Where Everybody's Crazy

My blog is really a surrogate short-term memory. If I don't blog, I can't remember what I've been doing recently. And it has been a fairly hectic few weeks.

My mother was here for three weeks, which was great, and I have a much tidier house and garden as a result. We then spent three days thinking about what sort of orientation programme our new missionaries should undergo - on the condition that the new missionaries coming up with the plan should also go through it themselves! We've come up with a programme which should hopefully be as challenging as it is informative, and will also be a stimulus to the rest of the field as well as the new missionaries.

It feels like since then the past two weeks have been a blur, because from there, my schedule went: pastor's meeting; media team meeting; meet up with an old friend from Oxford who was passing through the area; weekly meeting with pastor; day off; preaching and church vision meeting; preparation for missionary conference plus time with Henrietta; climbing a mountain; (it was the Midori no Hi - Green Day - holiday so the church did something involving being out in the greenery) two more days of conference preparation and another weekly meeting with my pastor, and that takes us up to today. This is why I haven't been blogging much.

Today I played football. No, really, don't laugh. We had an Argentinean professional coach over, who's in Japan to set up soccer schools and share his testimony with the kids he teaches. Our numbers today were swelled by the soccer team from Omi Kyodaisha School which (ObVories) is the school set up by Vories.

I'm presenting about Vories at the missionary conference, and I need to take some more time to look over that. I'm also preaching tomorrow, and I suppose I need to take some more time to decide what I'm going to say...

(I've started blogging in Japanese again; click the 日 button below if that's something that concerns you...)

One wedding, two fake weddings, one dedication, and, today, an exorcism. I've nearly collected the full vicar set. Oh, and today, "visiting preacher", which I think is worth a few points.

How the heck did this happen? I'm sure that some time in the not too distant past I was a computer programmer whose biggest problem was the most elegant way to code a particular algorithm. Now I'm saying "visiting preacher" like it's part of normal life.

It feels like a year since last Sunday. I honestly can't remember all of the things that have happened in the last week, which means I probably need to blog more. I've preached four - different - sermons in the past two Sundays. Last week I was also a "visiting preacher" in Kusatsu church, and preached at our Latin group in the evening. Monday, a Japanese lesson in the morning and some time to catch my breath in the afternoon. Tuesday, a few of us from church went to the Vories exhibition, which is why I came back blogging all melancholy. Wednesday: I have no recollection. Thursday, trying and failing to write a sermon; played go in the afternoon. Lost. Friday, talking with Takahashi-sensei in the morning, and then off to western Kyoto to be a foreign guest at an English school's end of term party. Saturday with H, and then today, preaching at Kyoto Ai No Church in the morning, and our English service in the afternoon.

I'll try to write some kind of analysis of all this later, but for now, I've frankly had enough.

It's been an up and down week in the life of Nagahama church.

Last Sunday I broke down at the pulpit while preaching on Amos. I was not expecting to do that, particularly since I'd already given the sermon once before in English and once before in Japanese without incident. Which just goes to show, even if you're preaching to yourself, eventually you'll start to listen.

And then I had the privilege of conducting the dedication of the daughter of a couple from English service:

Surely one of the best perks of the job.

But then on Friday we had the funeral of a still-born baby. Yeah. Not much else you can say about that.

Today was fantastic. Lots of stuff just fell into place. We had an Argentinian pro soccer player, Ignatio Medina, come to give a testimony and talk about a sports outreach thing he's doing in Osaka, a soccer school attached to one of the churches there. He gave quite a long but very encouraging talk, not just about himself and his work but also encouraging people to use their gifts and their abilities for God's glory.

After the testimony I remembered the words of Bob Moffett about a particularly moving worship time we had in college: "Please don't spoil it with a sermon." And Takahashi-sensei, to his eternal credit, didn't. There was plenty of value in what Ignatio said for one service.

Ignatio gave a quick soccer workshop in the afternoon, to the delight of Japanese and Latin American kids alike, and then popped down to our local sports stadium to talk his way into hiring it for a decent price over Golden Week so he could run a soccer school here in Nagahama too. Result.

I, meanwhile, got talking to a bunch of professors from the Buddhist University of Osaka, who were in Nagahama to do research on multiculturalism and ethnic diversity - because of all the Latin stuff we do they contacted the church to come and interview people. One of them came along to the English service.

Now, I didn't know he'd be there, and in fact I hadn't really taken in that they'd be in church at all, because otherwise I'd have made a bigger thing about it. But in my sermon I talked about how God had promised to bring together a country from the lame and exiles of all nations, (Micah 4:7) which my new Buddhist friend obviously found very interesting.

