Opportunities through video

Imagine that…

…you could start a church with excellent Japanese sermons in your worship services.

…your church could impact young people with powerful messages that speak into their context, are fun and are delivered in a modern, trendy way.

…you could offer a well-prepared kids’ programme for different age groups right from the start.

…you could point people who can’t get to church on Sundays to online churches, with worship, a message, and live chat for questions, comments and prayer.

…you could offer meetings that connect with people from different socio-economic backgrounds.

A dream like this seems impossible for a church plant or a church with meagre financial resources, but new technology has made it possible. Around the world, churches are sharing and using video messages and Internet resources, allowing them to do things way beyond their own capacities.

In 2013, a small team of OMF missionaries started a new church plant, Connect International Community,¹ in Tsuzuki Ward of Yokohama. To concentrate our efforts on evangelism and to have a native Japanese communicator early on, we chose to use video messages from New Hope Yokohama, who share their resources with us.

Below, I have shared some lessons we have learnt over the last two years and also some ideas on how a movement could be sparked in Japan.

1. Video messages can be a powerful tool for communicating biblical truth

While a video message is not as personal or locally relevant as a real-life speaker, it has some advantages. The biggest one is that even a small church can have a message from an excellent communicator. Another advantage is that it is less confrontational. Preaching to small audiences can be challenging in Japan: listeners often don’t like eye contact and clearly addressing ethical issues can make listeners feel like they are being singled out. Using a recorded message is less confrontational and can make it easier to discuss the message afterwards as no feelings will have been hurt.

2. The pastor’s or missionary’s role changes with video messages

Most missionaries and Japanese pastors spend a significant part of their weeks on sermon preparation. By using a video message, this time can be used for evangelism, discipleship, and leadership training. But even though the role changes, the leader (whether full-time, part-time, or lay-leader) is still crucial to the church’s growth. The traditional church planter is often seen as a sensei (teacher). With video messages, his/her role changes to be a facilitator and trainer who initiates evangelism, discipleship, pastoral care, and networking with others. This requires humility, no question.

3. It’s vital to create a welcoming atmosphere

Just using a whole video worship service from another church won’t give you any meaningful identity as a local church community. In our case, we embed a video message in our worship experience. Our “connect experience” starts off with a coffee and tea time, where people can talk and interact with one another before the programme. There is also usually a craft table and some games to make visitors and their children feel relaxed and comfortable. Other elements we include are modern worship songs, prayer, and a short time to connect with people. We often facilitate a group discussion about the message and refer to recent occurrences and upcoming events.

4. Video messages have a huge potential to plant churches using limited resources

Most churches don’t plant daughter churches because the cost is just too high: a pastor, a building, and a core group. In our case, we rent public rooms in community centres for less than 2,000 yen on a Sunday. By using video messages and being willing to be flexible about meeting places, we think that any group of committed believers could start a church.

5. The need to work towards multiplication not just addition

Even though this model has great potential for starting churches that meet in different locations, days, and times and that target various pockets of society, it isn’t an instant recipe for growth. Building a church and discipling believers takes more than just showing video messages.

In our case, we are intentional about evangelism. Besides the seeker-oriented Sunday worship service, we are using the social network meetup.com² as a platform to build new relationships. We offer a weekly conversation café, monthly special evangelistic events and schedule regular outreaches on the street to connect with new people.

Listening to a good sermon is powerful, but there is also a need to experience the Word ourselves, so in our small groups we use the inductive Bible study approach. At a later stage, we see leadership training playing a crucial role in starting new communities.

After two years, we are still experimenting with this approach. We haven’t seen rapid growth, but the experience has convinced us that there is a lot of potential for the future of mission work in Japan.

How could a movement be sparked in Japan using modern technology for church planting?

1. By more churches producing and uploading good-quality message videos

At the moment, there are still very few video messages available online that have a good audio recording, close-up shots of the pastor, and a high-resolution video file. Even more difficult to find are messages with content that is neutral enough to be used in another context and is also relevant for non-Christians. Some media ministries in Japan are providing professionally filmed worship services, but some of them are difficult to access and download via the web.

2. By training and empowering church-planting leaders

If lay people or part-time pastors were trained and empowered by their churches, they could start worship in their homes, their work environments, or in local community centres. Those churches could hold multiple services not only on Sunday but also during the week to reach out to different groups in society. Teaching believers a new pattern of church could also help hundreds of small churches in rural Japan that can’t afford to call a pastor.

3. By churches starting new campuses, networks, and online worship experiences

One way of starting an additional location is to create a similar worship experience somewhere else, using your own recording of a live worship service. So that, like Starbucks, wherever you go, you can expect the same experience.

Another way is to start networks where other churches would use the messages of a church, but still have their own unique flavour and might vary quite a bit in the way they are doing church. Churches could also be as innovative as starting interactive online worship services reaching out to the Internet users in Japan (over 85% of the total population). The platform to do that is free!³

Imagine how many more churches could be started if some of the bigger, growing churches in Japan invested in these approaches.

A resource platform is being created on the web

One church in the US that is already doing this in a marvelous way is Life.Church.⁴ From this church comes the YouVersion Bible App⁵ and Bible App for Kids.⁶ They host a resource platform called Open, where they share all their resources for free.⁷

At these links, you can find free resources for kids, youth, students, small groups, worship, leadership development, and, of course, all of their message series. They have started more than 20 campuses over the years and currently more than 100 network churches partner with them.

Imagine if Japanese churches, various mission organisations, and parachurch ministries started working together to create a similar resource platform for Japan. I believe that if we served together and shared our God-given gifts for the advancement of the gospel in Japan, we could make an incredible impact on the whole country.

Please share your ideas and experiences with us via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/multisitechurchjapan or email: multisitechurchjapan@groups.facebook.com 

1. connect-japan.com
2. meetup.com Meetup.com is a social network app that allows people to form a group of like-minded people who can then meet in person through events organised by the group organiser or event host.
3. churchonlineplatform.com
4. life.church
5. youversion.com
6. bibleappforkids.com
7. open.church