Scott Parrish of Asian Access gave a presentation entitled Unlocking Church Growth in Japan at the Karuizawa Union Church 2007 Missionary Conference. Here you will find the audio file (takes 1-3 minutes to download), a PowerPoint presentation including graphs and charts (as an attachment at the end of this blog) and the script of his seminar. I believe you will find it very informative. Some of the highlights were:

"126.5 million Japanese do not know Christ."

"At the current (church) growth rate it will take over 1250 years before 7% of the people in Japan will profess to be Christian. But this can be done in 25 years if every Christian would be involved in personal evangelism sharing Christ with just 3 people every year and seeing only 1 in 25 respond to the gospel."

"The key is personal evangelism of all believers. This must be taught in our churches and seminaries."

I.  Opening (Slide 1)

How do you feel about the state of growth of God’s Kingdom in Japan?  Do you see it as the vibrant, growing and thriving mustard plant that the Lord described in Mark 4:32, a plant that has become the largest of garden plants and even a tree?  Or do you have “holy discontent” because you do not see that happening?

My own holy discontent over what I see in the growth of the Kingdom, is because I know that the end is coming.  When I think about the reality of the end coming, I am terrified for the fate of the people who do not know Christ.  2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 describes the punishment that they face this way:

“He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.  They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of His power.”

Today this is the fate that the 126 and one-half million Japanese who do not know Christ. I know that your hearts also burn with God’s burden for these people.  I know that your hearts break for them, as Christ’s does. 

We all know that God’s kingdom is not advancing rapidly here in Japan.  We are all frustrated with the slow pace and we wonder when and how things will change.  When will the Kingdom of God truly grow in Japan?

I am here today with what I believe is good news.  There IS a way to have Kingdom growth here in Japan.  There IS a key to this growth.  I want to use this time today to tell you what I believe that key is. 

Let’s pray for our time together: Father in Heaven, we praise you for who you are, the creator of the heavens and earth, and the maker of everything in them.  You have made us in your image to have a relationship with you through our Lord Jesus Christ.  We praise you for that.  Lord, we declare to you that our hearts break together with yours for the lost here in Japan, these beautiful people whom you have also made in your image.  Help us to open our eyes to see your design for the growth of your Kingdom.  Lead us to see things that we may not have seen before.  Show us, Father, where you want each of us to do new things.  Father, please, grow your Kingdom in Japan, and use us to glorify yourself here.  Father, in preparing this presentation I have sought to articulate only what I believe you have been showing me.  But, I confess that I am a sinful man, and that I do not fully understand your purposes, which are so much greater than any of us.  So I pray for your truth to stand out today.  If I say anything which is contrary to your design, Lord I pray that you will cause my brothers and sisters in this room to know that it is not from you.  Father, please glorify yourself, and your truth, and your kingdom here. In Jesus name we pray.  Amen.

II.  Outline

I want to give you an outline of my speech. (Slide 2.)

The main point is that there IS a key to growth of God’s Kingdom in Japan.  This key is Evangelism.  And the key to getting evangelism done on the scale that is necessary, is to mobilize all lay Christians to witness to their families, friends, coworkers, etc.  I am going to call this “Personal Evangelism.”  This is different from what is mostly done in Japan today.  I am going to call this, “Professional Evangelism.”  Under professional evangelism, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ is done mainly by the church professionals – the pastors and the missionaries – but not by the lay people.

My point is this:  Biblically prescribed growth can happen in Japan if we all work together to mobilize the power of witnessing by lay Christians.  If we develop and promote Personal Evangelism.

To get at this point, I am going to do three things. (Slide 3.)

FIRST, I will show you why I believe that personal evangelism on the part of all Christians is God’s plan for Kingdom growth.  I will show you that the slow growth here in Japan is because personal evangelism is not widely done.

SECOND, I will show you the miraculous growth that is possible if we mobilize personal evangelism.

FINALLY,  I want to challenge you, as leaders of the missions in Japan, to take leadership for making personal evangelism happen.  

