How the Japanese Church Is Reinventing Itself

Haruyoshi Yano
January 2011

Left: Mr. Haruyoshi Yano, director of the Witnessing and Education Office, Right: Mr. Sam Nagasaka, director of the Culture Department under Mr. Yano

Our church has more members in Japan than in any other country in the world. Members in Japan join forces across the nation to support -- ' global providential initiatives. They have gained an acute awareness of the seriousness of our time. In fulfilling their collective role as the providential mother nation, they have sent resources all over the world, and they have constantly reached out to their countrymen (and women) to inspire them to work together under their unique mandate.

Recently, Hyung-jin nim, In-jin nim and Kook-jin nim have placed much emphasis on a more direct witnessing approach. In keeping with the age, our church in Japan is creating its own revolution in its outreach methods. As Mr. Sam Nagasaka, who works in national headquarters in Tokyo and heads the church's Culture Department put it, "In the past we used various volunteer groups, or counseling as opportunities for witnessing, introducing the Principle through good works or healing people's lives. Nowadays, however, the approach is becoming more direct. We introduce the Unification Church and Divine Principle, or introduce Father's autobiography. This change of approach means we cannot witness as easily on the street, so the mainstream effort is now to reach out to friends and family. We are renewing the church and it is becoming more open."

Mr. Haruyoshi Yano, who leads the church's Witnessing and Education Office (which includes the Culture Department) sees the change as inevitable. "Father recognizes the hard work of the movement in Japan," he said, "yet he has also been emphasizing, since long ago, that Japan has to testify openly about True Parents.... Chairman Song thinks we need to broaden the categories of people we witness to, so we must challenge ourselves to open up to different types." Mr. Yano said that widening the scope of witnessing activities presents a challenge. Because they have been used to a certain way, he feels they are still weak in providing the right kind of education to raise all the different types of people to become practicing members.

But necessity is the mother of invention; they began with a national-level effort to improve leaders' teaching abilities in 2009. When the initiative was launched, Chairman Song announced that all church leaders must attend Divine Principle lecture competitions. "This included directors at the headquarters, like me," said Mr. Yano, "and the regional church leaders." Mr. Yano explained how they set up different levels of Divine Principle lectures -- elementary, intermediate and advanced -- and are encouraging everyone to challenge themselves.

The leaders would each give a lecture and then be evaluated as a church-level, regional-level or national-level lecturer. This has made the leaders humble," said Mr. Yano with some amusement. In 2009 alone, they certified 588 lecturers.

During 2010, these lecturers were asked to teach at Divine Principle revival meetings all over Japan. Mr. Yano explained that this has been a way of encouraging the church leaders and pioneers. "Pastors should lead the way," he asserted. Chairman Song is doing just that, travelling around the country teaching at a revival each day. He gives inspirational Divine Principle talks to audiences that include members and their guests; at the end of his talk he invites the latter to join our church community.

Mr. Miki Abe, who heads the Witnessing Department under Mr. Yano, explained that prior to this change of focus, the church had usually looked for people who could practice as soon as they joined. "But now we are witnessing to almost everyone. That's a big change. And whereas before it was mainly only core witnessers who went out, now everyone is witnessing."

Perhaps surprisingly, considering the number of young Japanese members one encounters in the course of church life, for a nation with so many members, the Japanese church has not had a tradition of specifically reaching out to young people. Mr. Yano feels it is more natural for parents to talk to their children, and he hopes the current trend of family-oriented witnessing will mean that mothers will witness to their sons and daughters.

2009 was a year of trial for the Japanese church, Mr. Yano explained. "It was a year of the pain of giving birth. 2010 was more stable."

One major focus has been on witnessing to former members. Mr. Yano told me of people who had left the church twenty or thirty years ago who last year returned to membership. Many couples had also resurfaced to rededicate their blessed marriages at the October 14, 2009 Blessing Ceremony.'` Likewise, the two blessing ceremonies in February and October of 2010 provided a great impetus for witnessing result.

Another major supporting pillar for witnessing in Japan has been Father's autobiography, by which members can offer direct testimony to True Parents. Despite the fact that our church is still persecuted in Japan, there are still many who know nothing about Sun Myung Moon.

A change of approach has required a change of mind- set in the churches, Mr. Yano explained. "Before, we would only begin educating those members who had come to the church, but now members are visiting people in their homes and teaching them the Principle, watching Divine Principle videos together with families. In Saitama, for example, one eighty-year-old lady, our member, is educating people in their homes."

