InterAct Japan

Fifteen years ago, three Swedish denominations (Orebro Mission, Free Baptists, and Holiness Union Mission), each with their own foreign mission, merged to become a single mission— InterAct or Evangeliska Frikyrkan (which means Evangelical Free Church) in Swedish.

Two of the missions had been in Japan since 1950. Orebro Mission started in Kansai and founded the Kansai Bible Institute (KBI) in 1961, where many Japanese pastors from various denominations are educated. The school is now located in Ikoma, Nara prefecture. The mission also started the Japanese denomination, Japan Evangelical Church (JEC), which now has 32 churches and about 20 branch churches in many prefectures.

The Holiness Union Mission started in Shirakawa in Fukushima prefecture, but now works in Tochigi prefecture, together with 11 Japan Evangelical Church of Christ (JECC) churches.

The work has always been focused on planting new churches and training Japanese pastors and leaders. There are very few missionaries now, just the Edefors family in Shizuoka, the Bohmans in Tokyo, and the Kullbergs in Tochigi prefecture.

In our latest pioneer work in Ōgane in Nasukarasuyama city, we were able to purchase a wedding chapel that went bankrupt about 15 years ago. The chapel and its surroundings were in a very bad state. It was quite an adventure to buy it and convert it into an ordinary church. We are very happy to have this nice little church, which occupies 3,300 square meters and has a parking lot for 50 cars. Since we were able to buy it tax-free, it cost only about ten million yen to buy and fix the church. We also bought and renovated a building beside the church that had been used as a reception hall for wedding parties. That was also an interesting major undertaking. We now live in half of that building; it is very practical living next to the church.

Our mission has had many short-term missionaries who came to our churches for one or two years to do outreach through English teaching. Many Japanese have heard the gospel for the first time in an English class. Other ways we reach out include cooking classes, choirs, weddings, concerts, and music therapy.

We are happy that JEC and JECC are now sending quite a few missionaries from Japan to many countries around the world. As missionaries, we can still do many things to reach the unreached in Japan, but the Japanese pastors are now definitely the main leaders in JEC and JECC, and we are very happy about that.