III.  Disclaimer on speaking about prayer, work of the Spirit.

Before I begin I want to alert you that I will not say much about two things.  I am not going to say much about prayer, nor about the role of the Holy Spirit.  Instead, I am going to focus on ACTIONS that I believe God is calling us to do. 

As a result, you may feel that this talk is not very spiritual.  But please do not misunderstand me.  The fact that I won’t talk much about prayer and the Holy Spirit does not mean that I believe they are unimportant.  I know that people cannot believe until the Spirit opens their hearts and minds.  I believe that prayer is critical in the process.

But I also believe that God has called us flesh and blood humans to take action for the growth of His Kingdom.  That is why Jesus said, “Pray that the Father will send workers into His harvest field,” [Matt 9:38].  He did not say, “Pray that the Father will convert people.”  He said, “send workers.” 

It is this part of the equation, the area of our Spirit-guided but human-planned and human-done strategy that I want to address.

IV.  Lack of Growth is a Result of Lack of Personal Evangelism

Let us dive into the FIRST POINT – Slow growth of the Kingdom of God is a direct result of lack of personal evangelism. 

To begin, let’s look at how God describes the pattern of growth of His Kingdom in the Bible. (Slide 4.1.)

God says a person has to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ before he can believe.  In Romans 10:14 He says, “How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”  In order to believe in Jesus, you have to hear about Him, and someone has to tell you!

This is pretty basic.  I don’t want to insult anyone by saying it.  But I do think it is important to remind ourselves of it.  I believe it is easy for us to get distracted by all the other important things we are doing and forget that people have to hear.  The basics are that a person has to be told about Christ.  If a person is not told, he or she cannot believe.  And there can be no growth of the Kingdom.

Second, look at the PATTERN of growth that Jesus describes. (Slide 4.2.)

In His parables about the Kingdom, He often described it in agricultural terms.  He spoke of seed planting.  You plant a seed and it produces fruit.  Take the seeds from that fruit and plant them.  They in turn produce even more fruit. 

Let’s put Romans 10:14 together with this and see the growth pattern that results. If the seed is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and if when it is planted someone comes to believe, and if that person then speaks to others, and some of them believe, and then those who believed plus the original person speak to still more others, and some of them believe, then we get a growth pattern that is called exponential growth.  You can also call it compound-interest like growth. 

So this is God’s pattern and standard for the growth of the Kingdom.

Now I want to show you graphs of two different growth patterns.  One of these looks like this Biblical growth, and one of them does not.  In a few minutes, I want to compare these to the actual pattern of Kingdom growth in Japan. (Slide 5.1)

The shape of the first one is what you see when you have Biblical, compound-interest-like growth.  It increases each year.  But more importantly, its increase is steeper and steeper each year.  The fact that the graph itself becomes steeper each year is due to the fact that the growth rate is the same each year.  The annual growth rate is constant. This happens because each Christian produces new Christians, and then both the new Christians plus the older Christians together produce even more new Christians. Personal evangelism. (Slide 5.2)

The second pattern is not Biblical growth.  It is growing, of course.  But the growth rate declines each year.  You get this linear pattern if the same number of seeds are planted each year. Last year the same number, this year the same number, next year the same number. 

V.  Japan’s Situation

Now I want us to take a look at the pattern of Kingdom growth in Japan and see how it compares to the Biblical pattern.

Before doing that, I want to do two things. 

First, I want to make a comment on how to think about what you are going to see.  I am going to show you a picture of the past growth.  For some people, seeing this can be discouraging.  But I pray that you will have a different reaction than that, because I believe that God wants us to see and understand the truth.  In Proverbs 23:23,  He says, “Buy the truth and do not sell it.”  The truth is this important, that we should deliberately find it, even to the extent of buying it.  God calls us to understand the past and the current situation that came from it.  For it is only when we understand this truth that we can find ways to change the road in the future.  So please look at these facts with that purpose in mind.

The second thing I want to do before getting to a comparison of the current growth pattern to the Biblical pattern, is to look at the current size of the kingdom and recent growth rates. (Slide 6.)

