International Approach to the Japanese People using House Church Strategies 1
Manuscript, presented to the SEANET VI in Chiang Mai in 2004
Published as a chapter in the Sharing Jesus Effectively in the Buddhist World
by William Carey Library in 2005http://www.netramp.us/wcl/customer/product.php?productid=506&cat=1&page=2
1. Introduction
In order to help catalyze house church multiplication in Japan by providing resources for and networking house church planters, I founded the RAC Network. Though the acronym remained the same, the name of the network was changed in April 2002, from the Research Association for Contextualization to the Rethinking Authentic Christianity Network in order to reflect a new focus. Prior to 2002 our main activities were publishing missiological periodicals. Our vision was to see a contextualized Japanese Christianity.
The major reason why we changed directions stemmed from a strong desire to see New Testament Christianity actualized in Japan. It was discouraging and exhausting to see such little fruit come out of our publications, lectures and conferences. We realized that churches where direct access to God is encouraged and that have a flat and personal relationship structure, rather than hierarchical structures, reflect the lives of people most contextually.
Here I try to describe how we changed our focus from just doing research to being on the actual field where we coach house church planters.