How to Pray

The sincere, polite, hard-working Japanese are often too busy to give heed to the gospel and have little concept of personal sin. Pray that economic shocks, political instability and fears for the future may shake many out of complacency.

There are however some housewives with plenty of free time. They enjoy attending foreign cooking classes, English or other foreign language classes or craft classes run by churches. Some ladies are then very open to start an individual Bible study with the missionary, pastor or Christian. For others, the barriers are up ~ they want to continue to worship their ancestors at the Buddhist or Shinto family altars. Pray that these barriers will come down and people will be free to believe.

Pressures by non-Christian spouses not to attend church, by families to worship at the Buddhist or Shinto family altar, by fellow business workers to socialize after work ~ turn many (however reluctantly) away from church, Christian fellowship and time with the Lord. Pray they will be restored. New religions and sects have grown faster than evangelical Christianity. Pray that those involved would be set free.

Japanese Christians have made little impact on the centers of power [industrial, commercial and political] in the land.

Bible training for Christian workers is provided by nearly 100 seminaries and Bible schools. OMF is involved in teaching at Hokkaido Bible Institute in Sapporo. The great hope for the church’s future is the high quality of many of Japan’s pastors and church leaders. However Christian workers in training are at an all-time low and many post-war pastors are retiring with no one to replace them.

The church needs prayer:

  • Christians are a tiny minority in a society where consensus is important. Few families come to faith; individuals feel exposed. We need to see whole families believing and establishing family worship.
  • The lack of men in the churches. The drive for success and demands of employers make it hard for men to break free.
  • About 70% of all churches have an average attendance of less than 30. This sometimes means that there are not enough people to do the various duties at church so at times pastors take on some of these tasks.

Many towns and eight cities are without churches. Numerous country areas are scarcely touched by the gospel. However compared with the situation 10 or 20 years ago there are growing, flourishing churches started by OMF (and other missions) and there is encouragement in the churches. Since 1980 OMF has been praying for a decisive spiritual breakthrough.

Student witness is strategic, but only a quarter of campuses have KGK [similar to InterVarsity] groups. The estimated number of all Christian students is 0.1 per cent. There are also 70,000 Chinese students in Japan, most from Mainland China.

Christian radio and TV are effective in reaching people.

A highly literate, reading, commuting society offers excellent publishing and distributing structures for high-quality Christian literature. Japanese writers are needed, especially now after the death of well-known author Mrs. Ayako Miura.