This shows recent growth rates of the entire population, the number of churches and the number of church members.  I am going to use the number of church members as a proxy for the number of Christians in Japan.  I am sure that they are not exactly the same, but I believe that they are reasonably close.

Recently the population has been growing at 0.17% per year.  The number of churches has been growing at 0.46% per year.  And the number of Christians has been growing at 0.39% per year. 

The good news here is that the growth rates of both churches and Christians are higher than the population growth rate.  This means that we are penetrating the land – both the number of Christians and the number of churches is increasing in relation to the population.  Good news indeed!

But the bad news is that these growth rates are very, very low.  All of these growth rates are less than 1/2 of 1% per year.  In order that we can all see how low they really are, I want to show you a projection of what will happen if these recent growth rates continue into the future. 

In order to make projections, we have to pick a target and then calculate how long it will take to reach that target.  The target I’ve picked is rather arbitrary, and I am not trying to suggest it is the right one.  Please recognize that my purpose here is not the target itself, but rather to give us an understanding of how low the growth rates actually are. (Slide 7.)

The first line in this table is based on a projection of the number of churches.  Today there is one church per 16,000 population.  Some church planters say a ratio of 1 church per 1,000 population is a good target.  Whether you agree with that or not, let’s use that as an arbitrary target. 

You can see how slow our current growth rate is – at this growth rate it will take nearly 1,000 years to reach that target. 

Look now at the growth in the number of Christians.  Today we are at 0.44% of the population.  If we increased the number of churches to 1 per 1,000 population, and if the average number of Christians per church remained the same as today, then Christians would be 7% of the population.  Using that 7% as a target, if growth continues at today’s growth rate it will take 1,263 years to reach that target.  More than 1,000 years! So the bad news is that the current growth is very, very slow. 

All right.  I don’t think I’ve told you anything you didn’t already know.  Most of you knew that the growth is slow, although the actual numbers may be new to you.  I showed you the projections just to help us comprehend how slow slow really is.  But the next point is what I really want us to look at.  The pattern of growth.  It is in the pattern that we can see whether or not we are experiencing healthy growth.  How does the pattern of growth in Japan compare to the Biblical pattern I showed you a few minutes ago? (Slide 8.)

This is a graph of the members of all Protestant churches in Japan from 1948.  Again, I am using members as a rough proxy for the number of Christians. By the way, it doesn’t matter whether you do this graph for all Protestant churches, or for all evangelical churches, or for the JEA  member churches.  Every one of these sets of churches shows a similar pattern. 

Look at the shape and tell me what you see.  How does it compare to the two sample graphs I showed you before?  Of course it wiggles up and down from year to year, so it’s a bit hard to see the shape.  But if you look carefully at it you will notice that from 1948 until about 1962, the pattern was indeed compound interest like growth. (Slide 8.1)

During this time, the number of Christians grew at an average annual growth rate of about 4.6% per year. Since that time the pattern is harder to discern from this graph, but it is in fact that (Slide 8.2) linear shape that I showed you in the second graph of my samples. 

A doctor examines a patient’s symptoms in order to diagnose the cause of an illness.  In the same way, we can use these patterns, these symptoms of our growth, to draw conclusions about what is happening.  Here is the insight we can draw from them. 

Recently we have linear growth.  When I showed you graph number 2, you may remember I said that this shape happens if the same number of seeds is planted each year. This is like professional evangelism in Japan.  Roughly the same number of people, the professional pastors and missionaries, are the ones planting the seeds each year.  The number of seed planters is not growing each year, and thus the number of seeds planted is remaining about constant.  As a result, the average growth rate, which is very low now, is declining every year.  This year it is lower than last year, and next year will be lower than this year.

On the other hand, if every Christian were sowing the seed, that is speaking to his friends, neighbors, coworkers about Christ, then we would have compound-interest-like growth. (Slide 8.3)

We do not have that kind of growth.  Thus we can conclude that lack of personal evangelism is the cause of the declining growth rate in Japan.

