Pray together with the team of OMF Japan for their prayer goal to receive 200 new workers until the year 2020. 150 of them should be full time and long term missionaries and 50 of them short termers (above 6 months) or so called “OMF friends”, i.e. committed, vibrant Christians who are working full- or part-time in Japan. Without being official OMF members they have a heart for reaching out to Japanese in their setting^[1].
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Pray that God may use the OMF friends to penetrate parts of the Japanese population which would be hard to reach by full-time missionaries, e.g. Japan’s office workers and business people.
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Also pray for enough strength and resources to support and equip the new workers adequately.

Many Japanese have never heard the Gospel or even anything about Jesus. Only one in ten Japanese even knows a Christian who could tell him about Jesus. Often Christianity is associated with something foreign and sometimes scary, which has to do with old church buildings and religious motivated wars. Then again Christian traditions also are used to create a romantic atmosphere, like a date at Christmas Eve or a wedding in white in wedding chapel designed only for this purpose.
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Please pray that Jesus’ good news will spread in Japan and that the Japanese learn to distinguish between western traditions and genuine discipleship of Jesus. Pray that Christians and seekers meet in divine encounters and that Christians in Japan have the courage to talk freely about their faith.

This may sound strange, but for many Japanese, Jesus is a God of the Americans or the Europeans. For them being Japanese is seen equal to being Buddhist or Shintoist, or religion is generally equated with something cultural which differs from country to country.
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Pray that the Japanese understand that God is the almighty creator of the whole universe and that He deserves to be worshiped by every single people group on earth. Pray that the Japanese can believe that Jesus has given His life also for them and that the access to God is free now also for them.

The last decades of stagnation and even decline of the Christians in Japan let many missionaries and organizations think about their approach how they present Jesus to the people in Japan and how they plant churches. Many come to the conclusion that their methods and structures are too much influenced by our western way of thinking and or traditions, and don’t fit into the culture and the mindset of the Japanese.
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For example Japanese are irritated when they encounter locked church doors during the week whereas their own shrines and temples are open almost around the clock. Also many churches look like copies from the USA or Germany which is very foreign to many Japanese. And one finds only very rarely that God is worshiped with traditional Japanese instruments.
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On the other hand many congregations in Japan are rather conservative and hold on to the established western traditions. Pray for much wisdom and unity when it comes to taking new ways, and that God will show the missionaries and Japanese Christians the key to the hearts of the Japanese. Pray that the Holy Spirit will guide them how to live church and discipleship in a Japanese way.