Ralph Moore's Blog, page 4

Japan Trip PhotoCollage

January Japan trip collage is below.

To subscribe to the newsletter about the trip, send snailmail info to:

Mission Hope

150 Hamakua Drive, PMB 420

Kailua, HI 96734

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"Once upon a time..." beats "Thou shalt not..."



"Once upon a time…" is a better teacher than "Thou shalt not…"

Gotta watch this one. It is so easy to get excited about helping another person, only to burden them with rules, disguised as helpful hints.

How many times have you been "put off" by someone who crowds you to do something? They may have the best intentions in the world but…

It is always easier for people to "snatch and grab" truth when it comes packaged in the form of a story. Especially nice are true stories from your own life or other people's stories.

If there isn't a true story that makes your point you can always make up a story. That's fair, Jesus told stories and we call them parables.  They've also lasted for 2,000 years and are much easier to grasp than the moral codes of Moses.

A simple metaphor can work wonders. But you need to be careful that the hearer is familiar with the metaphor—The other day I heard a guy compare a fast growing church to a bamboo forest—anyone who has tried to root bamboo out of their yard knows what a nice thing he was saying. But, those who don't know bamboo would be lost in the same forest. 

However "A heart melting like ice on a hot summer sidewalk" works well for just about anybody. Or, "Good people will prosper like tall palm trees…virile still in old age."

Learning seems to be all about the pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

Surprising Startup in Japan!

I met with a very nice surprise yesterday.

Preached at Hope Chapel Tokorozawa in Tokyo. Before service I met a man named Marc Renton. The surprise was that he had planted a church under Hope Toko but I never heard about it.

Seems that he had read my book "Starting A New Church" and got excited about starting something new. At the time he was in the US military stationed in Japan. He called our office to see what we had going in Japan. They connected him with Jeff MacKay, one of our pastors in Osaka.

Jeff connected him with Corey Grinder, who was pastor in Tokorozawa at the time. He also hooked him up with John Bacigalupo, a former gunny sergent in the Marine Corps. John planted a church in Okinawa while still a Marine--he pastors it 25 years later. 

Between them all, our pastors encouraged Marc and he planted "All Nations Fellowship" in Masawa. He's now out of the military but working in Japan for a Department of Defense school for kids living on military bases. He is also trying to build up a small Bible College in Tokyo.

What's so cool about this is that it all happened without me knowing about it. Better yet without any church organization giving "permission" for someone to make disciples and carry out God's work. I totally love this aspect of this story...

Marc and his life are examples of what I call "normal Christianity." It is natural for Christians to advance the Kingdom of God through church planting--and it is not all that hard. You might want to try it yourself????