VI.  Summary

I want to summarize the first point.  (Slide 9.) Growth is slow.  If recent growth rates continue, it will take more than 1,000 years to reach 7% of the population Christian.  But underlying these growth facts is something much more important – the pattern of growth.  Because personal evangelism is not happening, the annual growth rate is falling each year.  As a result it will take even longer than this to reach 7%. 

And if we go on this way, how many people will die without knowing Christ in the meantime?  Our God is not willing that any be lost, but wants all to come to salvation.  What do you believe He thinks about the state of the church in Japan?

And what do we say?  Do we say that business as usual is good enough?  Or are we hungry for a change?

VII.  A　Suggested Program – Personal Evangelism

I hope this history is not discouraging to you.  Certainly it should be sobering for us to understand where we are.  And it should be eye-opening to understand what the outcome will be if we continue our current regimen of professional evangelism.  Discouragement should come only if there is no way to change this course.  But there is a way to change it! (Slide 10.)

I want to turn to my second point and look at how easily the miracle of Biblically prescribed compound growth through personal evangelism can be employed in Japan to change the future.

To be able to talk about this, we need to think of a target.  Then we have to determine the annual growth rate required to get to it.  Then we have to calculate how much evangelism has to be done to accomplish that growth rate.  (Slide 11.1)

I am going to work with the arbitrary target I mentioned before --  7% of the population Christian.  We saw that at the current growth rate of the number of Christians, it will take over 1,000 years to get there. (Slide 11.2)

What if we are very bold and say we want to get there in 25 years?  (Slide 11.3)

To get to 7% in 25 years requires an average annual growth rate in the number of Christians of 12%.  So I’m going to use this 12% as the target growth rate we need. Now let us see what is required to accomplish this growth. (Slide 12.)

When we look at the numbers of new churches and new believers that need to be added, they are absolutely staggering.  We have to add 124,000 churches.  More staggering, we have to add 8,800,000 new believers.   When I first looked at this number I was overwhelmed with the size and the amount of work required. 

Let’s think about what is required to do this with today’s professional evangelism. (Slide 13.)

Today there are about 10,000 pastors plus missionaries in Japan, in round numbers.  If we rely on professional evangelism, then we are the ones doing the witnessing.  Here is the staggering implication of the work required.  Each one of us has to bring in 34 new converts every year for 25 years.  But if only 1 out of every 2 people responds to hearing the message of Christ, then we each have to witness to 68 people every year.  If only one out of 5 responds, then we each have to witness to 170 people each year.

How many of us can handle that magnitude?  How many of us can you build solid witnessing relationships with 34 people each year?  With 68?  With 170? 

Hearing this, is it any wonder that we are struggling to see Kingdom growth with our current regimen of professional evangelism?

Now let’s look at the other strategy, “personal evangelism.”  (Slide 14.)

Under this strategy we professionals don’t rely on ourselves for the witnessing.  Instead we disciple and train the lay Christians to witness.  We help them develop witnessing techniques that are comfortable for them and which work in their daily lives and relationships.  And then we encourage them to set goals for the number of people they witness to.

If we do that, let’s find out how much witnessing they have to do to accomplish the 12% annual growth rate. 

First we need to recognize that not every witness results in a conversion.  (Slide 15.1)

After all, the Lord Jesus, in His Parable of the Sower, pointed to the fact that much seed falls on rocky soil where it cannot grow.  I really don’t know how much seed has to fall on rocky soil before one seed falls on responsive soil in Japan.   But for planning purposes I like to make really pessimistic assumptions and see how things turn out.  So let’s be pessimistic.  Let’s assume it is 1 in 25.  That is, for every 25 witnesses, only one responds and accepts Jesus.  Is that pessimistic enough?  Do you believe the real situation is actually be tter than that?  I do.  But let’s use this pessimistic ratio just to make a point.

