Why Japanese YAs Don’t Evangelize

At a Japanese Evangelical Association (JEA) Youth Commission retreat, a panel of college students spoke enthusiastically about their church experiences and how they felt loved and encouraged by the various members. In the question and answer time, I asked, “Have you ever invited a friend to your church?” Three of the students responded “no,” and the one student who did said his friend didn’t come. He never asked that friend or any friend again. I followed-up with, “If your church is such a loving, nurturing environment for you, why don’t you invite your friends?” No one had an answer.

Although this Japan Harvest issue is focused on evangelism, I want to examine why young Japanese do not evangelize. Older generations of Japanese believed that only the sensei could evangelize. However, I believe that there are other issues for young adults (YAs). Two heart issues that I feel are stumbling blocks to YAs’ ability to evangelize are an inability to communicate and segmented self. This issue, I will discuss YAs’ difficulties in communication.

Introductions

At dinner after Lighthouse (our contemporary YAs’ worship service), I was sitting with two of my YAs and their boyfriends (who don’t attend church regularly). At dessert time, the women said, “Well, I guess we should introduce them to each other.”

I said, “What? You guys have never met before?”

I was shocked that not only had the young women failed to introduce the men, but also that the men hadn’t taken the initiative to introduce themselves. Another of my YAs said, “Oh no. You would never introduce yourself. That’s presumptuous.”

Our 30-something assistant pastor confirmed this by saying, “That’s why when we went to that JEA youth meeting, I took you around and introduced you to everybody I knew as soon as we arrived.”

I remembered the situation and how awkward I felt as he introduced me to about 20 people in less than 10 minutes! I barely remembered their faces let alone their names and I felt strange not having a chance to talk with any of them before being introduced to the next one. However, the assistant pastor felt that he was helping me meet people by these speedy introductions.

I wondered what happened when new people came to our church, so I decided to do an experiment. Two weeks later, I had two friends (one Japanese and one a gregarious American missionary) come to our Lighthouse service for the first time and instructed them not to talk to anyone. Even after they were introduced to the group as new people, not one young adult spoke to them.

Communication practice and role-play

So, for several months, we practiced communication skills. First, I stressed that they were introduced to this new person during the announcement time, so it would not be presumptuous for them to introduce themselves—rather, it was rude after being told someone’s name not to introduce yourself. I explained that we wanted the visitors to feel comfortable and to have a connection the next time they came back to church.

We want to discover some basics about the visitors: Are they new to the area, what do they do, and where they are in their spiritual journey? Although the YAs were reluctant to talk about spiritual matters so quickly, I explained that since this is a church, it is appropriate to ask the visitor if he is a Christian or if this is her first time visiting a church.

In order to start conversations, we would play the “find something in common” game. Most of our YA visitors are college students, so if we found a visitor who went to a specific university, we would introduce them to another student from the same university. Or we would find a major in common, a home-town in common, someone we know who has something in common.

Our YAs were also concerned with how to end conversations. “What if I have to go to a meeting?” I explained that you can say, “It’s been great to meet you. I have to go to a meeting now, but I hope to see you next week,” or turn the person over to another person who doesn’t have to attend a meeting. We also emphasized the importance of connecting the new person to others in the church who are not YAs.

Over-communicating!

We also had the other extreme: A person who would pounce on the new people, overwhelm them, and immediately start talking about doing Bible study. I explained the way I approach getting to know a new person at church, that it is a gradual process and that I don’t ask someone to do Bible study with me until I know him or her better. This young man, sincere in his desire to evangelize, was surprised at this “process.” He has now calmed down in his own approach.

Electronic and social media

Electronic media has unmistakably influenced how YAs communicate. We recognize that Twitter, texting, Facebook, etc., has impacted the frequency and brevity as well as the emotional aspect of expression. In addition, these new means of communication have influenced the concept of intimacy; people who have never met face-to-face can be closer than people we see every day. One YA brought a friend to church whom she knew only from Facebook. The friend was welcomed immediately by all of the Lighthouse members.

In conclusion

To us older folks, the everyday communication skills I’ve mentioned seem very basic and self-evident, but today’s YAs need help and guidance in face-to-face communication. It’s also essential that we learn how to make greater use of social media for relationship building.¹ Finally, it’s important we give our YAs tools to overcome this tremendous barrier to their ability to evangelize. 

1. See our Modern Tech column on page 32.
2. Photos by Kevin Morris (OMF)