Contagious

The following article was written by our Partner, Kevin Laverman, who plants churches in Japan...

You've heard of the coronavirus going around Asia. As a close neighbor with China, it is BIG news in Japan. And it's hit pretty close to home: right in our Yokohama port a cruise ship of 3700 is under quarantine, with several dozen cases aboard. For the rest of Tokyo, face masks are in hot demand and short supply. Stores are sold out. People are fearful of this new Asian contagion. 

I've often thought it would be great if Christianity in Japan would spread as rapidly as these asian flu viruses. This past Sunday, we began a new discipleship study in our Sunday school group of about 10 relatively-new adult Christians. The premise of the textbook is that disciples must be contagious. They must make more disciples. If each of these 10 Japanese disciples spread the gospel bug to just one other Japanese per year, where it was caught, and incubated into a full-blown new believer, who in turn infected one other Japanese per year, and so on down the line, then in just 10 years there would be over 10,000 new cases of disciples for Jesus in Japan. In just 16 years we would double the number of Christians in Japan.

"Wouldn't it be great to see this kind of church growth?!" I prodded my Sunday School students. "We might need to buy a few more chairs!"

Instead of masks being sold out, what if new Japanese believers were "sold out" for Christ? That strain of infectious Christianity is what Japan really needs to catch! I'll do my part to spread it in Japan by encouraging and training our people. Keep on praying and asking God for this kind of viral spread of faith, so the church can grow in Japan beyond its current stagnant 0.5%. (That's 99.5% to go!)

Until Jesus Comes!

- Kevin Laverman 

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