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"Make the church aware of the need |
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-- make the world aware of the message" |
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Ron &
Debbie Galbreath |
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Missionaries
to Japan
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http://www.japanmin.com |
MINISTRY
OVERVIEW:
Our ministry is church
planting in Japan. We are currently planting the first
Pentecostal church in Hachinohe, a city of 250,000 in Northern
Japan. We've been in this present location since December 1996.
WHY CHURCH PLANTING IN
JAPAN?
The field of Japan is one of the most unreached
in the world. In many missions fields where there is already a
strong, self-propagating national church, the major focus of
missionary effort is on training national workers. The greatest
need is for support of the national church in the form of Bible
training. In Japan, on the other hand, the greatest need is for
missionaries to do the foundation laying for new churches, often
raising up one of their own converts to take over the pastorate
of the new congregation once it is stable enough. This kind of
work is a lot like what the Apostle Paul did when he made his
missionary journeys through the Roman Empire.
Japan, population 125 million, is one of the
most unreached countries in the world. Even when counting
"Christians" of every sect and variety, they still
make up less than 1% of the population. Church attendance for
all Protestant churches combined is somewhere around 0.2% (2 for
every 1000 people) for Japan as a whole. (We don't have the
exact figures for Catholics, but their numbers are approximately
the same--resulting in less than 1% if you count all sects of
Christianity.) If you were to count only evangelical
Protestants, the percent is about half that, or somewhere around
0.09%.
I
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Japan
Facts |
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Official
Name: Japan (Nippon or Nihon, in Japanese)Capital:
Tokyo
Location:
In the Pacific Ocean near the northeastern coast of Asia
Official
Language: Japanese
Population:
125 million
Area
in Square Miles: 145,856 sq. miles, a little smaller
than the State of California
Population
Density: 331 people/square km
Flag:
Red sun centered on a white field
Religions:
Observe both Shinto
and Buddhist 84%, other 16% (including Christian 0.7%)
Cities/Towns/Villages
with 0 churches = 1,758
Church/population:
1:16,168 (meaning one Protestant church for every
16,168 people)
Church
attendance/population: 0.21% (meaning 2.1 people
attend Protestant churches for every 1,000 people)
Literacy: 99%
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