Japanese immigrants setting out to start new lives in south Florida may find more than they were expecting. Some may find new life in Christ.
“Starting a new life in a new location makes people’s minds open to new things in general,” said Hiro Takaoka, who is seeking to plant a Japanese church in Miami even as he pastors a Japanese church in Orlando.
Japanese people in the U.S., “released from the demands or connections in Japan that used to prevent them from going to church” are “open to the gospel,” the pastor explained.
As pastor Takaoka was launching the only Florida Baptist church for Japanese in Orlando in 2012, his heart and mind turned to Miami. “I considered Miami as the next target of our mission,” he said.
Such a Japanese mission “was already in God’s sight and plans at least 10 years ago,” said Henry Gonzalez, pastor of administration at Iglesia Primera Bautista de Coral Park.
About that time the Japanese Consulate in Miami asked to rent space in the Hispanic church to conduct Hoshuko school each Saturday, a school devoted to teaching Japanese language and culture to children of Japanese descent.
Many Japanese executives come to Miami on a two-year work visa, said Gonzalez, and parents do not want their children to lose their Japanese culture and language skills during that time.
“What an opportunity to build bridges with Japanese people,” said Gonzalez.
Even as Gonzalez and Takaoka were gaining a vision for reaching Japanese people in Miami, others began sensing that need also.
For example, “On the very day when I pinned up a map of the Florida peninsula in my office to pray more concretely for Japanese mission to take place in Miami,” Takaoka recalled, “a Japanese Christian woman named Luna in Miami called him to say she wanted to visit his church in Orlando because Miami had no Japanese church.”
“Luna’s words touched my heart just like the cry out of Macedonia found in Acts 16,” he said.
Around the same time, Mike Yokoy, who leads Japanese Church Planting Network, contacted Takaoka, expressing his vision for a Japanese church to be planted in Miami.
“We had been praying (about starting a Japanese church in Miami) for more than five years. The time had come,” he said.
There are more than 12,000 Japanese people living in Florida, Yokoy said, making it the seventh most Japanese-populated state in the nation.
In January of this year, Takaoka led his first Bible study in Miami. Seventeen people attended. Since that time, he has traveled to Miami twice a month. That one Bible study has grown to three Bible studies – held at a Japanese restaurant, a home and Primera Iglesia Bautista de Coral Park. Each time Takaoka makes the round-trip between Orlando and Miami, the Florida Baptist Convention provides overnight lodging.
“Hiro has such a passion for what he does. It’s contagious,” said Gonzalez.
Primera Iglesia Bautista de Coral Park has agreed to help sponsor the new congregation, offering classroom and worship space and working alongside JCPN as it finds and begins the immigration process for a pastor in Japan to relocate to south Florida. It’s a process that can take one to two years, said Yokoy.
The partnership in how this Japanese church plant is coming together is “quite a testimony of what can and should be done,” said Gonzalez.
Al Fernandez, Florida Baptists’ regional catalyst/southeast Florida agrees. He believes the vision for and first steps to launching the Japanese mission have been an opportunity for Florida Baptists to “join God in what He’s already doing.
“It’s a God-thing,” said Fernandez. “It’s all coming together.”
By Margaret Colson, Florida Baptist Convention, October 26, 2016