Rambling Notes from Japan
Here are some blog posts that we hope will make you feel a part of things, and help you understand how to pray better for us and Japan. Please see our external blog in Blogger, if this page does not display correctly.
Christmas @ Denen 2007
This past Sunday was our Christmas Service outreach at Denen for which we have spent some time planning. We rented a hall that holds 140 in the faith that God would fill it. Then the invitations, flyers, and emails went out to encourage our friends, acquaintances, and the surrounding neighborhood to come and be part of the day's events. It quite a contrast for a Christmas service; handbells and gospel! We also mixed in some special music by a guest soloist, and several carols. Kevin gave an evangelistic message on the meaning of Christmas according to the Bible.
Merry Christmas 2007! Meanwhile downstairs we ran a separate Kids Christmas Party with Christmas songs, games, a Max Lucado kids video, popcorn, hot chocolate and more. We really stretched our staffing resources as a tiny church.
My faith wavers between two fears when we do an event of this scale. 1) What if no one shows up? What if we've done all the planning, opened the doors, and no one walks in? (We have some of these days). I could personally get over the discouragement quickly enough, but I would feel badly for many others who have done so much to preparing and praying for the day. 2) Or, what if everyone shows up? What if among those who received the one of the 1500 flyers, many invited family, or classmates, or neighbors. After all, it is advertised as a free concert. What if 2500 or more people show up and we have no possible way to accommodate them, turn them away upset, and the reputation of our church plant in the community suffers as a result?
As it turns out, God worked things out for us just right. We had 110 adults, and 19 kids. This is about 4 times the amount of number of people that attend our Sunday Services. They all went away having heard the Gospel message, and given Christian literature to read with the church information on it. We also fed them all cake, and coffee or tea.
We appreciate many of you who were praying us through this day as a church. Now, please remain in prayer as we followup on some of these individuals in the coming days. Merry Christmas!