Kokoro Connection: Maximize the Message Being Heard

The rainy days were the most depressing. Random evangelism on Tokyo campuses had enough challenges, not least being the lack of interest and response, but somehow the gray and the wet ate away at my already dwindling morale. I arrived at Tokyo Roku Daigaku (Tokyo’s top six universities) brimming with zeal, only to get hit with reality. Few seemed interested in spiritual issues, and even fewer received the message. Month after month, and then year after year, I banged my head against the brick walls of Tokyo’s Ivy League apathy.

But then I began to change my approach. After all, if the target is missed, it is not likely the target’s fault. And after I changed, I started to see a response—a lot more response. For the next ten years, at least one person, but at times many responded at every event where I shared the gospel. That was despite my skepticism and disbelief. I once caught myself thinking, “Not today. Today is the day no one will say yes to Jesus.” But wouldn’t you know, they said yes, even on that day!

In one unforgettable situation, a secular company invited me to speak to all the employees on the topic of Christian love (yes, the stuff of dreams). When I gave an invitation at the end, 16 of the 25 present accepted Christ. My wife Junko and I had to help lift each other’s jaws off the floor.

What was the change I made? Basically seeking a kokoro connection. Simply put, a kokoro connection is a bond with heart, emotion, and deeper being. It is very powerful. In my years in Japan, I have seen a lot of evangelism that never connects to kokoro, and a lot of kokoro connecting that never becomes evangelism. Both situations are unfortunate.

With 65% of churches in Japan not seeing a single conversion in a year, it’s easy to think that Japanese society, culture and hearts are resistant to the gospel. However, decades of evangelism with Campus Crusade in Japan has indicated that a basic, personal presentation of the gospel in Japan will result in one in ten responding—a similar response rate to what I have seen in many developed countries. So one might ask, how much evangelism are churches really doing? Or, how appropriately are they doing it?

Perhaps we all might do well to consider in what ways we could make a solid kokoro connection with individuals we hope to reach.¹ There are a myriad of ways to help move people deeply and each is deserving of careful consideration, but in this article I will consider just three: music, story, and touch.

Music

In my limited understanding of music, I have been awed at its power to capture and bond to a heart. I was once in Milan with my wife on her birthday. Though I loathed opera, what choice did I have? Despite my ignorance of the dynamic Italian lyrics, I left with something pulsating forcefully in my heart. I had gotten a taste of why in films you see hardened Mafia bosses weeping uncontrollably at the opera house.

But perhaps too often we get caught in using music for a message, instead of just allowing it to create the kokoro connection. Perhaps the music doesn’t always need to carry a message. I recall a small church dedication I participated in in Yamagata. A man from the neighborhood played an old folk song of the region on the shakuhachi (traditional Japanese flute). His performance opened up deep memories and connections, so much so that the pastor couldn’t help jumping in and crooning the words of the song. Though it had no spiritual message, it deeply resonated with spiritual possibility. For in that moment, people’s hearts were wide open.

Story

Jesus was a master at the craft of story. When I did chapel weddings many years ago, I knew of chaplains who aimed to use their eight minutes of message time to clearly get across the points of the gospel and hope it might make its mark. I took a different route. I tried Jesus’ method and decided to tell a story that might move people at the heart level, leaving them curious and hungry. The story I employed most frequently was about an elderly couple struggling with Alzheimer’s and finding love in heartbreak. I would choke up myself, and over time I saw hundreds with tears in their eyes.

A good story is not easily forgotten. A few years ago I produced a manga, RiskRide (www.riskride.net). It is a story to initiate a kokoro connection. The manga merely hints at the gospel. But the seven questions that follow the story open up a raw and wounded place in the reader’s heart. Many reports have come in of deep kokoro connections having been made. Lonely people, damaged people, people ready to give up—and their hearts opened like lotus blossoms to Jesus.

Touch

Japan is notorious for being a place of very little touch, aside from experiences on crowded trains. But meaningful touch, though scarce, is greatly longed for. Touch may be countercultural, but if handled well and timed appropriately, it can create a powerful kokoro connection.

I witnessed this often in post-disaster Tohoku. In the shock phase following the disasters, I mobilized teams of hundreds of volunteers to offer kokoro care under the guise of stress-relieving hand massages. Though wary at first, I found it was obviously a God-thing. People in shock, grief, and trauma needed a touch, but so few were getting it, especially nuclear evacuees. In that context, a Christian volunteer would take their hand, listen, help them breathe right, think straight, release them to weep, and then offer to pray for their protection and blessing. I was amazed as I saw average Japanese volunteers making remarkable kokoro connections all around me. They too were awestruck. It worked so well that we employed the method many times back in Kanto at our community-care center, T3C, for those suffering from anxiety. In many settings, I have seen the myth debunked—that it takes a lot of time for hearts to open in Japan. If you go about it correctly, 15 minutes can be as potent as six months.

In producing the GospelShare Series,² we sought to offer the gospel in the most appropriate terms for different types of people: white collar, blue collar, seniors, kids, etc. But in our training, we emphasize that before sharing this highly tailored approach, it is important to establish a kokoro connection. Not hard to do, but tragically easy to forget.

Too often evangelism follows an unfortunate course: not really capturing a person’s interest or attention, struggling to get across a list of logical points, trying to get some kind of fundamental change of heart or mind, and coming away empty-handed. Been there, done that.

What must we do to fascinate, to intrigue, to move deeply? The path may be simpler than we think. Perhaps to start we need to find kokoro, perhaps we need to feel.

Long ago, I studied tea at the University of Hawaii. In the garden of the tea house is a pond. Unless you see it from above, you don’t realize that the pond is in the shape of the kanji for kokoro (心). To get to the tea house, one must pass through kokoro. It’s a good reminder. There, I learned from Okakura’s Book of Tea³ that, “We have good and bad tea, as we have good and bad paintings—generally the latter.” Precisely. And that is my great hope—that my evangelism will not fall into the latter category. 

1. I’ve long suspected that contemporary Japanese people are not looking for truth or drawn to rational, logic approaches. I view Japan as being neither post-modern nor modern, but likely pre-modern (that toyed with modern)—which looks a lot like post-modern. We may try to give the gospel in modernistic terms, but perhaps what Japanese people want most is an experience; they want something that feels good. That feeling may be our best starting ground.
2. GospelShare, www.newdaytoday.net/gospel
3. Kakuzo Okakura, Book of Tea (Dover Publications, 1964)