DALE & ANN LITTLE

TMC Vision Visits

03 Nov 2016TMC
Two churches have visited Tokyo Multicultural Church in the past few months, desiring to deepen their understanding of TMC and possibly partner with TMC in clothing the gospel with community (church planting).

Alicia Lim’s home church, Ottawa Chinese Bible Church, sent a team of young people to teach outreach English classes for one week at Soka EFC in late July and early Aug. We had an opportunity to lead them on a prayer walk in Sumida-ku, the area around TMC. The prayer walk ended with a meal at TMC and a time of sharing TMC’s vision.

2016_11-2 TMC2
Then in late Oct and early Nov, four lay leaders and the pastor from Jon Prins’ home church in Minnesota, Watertown EFC, visited for one week. Their desires are (1) to continue partnering with Jon so that he can serve at TMC and (2) to explore how to develop a mutually beneficial church-to-church partnership with TMC. They stayed in a nearby AirBnB house, prayer walked the streets of Sumida-ku where TMC is located, prayed from the observation deck of SkyTree overlooking Sumida-ku and other parts of Tokyo, observed outreach English classes at TMC and Soka EFC, prayer walked in the area we are thinking of launching TMC#2, and interacted at length with us about TMC’s history, vision, and leadership development. They also joined us for one of our weekly TMC prayer meetings, giving us a record turn out of 11 people.

2016_11-1 TMC2
We are now dreaming and praying about launching TMC#2 in Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa-ken at a key train station, Musashikosugi. Kawasaki City (1.5 million) is the fastest growing large city in Japan with the youngest average age. There are many young families in the area around Musashikosugi station, living in high rise condominiums of 35+ floors. The location is 30 minutes by train from our Kinshicho station and on the same train line.

We do not yet know for certain that this will be the location of TMC#2. But we do want to launch TMC#2 by about 2020, continuing to establish TMC#1 until at least then. TMC’s church planting model for the world’s largest (and livable) megacity is both affordable and reproducible. More on our TMC vision here—scroll down to Phases.