October 1, 2015 Hello fellow partners in ministry, On November 10-13 will be held the Japan CPI 2015 National Conference. Hundreds of leaders from all over Japan will participate in this church planting conference. Over 15 Rengo pastors will also be attending. Pray for us and the dozens of leaders preparing for this conference. Ask God to grant skill and energy to our tasks. Ask God to equip the many counselors which are coming to…
John was in Nagoya, Japan’s third largest city, at the end of April with a core of trainers for the Church Planting Next Steps training. He gives you a personal look.
The first CPI BootCamp for basic church planting training was November 16-18. About 50 participated from all over Japan, from Sendai to Okinawa. John thinks that the BootCamp was the most effective regional training CPI has ever done. At the last minute, a guest speaker from the Acts 29 Network cancelled so John and Dan Iverson had to do an additional session. For the first time publically, John presented some of his research and new…
In preparation for our CPI Leaders’ Summit last month on Gospel-centered Leadership I was reading and reviewing books on leadership especially the heart idols that leaders are most susceptible. (Elaine and I developed a list of heart idols that leaders often encounter). Good books have been Spiritual Leadership by Henry and Richard Blackaby (Experiencing God fame). Other good books have been Dangers, Toils, Snares, The Heart of a Servant Leader on Jack Miller and Overcoming…
Last week John met with a Japanese church planter. He told us that he was able in 18 months to gather 50 people in worship! As the average church in Japan is only 36, and if churches are able to break the 50 and 80 barrier fairly rapidly they will become large healthy churches. Another Japanese leader reported they have 17 church planting parenting networks throughout Japan and they plan to have 20 by the…
Three people shared stories at the JEMA meetings how Japanese who attended years ago are using our CPI training materials in their ministries. One missionary between last November and last month has received from God a new vision for church planting and Japanese partners. What a turn around. CPI is playing a part in helping people on the frontlines of ministry. We had a great but short visit with Dan and Sandi Peterson, district executive…
As you read this we are winding up our short working vacation back in Illinois. We return to Japan on 1/5. It has been frenzied being back but extremely good family times. Also on the work side have been possibilities for CPI in another Asian country, recruiting career workers, and recruiting ministry teams from a partnering church. We both hit the ground running when we return to Japan and there are various things in the…
Thank you so much for praying for last month’s CPI National Conference. A participant said, “The CPI National Conference at Fuji Hakone last week was truly a big blessing. It brought spiritual renewal, vision, fellowship, ministry training, among other things, to the participants” In spite of the economy and other factors about 300 adults and 85 children gathered this year to enlarge their Kingdom Vision for church multiplication and experience Gospel Renewal.
There are always several highlights at the CPI Conference. This time I was able to work it out to train in two sessions for missionaries in their first stages of church planting. Normally running the conference I have no energy or time for this. But God opened some opportunities and I love equipping and training church planters. I had two sessions with 12-15 people each time. They were from nearly everywhere in Japan from Sendai…
Please Promote Prayer for the CPI Conference! Just released a new YouTube video to encourage prayer support for the CPI Conference Nov 3-6. This 1 minute 50 second video is designed to shown in churches. Please help us mobilize God’s people to pray for this important Japan National Conference by passing this along to whoever you can think about. For public showings if you want a higher resolution file you can download Available at http://www.dhdentertainment.com/video/Mehn_Video_Prayer_CPI_2009.mp4…