When we look at the important financial centres around the world, such as New York, London, Singapore, many churches exist there. These churches are able to be a community for business people to rest, enjoy friendship, as well as worship God. In this way it is necessary to have churches as a way of experiencing rest and joy for the heart, amidst the intense competition of business in a free-trade economy.
Indeed, from the perspective of Japanese history, even at the beginning of the Edo era there was already a Christian grave in Marunouchi (1590). And in the Meiji era Uchimura Kanzo gave weekly Bible lectures on Sundays in Marunouchi (1919-23), which were on average attended by around 700 people. Furthermore, after the Second World War, for nearly 70 years a Christian group met within Meiji Life Insurance’s headquarters in Marunouchi.
In a similar way, we would like to see business people in contemporary Marunouchi find rest and joy through the wisdom of the Bible. And equipped with this wisdom and a Christian worldview, we would like to see people being a great blessing to others in their workplaces, as well as their homes and local societies, and sent out to various places in Japan and around the world. This is the vision of Marunouchi Church Tokyo (MCT). In other words, MCT would like to be a church which helps provide rest and joy and then equips and sends out Christians to numerous areas to see God’s purposes further accomplished not only in Marunouchi but throughout Japan and the world.
MCT considers its most important task to be to preach and teach the Bible faithfully, hoping for people to understand things like: “What is the meaning of life? How to find joy? How to rest? What is work? What is family?” Indeed, for people to mature as Christians it is crucial for them to have the Bible taught and applied to them. MCT desires not just for people to listen to the Bible being preached, but for each individual to meditate upon God’s words, and as married couples and as friends to discuss and pray together, and then put these words into practice in their daily life and in society, and to be guided by God towards meaning for their life and towards abundant joy.
However, in Japan which does not have a Christian culture, just having those simple elements may well not appeal to people enough for them to come along on a Sunday. In particular those who are not yet Christians. And so wisdom is needed and an approach that thinks about what might people themselves consider to be of benefit to them.
God is the God of the Impossible. We believe that everything is part of his plan, and under that we would like to begin the MCT church plant. Therefore, at present we are informing those who support the work of TMP about the plans for MCT. MCT is planning to be co-pastored by Thierry Richards and Takaaki Hirano. We would love as much wisdom as possible. So please do share with us your wisdom and experience. In particular, please let us know how we might best serve your friends and colleagues in this Marunouchi area, so that partnering together and with God’s assistance we might help our friends and colleagues to find joy and rest and to meet Jesus.