Roughly two-thirds of the Japanese population consider themselves Buddhists, and religious freedom is valued. However, Jesus followers in the country still face many challenges, including division between church denominations.
OM worker Kenji (Japan) says, “Japanese churches are in big trouble, and for the few numbers of churches that we have in Japan, we have 175 denominations. It is an unhealthy number of denominations.
“So we really need to bring down the walls of denominational barriers for Christians to work together. That starts with talking, meeting and praying, and seeing where the Lord is going to lead.”
Visualising the challenge
In Mie Prefecture, in the southern part of Japan’s main island, the OM team visualises the challenge facing churches with a coloured map.
Kenji (Japan) explains, “I created this map for giving updated information about all the churches, where they are located, and specifically highlighting areas in reds and purples.
“Red is an area that has no church. Either it has never had a church in its town history or all the churches have closed down because Japan is in a trend of churches diminishing. Beside the red there is purple, which is an area where a church is in danger; unless there is some outside intervention or external help, all of these areas will soon become red.
“Looking at the map, you can see almost 50 per cent of Mie is red or purple. So that's pretty significant. This province is kind of like an overlooked area. OM is the only interdenominational mission that exists in this province of 1.8 million people. And the number of Christians here is about 1,000.”
An aging church population
Between 2023 and 2024, the OM team conducted a survey of 59 churches across different denominations in Mie, gathering information on young people who regularly attend church service. In 40 churches, there were no young people under the age of 30, and across all the churches, there were only 79 students in grades one to six of primary school who attended Christian services.
Compared to a government census of how many primary school children are in the province, this number is less than 0.1 per cent — less than one out of a thousand students goes to church.
“I go to so many different churches in Mie,” Kenji says. “When we walk into a church in Mie, we assume to see only senior citizens, 65 and above, up to 90 years old." Churchgoers who are not senior citizens are often people with a disability, shares Kenji, adding that many churches in Mie are less than 10 people.
“So, it is very hard to engage a church that is actually catering for the real needs of younger people. But, by God's grace, I had a connection with people in the northern area, central and southern. I wanted to connect them to each other, so two years ago, I started the Mie Mission Network.
“Out of that, in 2023, two of our committee members started a monthly gathering of pastors, evangelical, charismatic, mainland churches, united churches... They come together every month to pray for each other because the pastors need encouragement.”
Working together
A few years ago, Japanese churches conducted a survey. They named the result the "Year 2030 Problem” as by the year 2030, the number of Japanese churches will have halved.
In response, churches have begun to work together in Mie, and Kenji now spends much of his time working towards church and mission collaboration. “We are the only interdenominational mission organisation that exists in the entire Mie prefecture,” he explained.
“There are many churches, but most churches are very weak, and quite a few churches don't have any leaders. In the beginning, we wanted to match up the seekers with the Japanese churches, but we found it very difficult.
“We found out that the reason the churches are not very motivated to do mission is because the leaders are not loved. We believe that if the leaders who are loved and blessed, the blessing from God will flow. So we started to help the pastors, and that actually helped us to develop a wide network of different pastors.”
A prayer group for the pastors has grown from fewer than 10 in the northern part of Mie to a whole network of prayer covering the whole area.
“I decided to start having pastors meeting together, encouraging them to pray for each other because with the shrinking and dying population in Japan, the only way for the churches to survive is for them to work together. And that starts from the pastors meeting together and praying for one another instead of working with suspicions and competitions.”
Raising prayer warriors
Kenji’s vision for the future is to empower the church members in Mie to take action. “We are not a strong or popular province like Tokyo, where there are many missionaries and many young people, but God gave a vision to my wife and I,” he explained. “Rather than focusing on what we don’t have, we decided to focus on what we already have – many ‘senior citizen Christians'. So we decided to turn that into a resources for prayer for unreached people in Japan.”
OM has published a booklet of '30 days of Prayer for Mie prefecture' with information on how to pray for each city each day for 30 days. “We will mobilise senior citizens in this prefecture as prayer warriors,” Kenji said. “They might not be able to go to places and do as much physical action, but they certainly have time. We want to turn that into prayer resources for missions in Japan!”
Pray for the church leaders who attended Japan's National Evangelical Missions Conference in October. Pray for them to feel invigorated by meeting with other leaders and encouraged to work together in the future.
Give thanks for the 'senior citizen Christians' who will be using the prayer guide. Add your prayers to theirs for the Mie prefecture, that the churches will see growth and that they will be able to impact their communities with the gospel message.
Thank God for the religious freedom in Japan, which allows Christians to share their faith without fear. Pray that they would have the right words and that those they speak to would be open to hear about Jesus.