Now take a deep breath.  Take off your shoes, because you are about to step on holy ground.  You are about to see how God’s miracle of compound growth works. (Slide 15.2)

If only 1 out of 25 Japanese responds to a personal witness from a friend, and if we need to grow the number of Christians at a 12% annual growth rate, guess how many people each Christian needs to witness to every year.  Remember, over the 25 years we need to create 8,840,000 new Christians, and today there are only 500,000, one-half million.  So how many?  30?  20?  12 per year?  What do you think? It is much simpler than that. (Slide 15.3)

Believe it or not, on the average, every Christian needs to share his or her faith with only 3 people each year.  Only 3!  That’s one every 4 months!  What a difference from the workload of professional evangelism! What we just saw here is of critical importance, so I want to say it again for emphasis. (Slide 16.1)

If we are obedient to the Lord, if we do our part, growth of the Kingdom is easy.  Even if the rocky soil ratio is as bad as 1 in 25 – if every single Christian will witness (on the average) to only three people each year, three people only,
and if only 1 out of 25 of those accepts the Lord. If those new Christians (on the average) again witness to three others each year. (Slide 16.2)

Then at the end of 25 years 8,840,000 new saved souls will have been produced, and the number of Christians in Japan will have risen from the current 0.44% to 7% of the population. Under our current practice of professional evangelism, getting to 7% of the population will take over 1,000 years.  But it can be done in 25 years if we obey the Lord.

VIII.  Not all will do this

Now it is true that we cannot expect everyone will witness to three every year.  This number of three should be thought of as “on the average.”  Not every single individual must do three every year.  Some people spiritual gift of evangelism, others are extroverts.  These people may witness to 4 or 5 or more each year.  Some people will not take it seriously at all and will never speak to anyone about Christ.  But if, on the average, putting together those who will witness and those who won’t, we have a witness of three per Christian, this growth will occur.

Are you surprised to hear this small number – how few witnesses per year are required for each person?  When I discovered it, I was astounded.  Previously, without thinking this through, I had imagined that the evangelism burden was too heavy for the average person.  When I discovered THIS however, my heart leapt for joy!  Three a year – one every four months.  I don’t have the Spiritual gift of evangelism, and I am an introvert.  But even I can do that!

And the fact that this small amount of witnessing per person will result in such an incredible growth rate is, I believe, a miracle from the Lord.  (Slide 17.)

In His Parable of the Growing Seed, Jesus said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like.  A man scatters seed on the ground.  Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”  [Mark 4:26-27]    The growth is God’s responsibility – He takes care of that.  But the seed cannot grow if it is not sown.  It is our responsibility, like this man, to make sure the seed is sown.  “They cannot believe in the one they have not heard of.” 

IX.  Challenge to Leaders – to Develop Reproducing Disciples

So here is the challenge I would like to throw out to all of us (Slide 18.).  If you want to see the Kingdom of God grow in Japan, the Gospel of Jesus must be sown, and we professionals cannot sow it at the rate that it must be sown.  This can only be done if personal evangelism is carried out by all Christians. 

I don’t have all the answers on how to make this happen, but I do know that God has given you the spiritual gift of leadership. I believe this leadership is what is necessary to make personal evangelism happen on a wide scale.

Here is what I want to challenge you mission leaders to do in order to take leadership for change. (Slide 19.)

FIRST, if it is not already there, make promoting personal evangelism a major part of your mission’s strategy.  Don’t just give it lip service, but put real commitment and action behind it.

SECOND, lets work hard together to find witnessing methods that work for Japanese lay Christians.   

These must be methods that work in this culture and for the individuals’ relationships.  I’ve used the term “personal evangelism.”  I learned this in the U.S., and it is the title of some specific programs in the U.S.  In using that term I do not in any way want to suggest that those same programs are the ones to use here in Japan.  This culture is different, personal relationships are different, and therefore the nature of personal evangelism must also be different.  So when I say “personal” evangelism, I am simply trying to make the point that the initiation of the growth comes through personal contacts.  And the initiation of those contacts by all lay Christians is essential.

THIRD, we all know that the real leadership in Japan is the leaders of the national churches.  We should all be working with our national church counterparts to help them understand and catch this vision, and then to implement the leadership to make it happen.   

