Surfing with a yakuza’s grandson

It started one early morning as I was loading my surfboard into my van. A young man from the neighbourhood walked up and said, “Hey, I live next door and I surf too! Where do you usually go?”

After some surf talk, we exchanged contact details and decided to drive together to the beach. Sharing a ride meant saving on gas and highway tolls, and it turned out to be the beginning of something much deeper than a carpool.

During the summer he was working in construction—so our surf sessions began before dawn. Convenience store coffee in one hand, steering wheel in the other, we headed toward the coast under a fading moon and the first light of morning. Those early drives were quiet; I needed all my focus just to stay awake. But on the way back, after a good surf, I practised what I call “the ministry of listening,” asking curious and grounded questions; caring about his story, his background, and the things that mattered to him.

In time, trust grew. I heard about his family background: a yakuza-boss grandfather and a lot of chaos in his life. Our conversations moved from the superficial to the deeply personal, to life’s big questions, and to spiritual matters. With that came permission to share something of my own life, faith, and the Bible.

Storytelling plants seeds

I began with one Bible story at a time. Like a good TV drama, we started at the very beginning, with creation, and I ended every story with a kind of cliffhanger.

For example, in the beginning everything was perfect in the world. He liked the idea of a God who created a beautiful world, where the first humans experienced rest and relationship in God’s presence. Then I asked him to think about why the world isn’t perfect anymore, sending him home still wondering about the “why”.

Two weeks later, after another surf session, he shared his thoughts about why the world had lost that perfection. Then he asked for the next story.

So I told him about the tragedy of the fall—how rebellion entered creation and yet there was a promise: One day a descendant of Eve would crush the serpent’s head. He wasn’t sure what to do with that story. Talking snakes and forbidden fruit sounded strange, and it was weird to him that people really believed it. Though he made fun of me for believing such a crazy story, he had many questions.

Instead of answering them all, I encouraged him to keep thinking about it. I challenged him to ask God to reveal the truth to him and reminded him that he had a good mind, able to think and find solid answers. Over the years, I’ve found that not answering every question right away helps people engage more deeply with God’s Word. It leaves space for the Holy Spirit to teach and reveal truth directly, rather than the work depending solely on me as the explainer.

A few weeks later, he shared his thoughts with me. He had been contemplating those two stories extensively and had even discussed them with his coworkers. He had been reflecting on God’s Word for two whole weeks. Let’s be honest, we often forget the Sunday sermons we hear by Monday morning. However, stories tend to stick in our minds, and they become even more impactful when they are God’s living Word.

What he shared with me was amazing. He believed that we are akin to Adam and Eve. We are reluctant to listen to a higher power and instead desire to be our own masters, our own gods. What a profound insight!

Over the next five months, we continued this rhythm of surfing, storytelling, reflecting. One story at a time, we travelled through Scripture until we reached the crucifixion. Insights kept coming, and I was amazed at how the Holy Spirit guided him as he drew these lessons directly from God’s Word.

After telling the story of Jesus on the cross, I asked him, “Who are you in this story? Are you just a bystander, watching from a distance? Are you like Pilate—sarcastic, asking, ‘What is truth?’ Are you like the religious leaders, mocking Jesus? Or are you like me—joining the thief hanging beside Jesus, recognising him for who he really is, trusting him as the promised Messiah and righteous King of heaven and earth and Lord over your life?”

That conversation marked a turning point towards eternal life. What began as a shared ride to save on gas became a journey of faith through God’s story—one coffee, one wave, one morning, one conversation at a time.

Community nurtures seeds

I’ve been a storyteller my whole life, even before I became a follower of Christ. But before Jesus met me in my weakness and lostness, the stories I told were not life-giving. Now, if I give the Holy Spirit space, my stories are biblical and pointing others to Jesus.

Over the past ten years, I’ve seen several Japanese come to faith and be baptized, mainly through chronological Bible storytelling. It’s a powerful way to both evangelise and disciple. It invites people to encounter God’s Word as a living story, not an abstract concept. At the same time, it teaches them an easy-to-reproduce way of doing Discovery Bible Study (DBS) orally and on the go.¹

Yet I’ve learned that storytelling alone isn’t enough. The true power of a storyteller emerges within a healthy community, where the storyteller’s gift of communicating the gospel in ways that make people want to hear more is complemented by others.

I’ve seen two families go through an eight-story set of biblical passages called “Creation to Christ,”² hungry and full of supernatural insight. After the sixth story, and only the second New Testament story, they began praying to Jesus and were set free in remarkable ways. But without a community to belong to and to care for them, they were soon pulled away. I’m still in contact with both families, though, so please pray with me for the Holy Spirit to draw them close to Jesus with full commitment to follow him.

Fivefold ministry blueprint

From my experience, Bible storytelling flourishes best within community. Specifically, within the framework of the fivefold ministry blueprint in Ephesians 4:11, where apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers each play their part in equipping the body of Christ.

I know these titles are loaded and can be hyper-spiritualised. But I like to talk about these roles as a way to describe how God has made us all unique individuals with different strengths, personalities, and gifts to build up the body of Christ. A helpful way to reframe these loaded words to make them more accessible and grounded in the real world is the 5-Fold Ministry resource from the V3Movement.³ It shows not only the strength of each role but also their shadows; being aware of our own shortcomings is the first step toward growth.

Shepherds create spaces where people feel safe, belong, and can heal. The evangelist shares the message of the gospel, and helps people to understand and to believe. Teachers feed God’s truth to people in ways that make sense and can be lived out without creating dependency, but rather identity in Christ. Prophets speak God’s heart into real situations, keeping focus on justice and on what matters most from a kingdom perspective. And apostolic, entrepreneurial spirits keep the community outward-focused and moving forward, expanding the upside-down kingdom of Jesus.

Pray for more labourers in the harvest who are aware of their roles in the body of Christ, able to build up healthy communities where not only storytellers can thrive, but where the sum becomes more than the individual parts.

Storytelling plants the seed and is a great tool, but it takes a whole community to nurture it to life.

1. Discovery Bible Study (DBS) is a simple method of reading the Bible that helps people discover God’s message directly from the text by asking simple questions and apply it to their lives through discussion, obedience, and sharing.
2. An outline of this set of eight biblical stories (plus the Christmas story) can be found here: https://storyingthescriptures.com/a-bible-overview-in-nine-stories/
3. 5 Fold Ministry “Strengths and immaturities worksheet” is found here: http://churchasmovement.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/strengths-and-immaturities.pdf