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Serving as an English Sensei

Over the next 10 Friday’s, I will run English conversational classes in a church called Kibo No Oka*, twenty minutes walk from Fuzukumi Station, south of Sapporo city. Kibo No Oka is led by Takemoto-sensei. The average size for a Japanese evangelical church is about 30 people. Kibo No Oka, however, is considered one of the biggest evangelical churches, with weekly attendance of 100 and average age of 53.

English conversational classes are a ministry run by the church, consisting of 60 minutes of English teaching, followed by a 10 minute explanation of the bible with three classes held throughout the day. Unfortunately the last English class was held over 5 years ago, so they greatly appreciate anyone who comes to teach at their church.

I was expecting those who came along to be shy and that I would need to ‘make’ people speak English (as Japanese are known to be shy and don’t dare to speak aloud in a group), but it was actually quite the opposite.

The first class has 4 ‘senior’ women who had limited English. As Japanese respect those whom are elder, but also respect those who are sensei (teacher), I wasn’t sure how they would react with a younger person teaching them. But soon they were repeating each word I was saying. It’s incredible how these women wanted to learn English at such an old age.

The second class consists of housewives, most of whom were able to read, write and speak English at a conversational level. Most woman had husbands whom played golf or soccer and had a pet cat.

The third class is a mix of high school students, housewives, and mid-thirties women. All had good conversational English skills. The two high school students were twins, so it was funny having them ask each other questions and having the other repeat the exact same sentence.

Watanabe-san is the coordinator of the English classes. She oversees the church’s 17 small groups while meeting with the core group leaders for accountability, encouragement and care. She is also involved with primary school evangelism. In a country with little Christians, it’s encouraging to see their passion for Jesus as they meet regularly to share and be accountable to each other in their groups.

Watanabe-san presents the explanation of the Bible, starting at Genesis. The passage is read in English, then translated and explained in Japanese, and then read together again in English. Out of the 18 attendees, 9 are non-Christians. Although the explanations were very quick, pray that God plants seeds in their hearts, especially those hearing the gospel for the first time.

Takemoto sensei mentioned that one of the biggest obstacles to Christianity is the Japanese people’s allegiance to the Emperor, who they see as a god. Pray that God will use this valuable ministry to speak to the lives of these people, and that the grip of allegiance they have to a human being will be broken. Pray that this community of Fuzukumi will come to see the one and only true Saviour, Jesus Christ.

* Kibonoka translated means ‘Hill of Hope’. Its actual physical location is on a slight hill, overlooking a few houses and next to a primary school.