The Witnessing Department wants to see a system that facilitates the communication of best practices from one mission post to another. "Of course, you cannot simply 'cut and paste' models from one church to another," Mr. Nagasaka said. "You must modify that model so that it fits with a particular leader's (or congregation's) personality or aptitude." His department is producing brochures and videos to aid in outreach and education, including video lectures covering the seventy days of workshops -- two-day, seven-day (commitment), twenty-one-day (vocational) and forty-day (leadership training) workshops.

The church headquarters in Tokyo is also deeply involved in the evaluation of their methods -- and of church leaders' performance -- in their quest to create a model church. For the past two years they have produced a quarterly printed review of model church sermons. For this, church leaders are required to submit their sermons, and the best ones are included in the review. This also permits the headquarters to look at the content church leaders are giving their flock, and to offer suggestions.

The church services themselves are also surveyed -- including how many people attend Sunday service, how long the service lasts, and how long the minister speaks for. Mr. Nagasaka says they have created two types of survey. One is a ten-point checklist about Sunday service that the ministers must do (to date, twice a year) in order to reflect on their work. This is helpful in situations such as where a church leader habitually gives a ninety-minute sermon!" The other is a yearly statistical analysis. Church leaders in Japan have key performance indicators (KPI) now, so the headquarters can monitor and assist churches across Japan. The overriding purpose is to raise the level of the worship services and other regular programs. Whereas in times past the focus was always the special mobilizations, now serious attention is being given to the steady growth of the church.

Such development is not coming simply from a proactive desire to improve. Circumstances in Japan have brought the church to the point of needing and wanting to open up more within society, and members feel freer to speak about their beliefs without inhibition. The same circumstances have instilled in the members a desire to fight back against unjust persecution.

Mr. Yano elaborated, "Some specific people are actively opposing us, especially some in the leftist media and left- leaning lawyers who spread propaganda through the media. A small number of Christian ministers are strongly against the Unification Church. These ministers are strongly influenced by leftist thought. They have the clear goal of destroying the Unification Church and have been working on this for many, many years. They have established themselves on the internet. If anyone shows support for the Unification Church, they will send them negative material and attack them in the media. We didn't know what to do about this."

I was curious as to how the autobiography would be helpful to them if indeed such opponents to True Parents' work operate freely. But it is clear that those perpetrating the false charges are a relatively small group. Mr. Yano emphasized that many people in Japan still don't know about the Unification Church and that when people encounter a member, they usually get a very good impression.

Mr. Yano credits Kook-jin nim with offering the church new guidelines that helped them find a new direction. For one thing, Kook-jin nim has identified the issue of the abduction of members as having the potential to lead to a breakthrough.

Kidnapping an individual off the street and holding the person captive is a serious crime in any country. Yet, as the reader is aware, our members in Japan have been dealing for decades with this constant threat to members' spiritual lives. In many instances the victim's faith in his or her experience with God, True Parents and the work of the movement is systematically destroyed by lies accompanied by cruel and debilitating treatment. The Japanese church has been emphasizing that the abduction and confinement of our members is organized criminal activity and has been publicly challenging the Japanese government to no longer turn a blind eye to these dreadful human rights violations. This courageous stance has rubbed off on the members, who have begun to rediscover their strong identity as Unification Church members and the will to take a stand against this evil.

The change of mind-set has had the effect of increasing the momentum for outreach and witnessing. Indeed, the weekly demonstrations against the organized kidnappings have proven a good opportunity to introduce the Unification Church in a novel way. It seems that public opinion is beginning to change. "The media hasn't changed yet," says Mr. Yano regretfully, "but some conscientious intellectuals have changed their views. We have just begun. It has only been a year. Our opponents have been working for forty years."

Overall, the Japanese members are highly dedicated. Mr. Yano put this down to the fact that Japan has the mission of the mother country, and that True Father's high expectations provide them the strong motivation they need.

"No matter what system we create, without that strong motivation, we cannot be successful," Mr. Yano emphasized. "The motivation Christians have is based on Jesus' death on the cross. Christians risked their lives and went out into the world as missionaries. We invest everything because our motivation is based on True Parents' love. Father's strong expectation for Japan to support the world, in various ways, could be looked upon as a burden in one sense, but viewed from another angle this becomes the motivation, the incentive, for the movement in Japan."