Sunday at Megumi Baptist Church

We drove with Mrs. Sato Sunday morning to Megumi Baptist Church in Tama City, where Pastor Yuasa serves. The church rents space on the second floor of a building. The room, which measured approximately 25' x 35', gets set up as Sunday school first with an adult class, a children's class, and a class for junior and senior high students. After Sunday School, the chairs are rearranged to form to sections with several rows each of about five or six chairs. There were a little more than 30 in attendance for worship.

The church is making plans to purchase land and to build its own building. One of the problems with their current situation is parking. They were amaze to discover that HHBC has nearly 180 parking spaces situated on 26 acres of land. They have only 5 or 6 spaces alloted to them in the parking area next to the building where they rent. This leads me to share the story of one of Mrs. Sato's sons, Daigo, the oldest, who faithfully attends church each Sunday. Daigo lives near the center of Tokyo, where he works in sales for an IT company. He drives 1-1/2 hours one way to church each Sunday. Along the way, he must pay approximately $15 in tolls. When he arrives, he pays about $12 for the day to park in a public parking lot about 4 blocks from the church. Daigo told me even if he arrived at the church in time to use one of the 5 or 6 spaces alloted to them, he still would park in the pay lot so older people and families with young children could use the other spots.

I told Daigo that I admired his faithfulness to the Lord. I drive 15 minutes to our church and have never paid to park for any church service ever. He drives 1-1/2 hours, pays $15 in tolls, and another $12 to park, and then no doubt tithes on top of it all.

Daigo's situation is representative of a set of even larger problems for young Japanese Christians. First, there is the problem of there being so few churches that it is somewhat inconvenient for them to attend regularly. Second, there are few churches because there are few Christians. And among the few Christians, there are fewer twenty- and thirty-somethings. There are, in fact, few in any age group from age thirty-something and down. In Daigo's case, he appears to be the only single person his age in the church. In fact, there are few Christians in any part of his social network. Daigo told me he knew of one lady in his work place, who claims to be a Christian. She is in her forties and a divorced, single-mother. All of this means that Daigo and others like him are being called on for now to live like Daniels in the Babylon of Japan. It's just one more reason to be on our knees praying for God to work among the Japanese.