FOURTH, we should all be training lay Christians to tell the people around them about Christ.  Work hard to help them become comfortable in sharing Christ.  Pray for them and encourage them to pray for opportunities to share.  Most importantly, train and encourage them to take the initiative to share Christ.  And encourage them to deliberately set numeric targets for their annual witnessing.  Use this “rule of three” people each year.  Use something more aggressive, if you think it is appropriate to do so.

Let me add a footnote on this point.  Some people have said to me that their congregations are not mature enough for this.  They say that more growth in discipleship and spiritual maturity is needed before the people can witness.  Thus they reject this message and say that the time is not right.  If your thoughts are running in this direction, I would ask you to consider something our Lord Jesus did.  Do you remember when in His ministry He sent His disciples out to preach?  It was during His second or maybe third year of ministry that He sent the 12 out, and it was during the third year that He sent the 70 out.  I ask you -- were they at this time fully mature disciples?  I don’t think so.  I believe that part of His method was to use this challenging assignment to help grow their maturity.  I know for myself that much of my own personal spiritual growth came only after I had begun to share my faith with others.  So, if we see spiritual immaturity in a believer, is it possible that a challenge to share his or her faith with others is a method endorsed by our Lord for helping that person grow?  Something to pray about. 

Finally, encouragement to persevere in the face of opposition and discouragement is an important thing to offer people.  I need encouragement, you do too, and so do they.  Here is the encouragement I see in all of this.  I think we must constantly keep this encouragement before people. (Slide 20.)

The Lord was very clear that some of the seed falls on rocky soil.  He told us this would happen. So I think we should not be surprised or discouraged when it does. But in spite of that, even if it is as bad as only one response in 25, the Kingdom will grow if we persevere in doing our job, in sowing the seed.  We need to encourage one another with this.  The growth WILL happen if we are obedient and persistent and do our job.  We are to sow the message, and God will cause the growth.  He says this!  And our God is faithful to His promises! 

X.  On to 100% of the Population

Up to now I have been talking about a goal of reaching 7% of the population.  That is much better than the current 0.44% of the population, but you and I both know it’s not enough.  Our God is not willing that any be lost, and I am sure that He is not happy with only 7% of the population coming to Christ.  The right number is 100%, or whatever the maximum that God has ordained. Let’s see how long it will take to get there. (Slide 21.1)

For comparison, here is the projection of the current growth rate again.  At the current growth rate, it will take over 1,000 years to get to 7% of the population.  It will take nearly 2,500 years to get to 100% of the population. (Slide 21.2)

We just saw that if the rocky soil ratio is 25, and if every Christian witnesses to three people on the average each year, we will have a 12% annual growth rate and we will reach 7% of the population Christian in 25 years. (Slide 21.3)

Believe it or not, at this growth rate, in less than 50 years we will have reached 100% of the population!  Or whatever the maximum percentage the Lord has ordained.  What an incredible difference from where we are today.  And within 50 years! Many of you, like me, think that the rocky soil ratio is probably better that 1 in 25.  (Slide 21.4)

If it is as good as 1 in 10, then with only two and one-half witnesses per Christian per year, we will have a 25% annual growth rate.  At this rate we will reach 100% of the population in 25 years! Is this incredible?  Are you surprised? 

XI.  Closing – Repeat the Leader Challenge

In closing, let me ask you -- Do you believe God has power? (Slide 22.1)

Romans 1:16 says, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”  God is powerful, and His power to convert people is vested in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  If they do not hear they cannot believe.

Please seek God’s guidance over what you have heard here.  Liberate this power of God for the salvation of everyone here in Japan.  If we cooperate together to do this, I believe we will truly see the Kingdom of God in Japan grow and become (Slide 22.2). "the largest of all garden plants . . . so that the birds of the air come perch in its branches.”

Leaders, I believe the key lies at your feet.  I urge you to pick it up and unlock this miracle of the Lord which He has prepared for the growth of the Kingdom in Japan.

END