(From journal: January 29, 2002 11:37 PM)
These last few days have been eye opening. Among other things, Iím finally getting the answers I was hoping to get at the beginning of my stay here in this location. I always found it quite peculiar how this church, the Kaminoyama church is the only church from the first Yamagata project (ending 2000) who still has a LIFE missionary. Knowing the basic structure of how the LIFE system/program works, and how the missionaries go through a three year cycle staying with one church, and knowing that that three year cycle ended in 2000 for the Kaminoyama church, I always wondered how they managed to get missionaries afterwards. After asking a number of people, I finally pieced together what a church has to do in terms of preparation work to receive missionaries from LIFE MinistriesÅEone of them being a written time table of their specific church multiplication plan and the usage of the missionary toward that plan. Naturally the next question was what was the new plan considering that they probably can`t use the same reason as when they had the career missionaries over for the first project over the course of three years. Apparently, the plan was to launch a new cell group (to become a future church) from the parents of the children attending the children`s ministry timeÅEin the present case an English class. The missionary would provide the initial attendance of kids by teaching English, and thus start the plan. Somehow or other, that vision died before I came here (even though I`m still teaching that English class). And so, I`m caught in between, not doing what I`m supposed to be doing (helping plant a new church), but instead, keeping up certain programs with hopes that some of these people would come to Christ. A worthy cause no doubt, an effort many missionaries around the world are undergoing earnestly, but realistically speaking, I`m not staying much longerÅEmany of these programs will cease to exist after I leave, leaving quite possibly many of these people without any reason to continue to be connected to the church. It simply doesn`t seem like a good game plan to me.
Regardless, at the same time, I feel like I`m finally starting to make a semi long term contribution to the well being of the church and toward the goal of planting a new church. After leading one of the two cell groups for a number of weeks, just last Friday, I finished covering the material we were going over. Previous to the last Hideyo led cell group Bible study, I was beginning to wonder what the church was planning to do about this particular cell group after I was done. After all, the leadership knew how long the material was going to take, and knew that my commitment was for as long as the material lasted. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to want to talk to me about the soon upcoming problem. And so, fearing the worst, that they were expecting me to continue leading the Bible study (making the material up as we went along) without consulting me, I took the initiative after the last Hideyo led study to talk to the original leader of the cell group. To make a long story short, we went through the long process of vision casting, purpose seeking, and concrete decision-making for this particular cell group in one sitting in about 3 Ω hours. Thinking about it nowÅEnot only did God really guide that time, but He made sure that I was adequately equipped to be able to handle the job. Obviously, the hands on training that I got from doing that sort of thing with AACF (over and over again) helped tremendously. Also, not too long ago, I went to the LIFE sponsored Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills workshop where one of the topics was helping others solve problems. With that still fresh in my mind, I was able to help the leader make all the decisions by herself, thus, having a more positive outlook on the ultimate decision. So anyway, the solution is easily reproducible by Japanese ChristiansÅEdoesn`t depend on missionary help, not leader-focused thus taking the weight off of the current leader`s shoulders, and provides the possibility for member growth. The leader`s happy, I`m happy, thinkinÅEthat God`s happy. We`ll see how it turns out. And that brings me to the last thing about the situationÅEI actually may get to see how it turns out considering that I still have about six weeks here.