CMS missionary Dave McIntyre (serving with Beck) reflects on the challenges of developing new leaders in Japanese churches.

At a church in Japan, Mikiko felt it was time to hand over her leadership of the Sunday School, particularly given her advancing age. She thought that Ikuko would be a good replacement, given her commitment as a Sunday School teacher and her love of the kids. Mikiko consulted with the senior pastor and leadership committee and then had
a conversation with Ikuko.

Ikuko was reluctant. She felt ill-equipped to lead the other teachers. Not only this, but Mikiko had led Sunday School for well over a decade. Ikuko felt her own lack of experience keenly.

Ikuko eventually said yes, and is now doing an excellent job of leading the Sunday School ministry. But this handover to a new generation highlights some of the challenges of finding and training Christian leaders in Japan.

Finding the next leaders

One challenge is that there are simply fewer people to choose from than might have been the case in the past. Whether it’s looking for the next pastor, or for a Sunday school teacher or a finance team member, many churches have trouble finding leaders. Who’s next? There’s often no one obvious to take over, and numbers in many churches have plateaued or are shrinking.

There are both cultural and church reasons for this. Culturally speaking, Japanese people are less willing to participate actively in any religion, not just Christianity.

Nozomu Oimatsu, a lecturer at Osaka Bible Seminary, notes that there was a time up to about the 1980s when many churches got bigger. That is no longer the case. There is also now a problem of retaining young people at churches. Fewer young people attending means that there are fewer potential future kids’ and youth leaders, which increases the difficulty.

Those who are available to lead can be reluctant to do so, because of their anxiety around getting things right and meeting expectations. This is not just an issue within churches. Japan is a country where accuracy and having the right information is highly valued. Kids are encouraged to aim for 100 per cent in tests from an early age. 80 per cent is often the required pass mark in a test or exam. As well as this, Japanese people are concerned with licencing leaders and ‘experts’. Teachers need good qualifications and are held to high standards, which means that to take on such a role is—and is perceived to be—a weighty responsibility.

Teaching and leading: more than information transfer

This sense of responsibility plays out with ministers and church workers, who fall under both the ‘expert’ and ‘teacher’ categories. The word ‘church’ in Japanese, Kyõkai, means ‘a place of teaching’. The sermon and other forms of teaching are highly valued, possibly to the detriment of seeing church as the place where believers gather to be God’s people, encouraging and modelling the Christian life to one another (as opposed to relying mainly on expert input from leaders).

This point is reinforced by Fumikazu Chito, senior pastor at Crossroad Church Nishinomiya (where we are serving), who suggests that there can be an overemphasis on the ‘information transfer’ of the gospel, potentially at the expense of living out gospel implications. Fumikazo has suggested to me that pastors in Japan tend to be academically qualified leaders who can prepare sermons well. Other people at church feel they lack such qualifications and knowledge, and this can seep into a general attitude of “I can’t teach others.” Yet, even for those who have, for example, taught kids for a while, (think of Ikuko above) stepping up to leadership responsibility is daunting. Furthermore, could they then end up stuck in a position where they fail to meet the high standards and expectations of others?

Nozomu Oimatsu, from Osaka Bible Seminary, also mentions the Japanese attitude of Ninjũ (patience and submission). “You’re expected to respond to expectations as much as possible and not disappoint those, particularly those of the people above you,” he says.

For Japanese over the age of 60, submitting in this way made sense. People over 60 have experienced Japan when it was growing economically, and in many other ways, post-World War Two. Life was getting visibly better for everyone. For Christians in this older generation—often under the influence of missionary input—this sense of growth and success has had an impact on the manner of choosing church leaders. There was commonly an emphasis on a personal ‘call’ from God to be a pastor, and (having received this sense of call) ‘putting your hand up’ to volunteer for such a role. In a country that encourages many years of training under a master to perfect a trade, ‘putting your hand up’ because you felt you had the ‘call’ comes with complexities. It cuts across the common Japanese approach to becoming a leader.

Missionaries in Japan encouraging young people to put themselves forward in this way could not have foreseen such long-term complexities. In addition, it is helpful to consider the ‘call and volunteer’ approach in light of New Testament models. Jesus chose his disciples deliberately, not by calling for volunteers. Paul, following the example of Jesus, chose men like Timothy to take the gospel to the next generation of believers.

It would be fair to say that many younger Japanese Christians simply do not have any sense of a ‘call’. For reasons already mentioned, they remain reluctant to enter what they rightly see to be an extremely demanding role. The upshot is that there are fewer pastors in Japan than there were previously.

The importance of discipling

What next? Nozomu Oimatsu says that diversity of leadership really matters, which means encouraging different people in church to lead, who may not fit the mould of what leaders have looked like in the past. He says, “We need to talk about what the aims of church are, so that we can scrap the things we don’t need and start rebuilding.”

Fumikazu Chito believes the problem is a failure of discipleship, which he suggests is the main purpose of the church. “We need to take care of the people who come to us as disciples, then ‘unwrap’ them, finding the ones who can lead,” he says. Such a change of emphasis, argues Fumikazu, would be a fundamental shift for most churches in Japan, which currently emphasise the Sunday gathering and particularly the sermon, as the main way that the word
of God is taught.

As things like the pastor shortage force change, all leaders (not just pastors) are being pushed to think about how to raise up and mentor a new generation of leaders. Change, even healthy change, is often difficult. However, what leaders like Fumikazo and Nozomu are encouraging is a Bible-based vision. By considering the examples of Jesus and Paul, Christians in Japan and everywhere are able to re-evaluate the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of growing faithful disciples, who can in turn become leaders after God’s own heart.

GIVE

You can directly support CMS missionaries as they disciple and mentor Japanese Christians, to help raise up new leaders. Go here and find out how to give financially to this work.