Dear Phyllis,
At this point in life, the Lord has only given me one sheep. Singha is the joy of my life. I see more of Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit in him than any other person in my life today.
I say the Lord has placed me on a shelf and taken away any ministry I have for Jesus, but there is one bright spot in my dark night. The only ministry I have is to go over to Netrahong kindergarten every morning to talk to little children in English for 30
minutes. But after our English class Singha and I always have coffee together for at least an hour. These times are amazing. In very reality Jesus sits with us there at the table and shares with us the deep things of His heart.
Of all the people that the Lord has given me in my life, Singha stands out as one of the brightest. But he has one major defect. He has a total blank on the 4th commandment. He
knows the Lord in black and white as clearly as any man I have ever seen saved, and earnestly wants to follow Jesus, but he doesn't want to be a church Christian. I have pleaded with him, “Why don't you want to go to church?”, and he honestly replied, “Because
I have been to churches and seen the emptiness of religion.”. I told him, “I agree with you. There are a number of churches that I would not recommend anyone going to. The international church I was attending in Chiang Mai was so bad, one time I thought, 'What
could I give up for lent that would make me a better Christian?'; and I decided, 'To quit going to church.'. I did, and that helped. But that doesn't mean that there aren't good places.”.
The 4th commandment is the forgotten commandment. Nearly everyone agrees about the other nine. Having other gods beside Jesus, idolatry, murder, adultery, theft, lying, etc. are
all bad. But, for the vast majority of Christians, the 4th commandment – honor the Lord's Day - has been eliminated. When I was with NLL, a brother from Ghana joined our company and told me how shocked he was when he came to Japan and saw stores
open on Sunday. He said in Ghana the entire country closes for Sunday and the only places open are churches. That is the way it should be. That is the way America was 80 years ago. I wasn't saved at the time and none of my family knew the Lord, but I recall
there was a huge uproar in our town over the local movie theater that wanted to show movies on Sunday afternoon. Of course Sunday evenings would be unthinkable, but why not show a movie on Sunday afternoons? You would not believe the protest against it. And
that was by unsaved people simply on the basis of American culture at that time. But not today. Nobody thinks about honoring the Lord's day. Apart from Mino Mission I don't know anyone who doesn't go shopping on Sunday. (I don't know about today, but Betty
Whewell was of the old school and we weren't allowed to read the news paper on Sunday. Buying anything on Sunday was akin to adultery.) Football has replaced church as the main event on Sunday in America.
The only place and time I have seen where the Lord's Day was honored as intended was in Kobe in 1985-90. There was an unusual moving of the Spirit among Kichijoji. Kichijoji was the place
in Tokyo where Gothold Beck started a church, and all the subsequent churches that were born out of that mother church were called Kichijoji.
I believe it can be safely said that Gothold Beck was the most successful post-war missionary in Japan. He moved to Kichijoji and started a church there around 1965. Gothold was a phenomenon
like I have seen in no other place. As a missionary he was off the chart. His work in Kichijoji was highly successful and he had an unusually large church. Then in the 1980s it exploded – in a good way. They suddenly went nation wide and international with
thousands being saved. I asked Gothold, “What is the key to your success?” Shockingly he replied, “When I quit doing dendo (evangelism) the Holy Spirit took over”. Gothold was the most faithful aggressive missionary I ever met. His work in Kichijoji blossomed
to where they were close to 200. (That is mega in Japan where the average church size is between 15 to 20.) Then he started something unprecedented by having tokuden (special evangelistic meeting) ONE WEEK EVERY MONTH. That is insane. Good churches will have
one week of special evangelistic services once a year, but no one has it every month. He did that for two years. And then quit. Gothold told me, “I had one special evangelist come to my church every month, but when I quit that,
every Christian in my church became an evangelist full time.”
Sister Koyama was saved in Kichijoji, and then a few years later her husband died and she returned to her home in Kobe. She went to a few churches in Kobe but nothing met her need. She called
Gothold and asked his advice what to do. He suggested, “Why don't you start having services in your own apartment?” Kichijoji is very strong against lady pastors and women are not allowed to speak in church. But sister Koyama contacted a couple Christian brothers
asking if they would come to her apartment on Sunday to have services. They started with 6-8 people in her tiny apartment. In a year it had grown to over 100. We started going there when it was still 10-12 believers.
When we started going to Kobe for church we would go at 9:00 in the morning and church would go to midnight. There were two services. From 9:00 to 10:30 we would have worship time where the
only thing that was allowed was for any man to ask to sing some number out of the hymn book, say a prayer, or read a verse from the Bible. Occasionally there might be a brief testimony, and there was always communion. (No leader and NO pastor) There was a
brief intermission after that with coffee and cookies, and then another preaching service where one of the brothers (all laymen) would bring a message for 45 minutes. (In all Kichijoji there were NO PASTORS) From 12:00 to 1:00 we would have a pot-luck lunch
together where all the ladies would bring something to eat, and fellowship until 3:00, when we had to vacate the kindergarten where we were meeting. But then believes would go to various houses and fellowship until midnight or later.
The greatest testimony I ever heard about church was one Sunday I was riding in the car with the Hirotas and another Christian couple. Miyuki turned around and said to the lady in the back
seat, “How in the world did we ever live before we had Sunday?” That was it. Sunday was the highlight of the week. You just had to tough it out until Sunday would come, and life would explode again.
The only other place I have seen anything like this was a Kichjoji brother in Chiba. They were going to a meeting about 40 km away, but he wasn't satisfied. He decided to have meetings in
his own house. That was ridiculous. He lived in a house that was so remote you couldn't get there from here. But they started having Sunday services. Pretty soon those meetings would start on Saturday evening and run to early Monday morning. His poor wife
- all she did was fix sandwiches and coffee as dozens of people would start crowding in their house to fellowship and worship Jesus from Saturday night to well past midnight Sunday.
That is church. That is what I long for for Singha. I am asking Jesus to make Singha a Sunday man.
I want him to come to the place where he says honoring the Lord on Sunday is the most important thing in life. You can't schedule this. You can't make a program for this. You certainly can't legalize this. You can't write a book about how to do this.
And you can't teach this. Meetings like this can only be produced by the Holy Spirit.
But when Jesus shows up no one wants to go home. God made the Sabbath for man – not man for the Sabbath (Mk. 2:27).
God rested on the 7th day to enjoy His work and He want us to come apart to enjoy it with Him. How sad when we don't.
I don't know what to tell you. All I know is that when the Holy Spirit is allowed to have His rightful place, He is able to lead us beyond anything we can imagine.
Lord Jesus, make Singha a Sunday man. Please.
bill
PS: Gomen nasai (I'm sorry) I know one other place. I went to Laos three times to take Bibles to a Lao pastor who asked if we could help him. I asked him, “How many people are you seeing saved
each month?”. He replied, “We are starting 13 new churches a month”. That is impossible. I asked him three times and got the same answer. The next time I was there, his niece was interpreting, and I had her ask him the same question. She confirmed what he
said was true. I asked her, “Where in the world do you meet?” She told me, “We meet any place we can.” And went on to explain, “The believers come from a long distance, so we begin the service early Saturday evening and go all night to morning the next day.”
Because coming a long distance is difficult they only do this once a month, but they are growing exponentially. (His niece confessed to me that she was only a nominal Christian and usually flamed out around 2:00 or 3:00 AM but the real believers went on full
bore to well past dawn).
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