Working together to reach rural Japan

The heart of the Great Commission is to bring lasting gospel presence to the ends of the earth. Japan has been open to missionaries for 160 years, but half its municipalities (1,640) lack their first church and remain untargeted. For the purposes of this article, I will call them “unchurched.” All these are rural (used in this article for a city or town under 50,000 in population). More than 90% of missionaries serve in the half that already have churches.¹

Increasing awareness recently of the great need has led to more interest in and prayer for rural areas that lack their first church, as well as more openness among missionary candidates to rural service. Yet these things alone cannot surmount the entrenched systemic barriers to getting workers to rural Japan that arose due to a several decade gap in church planting initiatives in towns and villages in many regions of Japan. So, despite a greater awareness, the missionary distribution among prefectures and between churched and unchurched areas of each prefecture continues to remain imbalanced.

The majority of mission agencies have no efforts underway in rural areas, nor long-range church-planting plans or internal pathways for new workers to serve there. Yet all unchurched areas in Japan are in rural areas. Even among the few agencies with rural ministry, urban-developed policies can unwittingly make the pathway more difficult or hinder prospective workers. The worker shortage in rural Japan is primarily due to dynamics that perpetuate an overconcentration of missionaries in some areas and absence in others.

Ultimately, to reach the remaining unchurched areas of Japan will require more rural church planters. However, the solution is not more mobilization, but

1) a new way of thinking about mobilization, placement, policies, and on-field support;

2) more agencies adopting rural church planting as an explicit part of their goals and openings; and

3) collaborating between agencies in selection and timing of target areas for church plants.

This last point will enable missionaries to be mobilized and placed into nearby areas in sufficient numbers and close timing to make rural service a more desirable, attainable, and sustainable option for new workers.

Ways to address the worker shortage

We need prioritization and concrete pathways. Below are some ideas about how we can achieve this.

Inform prospective missionaries that Japan has rural areas and needs missionaries in them.

Mobilizers could focus more on people from rural settings, those comfortable with highly diversified roles (i.e., not specialists), and middle-aged singles and couples who don’t have children aged 9 to 18.

Agencies, churches (in Japan and overseas), and seminaries could partner with rural ministries and routinely send them interns for one portion of the total internship duration. This increases manpower for the host ministry and exposes more prospective future workers to rural needs.

Each agency can make a difference by adding rural church planting as one of the main categories of placement possibilities offered to new missionaries. An agency without experienced rural workers could place a first-term missionary with a rural church plant of another agency, so that, in time, the first agency also would come to have rural workers in-house. To assist them, the Rural Japan Church Planting Network keeps a database of rural placements seeking additional team members.

Clear pathways should be provided to prepare missionaries in their first term to lead a rural church plant in an untargeted unchurched area in their second term. There is a need for a softer landing place for first-term missionaries and Japanese workers to learn the ropes of church planting in a rural setting at the same time and place with peers. In response, the Rural Japan Church Planter Training Center has been started to prepare missionaries with Reaching Japan Together Association or any cooperating church or agency, to lead a rural church plant with their own agency in their second term (see sidebar).

Change policies to lessen barriers

Consider the circumstances of available workers and rural settings. Then work to accommodate real-world situations, even if it requires flexibility in policies.

Ensure workers bond with rural Japan from the outset by allowing an option to study Japanese online from a rural area instead of at an urban language school. Living in an urban situation in one’s first term tends to lead to lifetime urban service. It’s now viable to study Japanese anywhere in rural Japan in a structured group class taught by certified professionals.

Allow each team to choose any blend of church planting models based on their unique team and setting. Some models that work in urban Japan can be counterproductive in rural Japan and/or create unrealistic expectations that set workers up for attrition. Mobilization emphasizing just one model could screen out those best suited to rural ministry.

Retain or regain a role as a mission agency in initiating church plants in unchurched municipalities, even if, in churched areas, the agency limits its activities to requests from the Japanese church.

Let pioneers pioneer—steer them to rural Japan, which is at an earlier missiological stage. Foreigners are still needed to lead pioneer church plants in unchurched areas, as long as they are committed for the long haul. This role in rural Japan should not be limited only to Japanese at this stage.

Equip workers for isolated settings, and, when possible, introduce prospective team members. But don’t mandate serving on teams after their first term, as doing so will nearly ensure unchurched areas stay unengaged. Prospective rural workers must be free to work alone at times.

Be open to interagency teams, which may be one of the only ways workers will be able to serve in a rural church plant alongside others.

Allow a first-termer to work in a rural ministry, even if it is outside an agency’s geographical focus area, to equip them to plant a church in an unchurched rural area within the focus area in their second term.

Prepare workers to be resilient in the face of unavoidable challenges rather than discourage rural service to avoid them. But also work to remove unnecessary ones (e.g., be flexible about home assignment, social security issues, minimal support levels required, etc.).

Interagency collaboration in target selection

If the coals are too far apart, a fire soon dies out. If limited rural workers are scattered across a broad area too quickly, needed synergy cannot emerge. But if they are too concentrated, not enough areas are reached.

Multiple agencies cooperating to field multiple teams simultaneously in separate unchurched municipalities of the same prefecture could be a game-changer. This would allow new church plants to emerge in close enough proximity for workers serving on separate teams to provide spiritual, social, and logistical support to one another through a peer network. As a result, rural service would be more viable while also permitting agencies and teams to each retain their distinctiveness.

Such collaboration in targeting is important, but the benefits depend on not targeting too many prefectures at once. No agency alone can reach 1,640 unchurched areas, but with cross-agency collaboration in target selection and timing, small and large agencies alike can be part of the solution, yielding sufficient critical synergy to reach rural Japan.

Other ways to reduce challenges:

• Organizing a pool of retired Japan missionaries for home assignment relief.
• Sharing mid-term workers (e.g., those with a three-month to three-year term) by splitting their term between urban and rural ministry partners.
• Locating successors for those who need to retire before a church plant can reach full completion.
• Options for rural MKs (e.g., home schooling/social co-ops, internationally-recognized distance learning, dorms near international schools).
• Organizing cross-agency prefectural missionary gatherings for fellowship.

Taking action

It will take much greater intentionality, interagency collaboration, and rethinking mobilization and on-field support paradigms to reach Japan’s last spiritual frontier in our generation. This article is to stimulate reflection and action, not be prescriptive.

How can you as an individual and your agency prioritize rural ministry and make it a more viable choice so that permanent gospel presence is established in each of Japan’s remaining unchurched areas? 

1. Author’s considered estimate based on various sources, including the JEMA directory and communication with other experienced rural church planters.