OperationSAFE IN Yunnan, China

OperationSAFE China

Zhaotong, Yunnan, China Earthquake Situation Update

At 4:30 p.m. on 3 August 2014, an earthquake at the magnitude of 6.5 shook Ludian County of Zhaotong Prefecture, Yunnan Province, affecting Ludian County, Qiaojia County, Shaoyang District and Yongshan County of Zhaotong Prefecture, as well as Huize County of Quzhing Prefecture. Among them, the worst hit areas are in Ludian County. The quake claimed 617 lives, 112 people were reported missing, 3,143 people were injured, and 229,700 people were displaced. Some 60,000 houses collapsed or were severely damaged. Public utility and infrastructure were damaged at various extents.

Our partners that we worked with for the 2008 Sichuan quake and 2010 quake in the Tibetan area of Quinghai have already been to do a rapid assessment and have discovered an urgent need for psychological emotional care for 6000 primary school students and have received an invitation from the local education officials. They would like to mobilize teams to begin OperationSAFE child trauma camps for these children as early as the end of this month. We need your help! As little as $6 can sponsor one child.

THE CHURCH IN JAPAN’S CRISIS OF AGE

Servant Team Leader, Reiko Sugimoto reported: “Churches from about 30 different groups and around 140 people attended. God’s incomparable presence was with us to the end. I was so pleased that people came from as far away as Wakayama, Miyagi, Yamagata, Fukushima and Nagano and ranged in age from 0 to 80. Thank you for your prayers and attending and for each of your contributions to making this event successful.”

4/14 Window Tokyo Leadership Summit

Dr. Luis Bush and East Asia Coordinator John Hur’s presence was a great encouragement for our team and for those who attended.  As we talked around the lunch table, conversation turned to the critical moment that Japan is facing in its history and how God is positioning His people for it.  I will try to summarize and give some of my own insight.

Japan is currently approaching an existential crisis that it must resolve if it is going to survive.  The most simple way to describe it is that decades of low birth-rates and falling marriage rates combined with ever increasing life-spans has created a top heavy society with roughly a third of Japanese over the age of 60 and only 28% under the age of 30.  This problem is actually compounded in the Japanese church where Masakazu Suzuki of CRASH Japan writes, “based on 2012 data, out of the average sized church in Japan with 35 attending worship on Sunday, 18 are over the age of 60 and only 2 are under the age of 30.  This means that the church has 20% more elderly than the national average and 20% less of the younger generation.”  『宣教の革新を求めて』(東京基督教大学国際福音センター、2012年)によると日本のプロテスタント教会教勢の概数(2010-2011年)(Tokyo Christian University International Mission Center)

Part of the task that the 4/14 Window faces in Japan is to raise awareness of this crisis within the church and “draw the hearts of the fathers to the children.”  We are making good progress towards this with the successful events now in April and July that is growing towards a national conference in November.  We have enjoyed a broad base of support including organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse, OneHope, Awana and CRASH Japan and 7Media on the servant team as well as cooperation from the Japan Evangelical Association, the Lausanne Movement in Japan and independent churches.  The events have been given good coverage in the Japanese Christian press and the Leadership Summit will be broadcast in seminar format on CGN Television.

This is a “Kairos” moment in Japan’s history and it would be short-sighted to assume that God has left His people unprepared to meet the challenge.  The church in Japan has just been through a period of great change in response to the Great East Japan Disaster of 2011.  It has been said that during that time three walls have come down; the walls between churches, the walls between the church and community, and the walls between Japan and the outside world.  Let me make a few comments on each of these.

  1. The walls between churches
    The 4/14 Window Movement is interdenominational and so far there has been great cooperation and unity between differing groups.  One of the key ingredients to making it work is that we focus not on specific methodologies or doctrines, but on doing theology together and sharing resources without territorialism.
  2. The walls between churches and the community
    The bottom line is that without engaging the community there is no way to reverse the declining trend in the children and youth in the church.  We are past the point of expecting that children born in the church will be enough!  I am hoping that this can be the challenge that Pastor Nam Soo Kim can bring to the conference in November.
  3. The walls between Japan and the world
    The general attitude in Japan has been that things that work other places in the world won’t work here because of Japan’s unique nature.  But the tsunami forced us to work together with volunteers from around the world.  It is still difficult and never an exact match, but I believe that the contributions of the 4/14 Global leadership will be well received and help the church in Japan to find the way forward.  That said, I am encouraged that the Global Leadership is not dominated by Western Christians.  It is important that Asians (Korean, Mongolian, Indonesian, Philippines) be at the forefront and that there is plenty of time for Japanese leaders to present from the stage.

The biggest thing that the church in Japan learned through the tsunami crisis was that what Japan really needs from us and has no other source of is hope.  The hope of the gospel must be clearly communicated to the next generation so that they can find purpose and strength to meet the crisis coming to this nation.

4/14 WINDOW MOVEMENT JAPAN

Over the last year I have been blessed to visit great organizations around Asia that are working with children. In Indonesia we shared strategies and techniques with World Relief who are working with the children of asylum seekers that are growing up in a detention center in Bali. In the Philippines we have partnered with the Philippine Children’s Ministry Network as they moved rapidly to respond to the devastation of Typhoon Yolanda. In Mongolia we collaborated with World Vision, Compassion International, One Hope and Awana to challenge and encourage hundreds of pastors and children’s ministry workers in a nation with a modern Christian history of scarcely over 25 years.

