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[simon at simon-cozens.org]

Hot, hot, hot...

It hasn't dropped below 30C for the past two weeks - not even at night. I
have an air conditioner and a fan in my bedroom, but it's still sticky
and horrible. But we battle on!

Camps and Conferences

Actually most of my past month has been spent at the relatively cooler
environment of the mission camp site. Last weekend was the final
camp of this year's season, the Latin American camp from my church in
Nagahama. I'm enjoying my connection with the South American congregation;
though my primary concern is obviously with the Japanese, I preach at the
Latin congregation once a month, and really enjoy the freshness of their
worship and the warmth of their personalities, and so it was excellent
to have an opportunity to have fun with them outside of the church for
a couple of days.

As well as that, we had one camp for primary schoolchildren, and two
family camps with an international flavour - our missionary team contains
people from Britain, Korea, Germany, and Myanmar, and we all presented
a little about life in our home countries. We also hope that the unity
that holds together people from such a diverse set of cultures will be
a witness to those at the camps who got to see us working together. My
duties in these camps mainly involved just being around and talking to
people, and also making sure that there was enough fresh water and tea
available by boiling water from a nearby spring!

Tokyo Nights

Last weekend I went to Tokyo to see some friends, ostensibly as a little
holiday at the end of the camps. But my plans soon changed! One set of
friends I visited was the Kawamuras, a Japanese couple I met while they
were missionaries to the Japanese in Oxford. Now they're pastoring a
church just outside Yokohama, and also helping to set up links between
the various organisations helping returnee Christians to adapt back into
Japanese life.

I think these returnees - people have become Christians during study
abroad or some other time living abroad, and now coming back to Japan -
are one of the most important parts of the future of the church here in
Japan. When they come back home, they are often disappointed that their
experience of church in Japan does not compare favourably with their
experiences of church in the West. Often Japanese pastors don't know
what to do with the returnees, and the returnees often get despondent
and leave the church. Hence the need for organisations to support them,
and hence the Yokohama Returnees Seminar last Saturday.

I met some interesting people at the conference, such as representatives
from the returnee support organisations, an editor at the major Christian
magazine here, and an old friend from London JCF who I was very happy
to meet up with again!

On the Sunday morning, I preached at the church in Shonandai, and came
back to Nagahama on the Monday - Tokyo is just two and a half hours
away by bullet train. For comparison, it takes me about the same sort
of time to get to my language school, even though Tokyo is five times
further away!

Leadership Seminar

Since I've been back, I've been working on a programme for a seminar
I'm going to be running at Nagahama church at the end of September. The
seminar is called "Life-changing Leadership", and will look at the nature
of leadership, mentoring and developing others, and the ways in which
Jesus developed his disciples.

This will be quite a major event for me in lots of ways - first, it'll be
the first big piece of interactive teaching I'll have done in Japanese,
and so it will require a lot of preparation; it'll also be good practice
for the kind of work that I want to be doing in the future; and, despite
my pastor reminding me that it is just a practice, will include members of
the local Lions Club, Youth Chamber of Commerce, International VIP Club
(a Christian businessmen's circle) and people from the other churches
in our denomination.

It's going to be held on September the 30th, and I'd appreciate your
prayers for it as I prepare.

Two Lantern Festivals

Speaking of the Youth Chamber of Commerce, they recently organised
a lantern festival in the city park. Schools, companies and NGOs had
little pitches and put together displays made out of lanterns.

A few weeks later, and there was a different sort of lantern festival in
Japan. In mid-August, we have the O-bon festival - the Buddhist festival
of the dead, where it is believed that the souls of the dead return to
earth. I say "it is believed", but really the festival has lost much of
its meaning and is now seen as a traditional summer festival. In fact,
seeing the two lantern festivals in such a short space of time, it was
hard to see which was the "religious" and which was the "secular" one.

To show how confused things have become, this Buddhist festival was
celebrated at the main Shinto shrine in Nagahama.

The celebrations involve dancing, often in traditional costume or fancy
dress, fireworks, displays of swordsmanship and re-enactments of old
samurai stories.

Much of Japanese religion is like this - it isn't really something that
people believe, so much as what they do. The doctrine, the understanding,
the belief systems all take a back seat to the celebration, the lights
and the action.

What should the response of the church be to all of this?
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