Kansas Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists (KNCSB)

Second KNCSB team to serve in Japan

A team of Kansas-Nebraska students and adults will return to Tokyo, Japan, to build relationships with the goal of sharing the gospel.

June 2009 will mark the second KNCSB mission team serving in Tokyo, the world’s largest city with a population of 33 million.

Evangelical believers comprise only one half of one percent of the population, said Terry McIlvain, KNCSB director of youth ministries.

This year’s KNCSB team will be comprised of approximately 40 students and five adults.

The project is a partnership with I Go Global ministries in cooperation with local International Mission Board workers. (Visit the I Go Global Web site at http://igoglobal.org/)

Team members will attend orientation June 7-8 at Webster Conference Center, Salina, Kan. They will fly to Japan on June 9.

While in Japan, the team will have full days of outreach activities, all designed to meet people and build relationships.

“We’re there to learn their culture, make friends, build relationships,” McIlvain said.

The Japanese are a “very relational people,” he continued. “They are not a fast-responding culture” to the gospel.

When a Japanese person makes a commitment to Christ, it will be “super serious. To choose to follow Christ is to pay a cost in family relationships.”

A typical day in Tokyo for the KNCSB team will consist of:

• Beginning the day with group worship.
 
• Going in groups to Tokyo neighborhoods along the subway. They will prayer walk, put tracts in mailboxes and invite people to lunch.
 
• The entire team will meet for lunch and fellowship.
 
• After lunch, they will go to subway stations and hold free 5-minute English lessons.
 
• They will then go to parks where they will try to build relationships with people.
 
• After arriving back at their lodging facility for the night, they will e-mail people they have met.

McIlvain asks Kansas-Nebraska Southern Baptists to begin praying now for the 2009 Japan team. Please pray for:

• Health, stamina and travel safety
 
• “Meaningful connections to be made and that they will be open to hearing the gospel presentation.”
 
• For the students to “capture the missional mindset and apply it when they get home.”