I also shared some personal stuff about forgiveness which opened the hearts of a few people, some of whom had been coming to church for a long time but hadn't particularly opened up about their own lives. And Mr Takizawa, who's been coming to English service for a couple of months now, got to meet a pro soccer player, so that was all good.

Now this week it's back to the grindstone after a fairly free few weeks, with a missionary meeting tomorrow, a pastors' meeting Tuesday, a housegroup on Wednesday, and preaching twice on Sunday. But hey, today was worth it all.

PS, check out my luridly coloured photos of Nagahama. They are really photos, I promise you.

Speaking of snow...

And of course many others.

On Wednesday I got back from a rather good holiday in Hokkaido with some Bible college friends. I seem to have brought the Hokkaido snow with me, because for the past three days I've had to dig myself out of my house.

Well, that's what I've been telling everyone, but it's not true. For the first two days, I've had to clear the area in front of my house to fulfill my social obligations. In parts where it normally snows really, really heavily, the council comes out with snowploughs, but in places like Nagahama, the way to get the snow cleared is good old-fashioned Japanese guilt-tripping. You really don't want to be the only one in your neighbourhood who is letting the team down by having a snow-covered patch in front of your house. My pastor was telling me on Friday how embarrassed he felt to have snow in front of the church when everyone else in the street had cleared their bit.

Hey, I don't like it, but it works.

So Friday and Saturday I was just keeping my neighbours happy. Today, though, I really had to dig myself out of the house. Last night was the first time since getting back that the roads were clear enough to cycle on, but it snowed an awful lot overnight, (the weather warning says 20 inches in the past day) and I literally could not get out of my house without some shovelling.

And not only did I have to dig myself out of my house, I had to dig myself into church at the other end. Or at least, join the work party clearing out the church carpark.

The snow is falling much more heavily now than this morning, and the weather forecast says it won't stop all week.

My first time cooking Christmas dinner, with all the trimmings - turkey, gravy, bread sauce, little sausages in bacon, peas, carrots, sprouts, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes; mince pies; Christmas cake.

For fifty people. And it all worked.

My thanks to Delia Smith, Alton Brown, and iCal.

They told me not to send out a prayer letter at Christmas, because nobody ever reads them. So instead I'm going to dump the unprocessed contents of my brain onto the blog:

• I have spent the past three days cooking. No, really, cooking. In fact, I have been staying over at church to get all the cooking done. I laughingly agreed to cook Christmas dinner for the church a few months back. As Jeremy Clarkson would say, "How hard can it be?" Well, quite hard, but it's going OK. The mince pies worked, the turkey is pretty much prepared and just needs a few hours in the oven in the morning, and then it's on with the vegetables. Maybe, however, "Perhaps we need a Christmas cake as well" was not a good thing to think at the last minute. Tomorrow it will be all go.
• I am really very proud of my mince pies.
• Friday and Saturday was just me cooking, but today I had "help" from some of the ladies in the church. Trying to get across culinary instructions in Japanese was ridiculous, and it would have been more efficient to do it all myself. But it would have been so much less relational. There's the Christian life right there.
• I took a break from cooking on Friday to write today's sermon. I gave a very liberationist Christmas message - it's just a product of my certain strange way of seeing the world. Everyone can see if they think about it that the shepherds were dirty, smelly, homeless people sleeping on the hills, and that the magi were Gentile foreigners, and that Joseph's family in Bethlehem (Of course he had family there, it was his home town, that's why he was going there) would apparently have nothing to do with him because of the shame of him being a father out of marriage, but you don't often get to follow all that through in a Chrstmas sermon.
• The strange thing I'm finding is that the further I go down the liberationist route, the more positive feedback I get from the congregation. I shall think about why this is and follow up later.
• Today I saw a one-day old baby and her mother. There is no finer sight in the world.
• I am very, very tired. And I still have another turkey to brine.

At 83 years old, Mrs Hiratsuka today accepted baptism. As she said in her moving testimony, "My sins have been washed away; I have become a child of God."

I've been using Mrs Hiratsuka as an example in my sermons recently, because I've been preaching a lot about the believer's joy. We often talk about being "born again" until it becomes a trite phrase, but to see someone of her age rejuvenated and full of joy reminds me why we say it.

And it reminds me why I'm here.

