Ministry Updates and News from the Mehns
1. A key Rengo National Mission Department meeting will be held June 11, 12 in Nara. Pray for God to grant vision, faith, wisdom and joy. 2. A team from California joined by veteran Ritsuko Narita from Bethlehem Minneapolis will form another team to serve in Ishinomaki to help disaster victims. June 16-27th. Elaine will be joining the group from 21st-26th to target women’s ministry with Linda Bengtson. Pray for travel, safety, prepared hearts, and…
JAPAN was privileged to have Dr. Dan Maxton pastor of LifeBridge church in San Diego visit us last month. He ministered at Field Council along with Roger Inouye (from Wisconsin). The rest of the time Dan met with Rengo pastors and stayed at the Mehn guest house. Some highlights were meeting with members of the Rengo National Mission Department, where we discussed assessment processes for church planters including a new tool translated into Japanese on…
1. Thank God for his strength, wisdom, endurance, faith, and orchestrated surprises during “non-stop” April. Again a full schedule of classes, key meetings, events, and projects. Keep praying! 2. John & Elaine are off to Yamagata prefecture on May 24-29th to spend time with Mr. and Mrs. N in her parent’s home. We have been sharing the gospel with them locally for several years. As we have built this relationship, pray for natural opportunities to…
I have suffered significant loss in the last year. One year ago, April 14th, my mother passed away. I am very grateful that she had a great life, died well, and knew Jesus and is now in heaven. She is still missed. My father died in 1991 so much of my time in Japan has been away from my mother. I used to call her every Saturday which I miss very much. She was always…
Several months ago a very curious and intelligent young woman wrote to me for her school assignment on missionaries. This was one of her questions and my answer. Besides the Bible what is your resource? Great question. The Bible is the greatest resource for spiritual development, the understanding of God, the church and how we go about missions. It is our key to the Biblical worldview which we must know well to make indigenous churches…
A new Japan missionary colleague Ian Smith recently wrote on his blog about indigenous missionaries. I liked his answer (from Dr. Ralph Winter) so I thought I would post it here too. I will add a few points to the end. Can’t the Japanese Christians evangelize other Japanese better than missionaries? I asked a question very similar to this to Ralph Winter when he taught a session of the Perspectives class in Seattle a few…
Items for Prayer April 2013 1. Ask for God’s blessing as Roger Inoye and Dan Maxton come to Japan in March and April to visit Rengo churches and pastors. Pastor Dan Maxton from LifeBridge church in San Diego will stay with us April 5-13. 2. Ask God to bless our April 3-5 Field Council with his presence love and vision. 3. Thanks for praying for John’s ministry of training small group leaders. John will launch…
The Unreached of the Unreached The Japanese are the second largest unreached people group in the world. Over 1,500 towns and villages (and 36 cities) in Japan still do not have churches. Because of this burden, a rural church planting seminar was held in early March in Sendai City attended by 25 missionaries and Japanese from all over Japan. John represented CPI by presented two seminars on the Heart of the Leader and Effective Models…
Recently one of our partnering churches asked us to send some comments on the theme for their mission meetings. That theme was The Heart of Missions. We thought many of you would be helped by this. We shared that there are several ways to approach this topic: 1. A Big God has a Big Heart for Missions – God knows the fallen nature and the mess people and the world is. Even though we did…
One of the most influential books for John is Born to Reproduce by Dawson Trotman. Trotman, or Daws as he was known, was the founder of the Navigators, instrumental in helping Billy Graham with their evangelistic follow up materials. In printed form Born to Reproduce is a short booklet about being a spiritual reproducer by sharing your faith in Christ with others. For years John listened to the cassette tape often as it was always…