Mission Strategy Support Map

Identifying where a “church within walking distance” is needed

Where are churches needed? An IT team from the Tokyo-based educational support organization, Kokusai Kyōiku Kaihatsu, has developed a Mission Strategy Support system and named it “Map David” (MD). Makoto Fukui, CEO and pastor of Tamagawa Christ Church, gave an overview:

“We thought of the slow-moving situation of evangelism in Japan as Goliath, and named the system after David who triumphed over him. MD brings the Church Database (by Word of Life Press) to a new level with the hope of bringing change to the current evangelistic situation in Japan.

“When we considered evangelism in Japan, we concluded that more churches are needed, not necessarily bigger ones. Without the growth of each church member, a church cannot survive and thrive. Building more smaller-scale congregations of about 40 members within walking distance of the church would help pastors to effectively care for them. Japan needs churches to take root in each locality and bring forth Christians to bear fruit in that area. This will not be solved by just supplying more pastors to churches. We need to seriously consider revolutionizing the traditional way of evangelizing and pastoring.

“MD displays all sorts of information about Japanese churches worldwide onto a map, including the location, number of members and whether there is a pastor or not. MD also overlays the area’s population density onto the map. This enables us to see how many people live within a church’s target area. This is important to know.”

“Switching to the satellite mode in the software reveals the geography of each area. For example, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture has only a couple of churches. But MD shows us that many people in that city aren’t within walking distance of either church.

“Japan has long been battling to ‘overcome the 1% Christianity rate.’ But when we take a look at the population living within a square kilometer of a church, there are hardly any churches with members representing 1% of the region. Furthermore, only a small fraction of the church members come from within walking distance around the church and this is where we need to put more effort. We hope our MD system becomes an aid to all mission activity. In the future, we plan to update the database and add the ability to compare mission work before and after COVID-19.”

From Christian Shimbun, July 17, 2022
Translated by Hiromi Terukina

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