Friday was a very joyful day. In the morning, I was doing a visit to a local primary school as part of their "world festival" - the school had rounded up a few likely foreigners, and we had to give a short presentation on our home countries and then a thirty-minute activity. I got the kids doing the London Bridge nursery rhyme and game, and while it was a bit slow to start, they got there in the end.

It was my first time in a Japanese primary school. I was very impressed by the school and the way the kids were encouraged to take initiative and responsibility. Each guest had a "host" who took us around and showed us the activities that were going on in the various classrooms. One of those activities was a room where the children were giving presentations to the visitors (us guests and their parents) about the countries the guests had come from. I was also very impressed that all the kids already knew our names, as photos, names, and greeting phrases in each of our languages had been put up around the school for the past month. And as I joined one of the classes for lunch in their classroom, they were asking interested and intelligent questions of me. It was a lot of fun!

After lunch, we all headed off back to the train station, and I got a lift from there to Linea, one of the many wedding chapels in the area, where I pretended to be a foreign vicar. Thankfully I have some experience in my role, and was able to conduct myself reasonably well. There's a trend here in Japan for Christian-style wedding ceremonies, in purpose-built wedding chapels. Usually they're in a hotel, but this was just a wedding chapel/reception place. To complete the stereotypical picture of the Holywood wedding, you need a Western vicar to perform the ceremony. Their usual Western vicar - my boss - is currently out of the country, so they asked me to do one. It's a civil ceremony with a Christian theme, so the "vicar" doesn't need to be ordained, and so this is a good line of work for out-of-work actors who are passing through Japan and jobbing English teachers. That said, the company which contracted me is a Christian business which only employs missionaries or Japanese pastors.

I don't particularly want to get into this as a regular thing, not that I have the time, but it was fun. You have to not let on to the bride and groom that it's your first time, so I tried to look confident and authoritative even though I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I'd got a very well documented script that my boss uses, but until you're actually there doing it some of the details are always going to be hazy. Thankfully the staff at the hall were very helpful - if a little stern for my liking with the obviously terrified groom - and took charge of the rehearsal. I fumbled a few things in the rehearsal out of nerves, but in the actual ceremony I think everything went off OK. My own voice was a bit too stern for that happy occasion at times, though! It's hard to do solemn and caring at the same time.

Because it was my first time and because the staff took over, I didn't get much time with the bride and groom. I did manage to say a few reassuring words beforehand, but the vicar is not invited to the reception and is expected to disappear pretty much straight after the ceremony. But - although I hate to admit it - I really just wanted to do it for the experience. And the experience is still doing my head in - the thought that somewhere in Japan there's now a couple who have started out their married life together because I so proclaimed it. And if I don't do any more, then, well, that'll be even more special.

And to cap it all, just before I started the ceremony, I got a phone call on my mobile. I was swearing and cursing and trying to get rid of it, and ended up taking it. "This is the police; we've found your stolen bike. Come and pick it up today!" Result!

I'm currently at the Church Planting Institute conference. There are six of us here from WEC/SFDD; five of us came down yesterday in Martin's van and stayed over in the most bizarre youth hostel ever. It's next to an army camp, and to be fair, it was difficult to distinguish between the youth hostel and the army camp, particularly what with the soldiers marching through the grounds and everything.

Up for a parade at 7am with the national anthem and flag raising - that's not military, that's just Japan - and over to the conference venue at Fuji Hakone Land. Most of the day and afternoon was taken up with setting up, as Martin was in charge of the resource area and I was acting as the general dogsbody. I'm also demonstrating my own worship projection software at a booth in the resource area.

The conference started in earnest at about 4 o'clock, with a sermon from Gary Fujino. Gary came to our missionary conference in April and I really appreciated his talks there. This time it was a bit more abstract, talking from Habbakuk abou having expectations for God to bring change into a situation. He talked about how God had challenged some of his hang-ups and preconceptions about missionary activity, and that was certainly good to hear.

After dinner appeared to be the comedy hour. One Japanese pastor spoke about how his church saw growth not through casting a vision but through creating an image, which was an interesting idea. It's a little like my philosophy of preaching, that you don't necessarily draw out an application but you walk through the story with people and expect them to meet Jesus through that. I guess I was put off a little by his style, which was certainly too fast-paced for his interpreter, but there was certainly something in there worth investigating.

And then there was a talk about how all the problems of the Japanese church would be solved if we started by teaching creationism. Mmm, Single-Issue Christians.

I'm having a lot more luck with the "corridor track", and have met a few interesting people and some good connections already. I think to be honest that's mainly what I'm here for.