Dennis Foster’s lasting impact

My wife and I have been in Japan as missionaries for 30 years. Within a few years after our retirement, we will likely be largely forgotten in the missionary community. We will probably not leave behind a church plant nor will we be called back for various anniversaries. We didn’t lead a mission organization. We certainly haven’t had anything named after us. But we are not alone. That is the case for many of us who serve as missionaries in Japan.

Two years ago, my wife and I began to look for a new place to serve. We had been near large cities (Yokohama, Osaka, Tokyo, and Sendai) for our entire career, but we began to consider places that missionaries were not going to, where the JEMA Directory has few names listed, even for entire prefectures. Living in Sendai, we began to look nearby in Miyagi and Yamagata Prefectures. In a Facebook post, we saw a prayer request for three unchurched cities in Yamagata Prefecture. We drove to Zion Christ Church in Murayama. That church is trying to do evangelistic work in Obanazawa, one of the unchurched cities nearby. Over and over, we heard the name Dennis Foster from those talking about the history of Christianity and the churches in that area.

When we actually decided to move to Obanazawa, we continued to hear the name Dennis Foster. People who have never been to church shared their memories of him.

“When I was a child, Dennis used to play with me in the street,” a flower shop owner told me.

“Dennis Foster always sat at that table,” the Ichiban Soba shop owner informed me.

When I was at the city cemetery helping clean graves, I learned from the former mayor of the city that Dennis Foster taught him English and music.

I asked an older missionary if he’d ever heard of Dennis. He did some asking around and it turns out that Dennis Foster was a single, independent missionary whose visa was sponsored by my own mission—SEND International (formerly Far Eastern Gospel Crusade).

Called to a hard place

Dennis Leon Foster, an African American, was born August 22, 1931, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from music college in 1955 and came to Japan as a soldier in 1957. He became an assistant chaplain and music director. In 1958, he was discharged in Yokohama and stayed in Japan to do missionary work. He studied Japanese and directed a choir at the YMCA. He prayed for the Lord to send him to a hard place, a place where there was no church.

During a chance meeting on a train, he met a believer, Mr. Hoshikawa, from Shinjo in Yamagata. “Are there churches in Shinjo?” asked Dennis. Mr Hoshikawa replied, “Yes, there are four churches; but in nearby Obanazawa, there are no churches.”

Dennis decided to go to Obanazawa as a missionary. He moved there in 1964 at 33 years of age. He remained there until his death on April 6, 1989, at just 58 years old. (Interestingly, my wife and I moved to Obanazawa when I was a few months from my 58th birthday.) In those 25 years living in Obanazawa, Dennis never once returned to the US.

In his last written report to SEND (probably 1988), Dennis wrote:

The church situation is nothing like that of Yokohama. There was no Christian witness in this city when I came. Even now there are only a handful. Some of them attend churches in the Yamagata City area. Many of the people who attend churches in the Yokohama area are young and live away from their families and the strong influence of the traditional religions of Japan. The turnover is very high as young people go to large cities, such as Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Sendai. The population has decreased as more than half of the high school graduates leave the city. I have introduced several people to churches in the Kanto area.

According to former missionaries Arthur and Beverly Moe, in their book Thou Shalt Remember, life was initially difficult for Dennis in Obanazawa as he was both a foreigner and a black man. However, he quickly made friends as he was known to always be smiling. Initially walking and later getting around by bicycle, many residents of Obanazawa remember Dennis for his large size, strong voice, bright smile, and his singing. At his memorial service, one man shared that Dennis often broke out into song—often gospel songs.

Dennis did make some connections through his one major music composition, The Second Coming of Jesus Christ oratorio (1969). Some believers in Yokohama helped him get it published, and portions of it were performed in some places in Kanto. In fact, the only pictures I’ve seen of him besides one printed on the bulletin for his memorial service at his home church, Nazarene Baptist Church of Philadelphia, are the three photos of him included in the publication of his oratorio.

Minoru Suzuki, as a grade school boy, used to go to Dennis’s house with his older brother to play. As he got older, he learned music with Dennis. Minoru played the guitar and Dennis sometimes accompanied him on the piano. At 15, Minoru came to faith in Christ at a church in Yamagata. Dennis would ask Minoru questions such as “What is the gospel?” and then he would show Minoru the answers directly from the Bible.

Dennis served the community in several ways. He kept the street he lived on clean. He taught music and English but never charged for it. He sometimes helped people with bills, even with his own limited resources. According to Suzuki, Dennis created an A4-sized tract and distributed it in many places. He visited people, and he also led Bible studies.

For a time, he had a small church in his tiny rental townhouse. (One friend recalled his home was cold and dark.) At the end of his life, three men and a woman were attending the little church in his house. Arthur Moe described the room as having two banners hanging on each side of the front of the room, and on them were written the exact same passage from the Bible: 1 Corinthians 15:3–4: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (NIV).

There are two women in Obanazawa, Hiroko Okuyama and Keiko Mori, who recall that Dennis made a big impact on their spiritual development during their high school years. A third, Miss Enomoto, died in 2022, just a few months before Susan and I moved to Obanazawa. At Dennis’s memorial service in 1990, Miss Enamoto said that Dennis was strict but loving, that he used the Kōgoyaku Bible version, sang from the Seika (Japanese hymnbook), and that he always taught directly from the Bible. After Dennis’s death, Minoru traveled to Dennis Foster’s sending church to thank them in person for sending Dennis Foster to Japan.

Ms. Okuyama shared, “He showed me by his life how to live the Christian life. He was a man who lived by faith. He would always pray for and with those who came to [seek] counsel with him.” She added, “he had a great sense of humor.”

Ongoing legacy

Since 1989, there have been a couple of missionaries who lived in Obanazawa but none stayed more than four years. The last missionary family left in 2004. And yet, the feelings of local residents toward Christians and foreigners are overwhelmingly positive. Mrs. Wada, a believer and former elementary school principal in Obanazawa, says that because of Dennis Foster, the city is very welcoming of Christians. Nearly everyone over forty who was living in the city at the time have fond memories or positive impressions of Dennis and Christian missionaries in general.

Mr. Hoshikawa, the man Dennis met on that train all those years earlier, stated at the one-year memorial service for Dennis in 1990, “Obanazawa is a hard place to evangelize but there is now a root planted and growing.”

Last week I met a medical doctor who loves music. In fact, he has a pipe organ and a piano in his clinic waiting room! He never met Dennis but he is full of gratitude for the gospel work he did in Obanazawa. He has several copies of Dennis’s oratorio, and he hopes to organize a memorial concert performance within a couple of years.

An article in Japan Harvest (Winter 1997) briefly mentions the ministry of Dennis Foster (p. 17). Outside of that, there are few, if any, current missionaries in Japan who remember him. Yet his legacy of Christian witness is strong, and the lives he impacted in the Japanese community continue to inspire believers and open hearts to hear more about our savior Jesus Christ. I want that to be my legacy—individuals and even communities impacted by the gospel.