The Need for Laborers

As I was sitting in the cafeteria this morning, I was reminded about the need for laborers to share the good news about Christ in Japan. As each person walked past the window outside, I thought to myself, "Will they every hear the good news about Christ and if they do will they ever come to an understanding of the gospel to believe?" A couple weeks ago I was riding my bike and as I pasted by each house I thought, "The family in this house has probably never heard about Christ." "They have probably never seen a Bible or even thought about studying the Bible."

I tell people I live in a smaller city in Japan. Well, compared to Tokyo it is a small city of 450,000 people. According to the Joshua Project for 2007, they estimate that 1.5% of Japanese are adherent to the gospel. In the city of Utsunomiya, if you knew 200 people there might be the possibility that 3 of them are Christians.

There is a great need for laborers in Japan and this weekend we are having our Young Laborers Conference. Believing staff and students will be joining together from the different campuses for this upcoming Friday through Sunday. This is a time where the believing students from around Japan can come and encourage each other and learn from God's Word together.

Please pray that this will be an uplifting time for the believers as some of them have graduated and live in the work world and are struggling with having the time to grow closer to God as the demands of work are far higher than in America.

Please pray also for future laborers to be brought forth. When Christ looked upon the crowd he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." Please join us in this prayer.

ONE other thing. Please visit the website http://summerimpactjapan.com
There is a video that was made by the staff in Tokyo about Japan and the need which can be found at the bottom of the website. I would love for youth groups and college ministries to see this video and to spread the word about the need in Japan.