Why are relief and development ministries like World Vision and Compassion investing so heavily in encouraging strong church involvement with children?

It is simple. The local church is the number #1 partner when disaster strikes or in combatting poverty. We have been so amazed to see how dynamic and powerful the churches in the Philippines have been to rally in support of the OperationSAFE child trauma work. Hundreds of volunteers have been trained and swiftly mobilized all because the churches are already networked and active in children’s work. After seeing what the Lord is doing in each of these places, we came back each time with an even heavier burden for Japan. What is the state of children’s ministry in this country? Some sobering statistics have emerged. Over half of the churches in Japan no longer have any children’s ministry whatsoever! Where post-war Japan had as many as 90 children on AVERAGE attending Sunday schools at churches, that number has dropped in recent years to less than 9. It is easy to see that children’s ministry attendance is a leading indicator of the health of the church, and the emptying of our Sunday schools is only a precursor to the emptying of the churches. The church in Japan is approaching a very real crisis! What can we do about it? CRASH Japan is a sponsoring member of the 4/14 Window Movement in Japan. What is the 4/14 Window? It is very simply the most effective window of opportunity to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ, between the ages of 4 and 14 years old. We are joining efforts with many of the same groups that came together to work so well during the 2011 Tsunami disaster to meet this new crisis; the Japan Evangelical Association, Samaritan’s Purse, One Hope, Awana, 7Media, Family Forum Japan and many many more. The way we see it there are three major points to begin in prayer.

Potential

If there is any future for the church in Japan it begins with the children. D. L. Moody once said that if he could go back and do it all over again he would have devoted his entire ministry to reaching children.

Priority

Although over 70% of people who receive Christ as their Savior do it between the ages of 4 to 14 years old, only a small fraction of the ministry of the churches are concentrated on this critical age group. We are challenging the churches to rethink their priorities.

Partnership

Children are not just the object of our ministry but are also part of the ministry themselves. The prayers of children, worship of children, testimonies of children and service of children are all vital to reaching Japan with the authentic gospel of Jesus.

Please join us on July 12th for a day of challenge and encouragement in Tokyo, Japan as we host Dr. Luis Bush who coined the term 4/14 Window and has graciously offered to come to Japan to address us in this time of crisis.

Prayer Forum for Fukushima

Special prayer forum for Fukushima!

Date: May 24, 2014  Time : 2:oo pm start

Place : Ochanomizu Christian Center (OCC) 8F

It’s been over three years after the earthquake, but still church and people in Fukushima are facing a lot of things. Let’s get together and pray for Fukushima!

フクシマ

Easter Program at Seaside Church in Sendai, Japan

Sharing the Hope of Easter with Children

Over the last three years OperationSAFE has held more than 20 child trauma camps in response to the 3.11 disaster in Tokyo, Fukushima, Ibaragi, Miyagi and Nagano with over 650 children affected by the tsunami and evacuated from the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Station.  Our philosophy is to work with local organisations that will be there for the children long after teams from outside have gone home.  Seaside Bible Church, whose church was also swept away by the tsunami, is one such local organisation that has reached out to these children and will continue to give comfort and hope with them for years to come.

IMG_0729Testimony from Japan OpSAFE Leader Rie Wilson

It was such a beautiful day to drive to the Northern part of Japan.  On the way there we saw cherry blossoms were blooming and all the volunteers were excited to see the children in Sendai who had suffered from the Tsunami in 2011 because this was our third time to visit them.  Last  summer we provided our Five-Day program and then last December we shared our Christmas program as a follow-up.  Most of the children who came to this program go to a nearby pre-school.

Pastor Naito and his wife Nozomi started the Kids’ club at their church to share God’s word to those children.  For this Easter event God provided nine OpSAFE veteran volunteers and some came from far away by bullet train.  The children were excited to start our Easter program since they knew we were providing games, crafts, snacks and also stories.  We spent two hours with them and shared why we celebrate Easter with them.  For craft we made a Easter basket to put five different colorful eggs with bible verses to take home.   We all prayed that they can hold onto those verses and they will share the meaning of Easter to their families.  We had such a blessed time with those children.  Thank you so much for your support.

Rie Wilson, Japan OpSAFE Leader

Testimony  from Mrs. Nozomi Naito

Naito“Let the little children come to Me.” Mark 10:14 was the verse that encouraged me to start the Wednesday Kids Club in the fall of 2012.  In the first month there were no kids showing up, but one child came and then little by little we started to gain in the number of children.  In 2013 April all of a sudden five mothers who send their kids to the local pre-school started to come to church and they desired their kids to come to Kids club.  In 2013 July, Nov. and 2014 March for those Kids club kids we invited OpSAFE to do the program.

The Kids who attended all of the OpSAFE programs were excited to attend and I could see their concentration span is growing each time and see God’s blessings were upon those kids.  Some kids could not attend our club since the last OpSAFE program and I was wondering why and praying for them.  But for this program they showed up and they told me that since it was winter-time schedule, they could not come to Kids’ club.

7 volunteers from Tokyo,  one from Shizuoka and one from Osaka came to do the program.  Most of them joined our Sunday worship service and shared their worship kids dance.  It was such a blessing to see one elderly man who is over 80 years old enjoying dancing with them.

I would like to ask your prayers that the seeds that the OpSAFE team planted will grow in kids’ hearts and fruit will come from them.