Why are we losing Japanese returnees?

Around the world, workers in ministries to international students work tirelessly to reach students who have gone overseas to study. Many international students come to faith while studying abroad. Twenty-four percent of the Japanese returnees that I met in Japan came to faith outside of Japan.¹ The Japanese Christian Fellowship Network (JCFN) estimates that of those who become Christians outside of Japan and are not followed up, about 80% fall away from the faith within three years of returning to Japan.² Why do we lose so many Japanese who profess faith overseas when they return to Japan? What is the point of helping them come to faith, if we lose them after they return? How can we stop this loss?

Issues Christian Japanese returnees face include:

• difficulty finding a church,
• families don’t want them to be Christians,
• busy personal and working lives,
• no Christian friends,
• not knowing how to share their faith,
• a very different atmosphere at church from their overseas experience, and
• no Bible study or fellowship group to go to.

What we knew and what we learned

My husband and I went to Japan for two years to learn about the cultural barriers that hinder returnees from entering a church in Japan.

We knew that international churches can be a better fit for Japanese returnees. Returnees are third-culture kids—they want to keep their English fluency, and international churches are often closer to what they experienced overseas.

Many of us have heard that the threshold to entering a church in Japan is six feet high. In other words, in the Japanese mind, you can’t just walk into a church, because it is considered foreign and also because you can’t enter an already formed group without an introduction. We knew that introductions were important in business, but we didn’t realize that they are also important for entering a church.

When I asked Japanese why they don’t invite people to church, they said that it is a social boundary that they aren’t supposed to cross. However, non-Japanese people in Japan can easily invite their Japanese friends to their churches, and their friends will usually attend with them. This is one reason why international churches can be more welcoming than Japanese churches.

The returnee follow-up model of International Students, Inc., assumes that its US staff have the time and money to follow up and visit their returnees every four years or so.³ However, most staff members are busy with the next group of new students arriving, and they don’t have time to follow up all their returnees.

Strategy modification

Other models for follow up include:

1. Take future returnees to a Japanese church in your country before they return to Japan. Their re-entry process with be helped if they learn how to worship in Japanese and experience a Japanese church before going back to Japan.
2. Introduce them to a regional JCFN fellowship where they can meet other Japanese Christians.⁴
3. Introduce them to another returnee in Japan who is growing and attending church.
4. Introduce them to an expat contact you have in an international church in Japan. Have your contact invite the returnee to an international church in their area.

Returnee-friendly churches

I have been investigating churches in Japan since 2000. I wanted to help the church in Japan by sending returnees to them. It quickly became evident that it was returnees that we needed to help. They needed to find a church that would welcome them, include them, and give them freedom to serve the body of Christ. Churches that returnees are looking for often had the following characteristics:

• international,
• bilingual,
• inclusive of newcomers,
• lively worship,
• intentionally welcome newcomers at the door,
• invite newcomers to socialize with the group, and
• encourage newcomers to use their spiritual gifts to serve the church body.

I have created a list of returnee-friendly churches. These are a wide range of evangelical churches that major in the majors and minor in the minors. They are mostly international churches, but there are a few Japanese churches that returnees have recommended to me.⁵

Our findings on the first steps to faith:

• Japanese will attend a church with you because of the relationship. Our church in the US has an English conversation program where international students can practice English and learn more about US culture. It gives us a relationship to work from and provides opportunities to find seekers and invite them to a Bible study.
• Many Japanese people are lonely and seek acceptance into a group. Japanese seekers often come to faith through the experience of community, not because of logic of the gospel or apologetics.
• Japanese society is not good at accepting people into pre-existing groups. This includes the church.
• A mix of foreigners will tend to break up the traditional Japanese hierarchies that creep into church from society, which is a good thing.
• Foreigners easily invite their Japanese friends to church.

By 2020, the number of Japanese studying abroad is predicted to double to 120,000. Reaching Japanese outside of Japan is a wonderful opportunity that many are engaged in, but it is a great ongoing tragedy that many who find faith outside of Japan don’t get involved at a church in Japan when they return and subsequently fall away. Hopefully, we who work with Japanese students outside of Japan and you who work in Japan can find better ways to cooperate to realize a better outcome in the future. 

Disclaimer : This article contains guidelines for connecting returnees to the church in Japan. But they are generalities, as everyone one is different and everyone’s circumstances are different.

1. During our two years in Japan I gathered information on 150 returnees that I knew, were referred to me, or whom I met in various places while living in Japan, this is obviously not a survey without bias as most of my networks are Christian-related. The 24% chose to call themselves Christians even though I found that some were not attending church.
2. Returnee Seminar, Presenter: Hiroko Higashi (JCFN), Toyoake, Japan, Fall 2009.
3. International Students, Inc., exists to share Christ’s love with international college students. Since 1953, it has been training Americans to meet international students’ needs. These Americans befriend international students and help them adjust to American culture. http://www.isionline.org
4. The JCFN website will help you find regional fellowship groups, they can also help finding churches, and providing follow up. Contact them via http://jcfn.org.
5. For a list of returnee-friendly churches, email Liz at lizgodwin1955@gmail.com.