Chris Carter
Picture : This is a science experiment during a sermon at TICA. The rapid release of pressurized air caused a loud sound and smoke to appear in the container.
CALL TO MISSIONS
As a high school student, I loved science, so I never prayed about my career. I just planned to go to university and study something related to science. However, when I was 16, I went on tour with a Christian singing group as their light board operator. The group required us to spend one hour every day reading our Bibles and praying. Before this, I had never had a consistent daily prayer time. To my amazement, as I prayed, God started to speak to me. So, I started asking God about what I should do with my life. I prayed for months, but I didn’t receive a clear answer. I grew up in Alaska, and every December, we had a winter youth camp called “snow camp.” At one of the services, God’s power came upon me. I fell over, and I had a vision. God spoke to me and said, “Chris, you’re going to be my missionary.” At that moment, I knew that I would spend my life as a missionary.
Picture : This is a science experiment during a sermon at TICA. The rapid release of pressurized air caused a loud sound and smoke to appear in the container.
CALL TO JAPAN
We spent our first term as missionaries at Asia Pacific Theological Seminary in the Philippines. I taught New Testament classes, and Lindsey did children’s ministry and cared for our three children, Wesley, Adelaide, and Hudson. During this time, we went on a missionary retreat to Malaysia. At one of the prayer meetings, someone read a letter from a retired missionary to Japan. The letter was really a complaint. The missionary had written to the leaders of Assemblies of God World missions. He said, “Why aren’t you sending more missionaries to Japan?” “Don’t you know how badly Japan needs missionaries?” “What’s wrong with you leaders anyway?” At the time, our regional director was Russ Turney. Russ read the letter, and he said, “We need to pray that God would send more missionaries to Japan.” Lindsey and I joined in prayer with all the others at the meeting. As we were praying, God spoke to both of us at the same moment. He said, “you are the answer to that prayer.” Lindsey and I looked at each other, and we knew God had called us to Japan.
BECOMING PASTORS
We arrived in Japan in August of 2011 just 5 months after the earthquake and nuclear disaster. In the Philippines, we had met David and Anna Hymes. At the time, the Hymeses were pastoring Tsukuba International Christian Assembly, and they invited us to come to Tsukuba and help them at the church while we studied Japanese. As I studied Japanese, we helped to launch a Chi Alpha at Tsukuba University, and later I became an adjunct professor at Tsukuba University for the purpose of meeting more students. In our second year in Japan, I began teaching classes at Central Bible College in Tokyo, and I continue to teach classes there even now. We felt very content with these ministries, and we were already very busy. So, when David Hymes asked me to pastor Tsukuba International Christian Assembly while he and Anna returned to the U.S., I answered very quickly. I said, “No, thank you. Please find someone else.” I thought, “I’m already busy, and I’m not a pastor. I’m a teacher.” David looked for someone else, but a few months later he said, “There is no one else. If you don’t do it, the church will not have a pastor.” So, we reluctantly agreed.
During the next two years, a couple of things happened. The church grew, and Lindsey and I discovered we loved pastoring. When the time came for us to return to the U.S. to raise funds, we contacted the Hymeses. We told them they probably needed to renovate the church to accommodate the growth. David said, “No, you do. We’re retiring from missions.” We asked the church if they wanted us to remain their pastors, and they did. I usually tell people we accidentally became pastors because it wasn’t part of our original plan. However, God has a way of working in unexpected ways.
DEVELOPING A PHILOSOPHY OF MINISTRY
Over years God has led us to our philosophy of ministry at TICA. The first sermon series I preached as senior pastor was on the book of Ephesians. I thought this was an appropriate starting point because Paul defines the church in this letter. In my study of Ephesians, I found that Paul defines the church as a place of belonging, forgiveness, purpose, and power. Each of these four characteristics of the church have become very important at TICA. We put belonging first because we have found that non-Christian Japanese people want to belong to the community of the church before they are ready to believe. The characteristic of forgiveness speaks of the high place we give to the doctrine of salvation and the importance of preaching the gospel. We also believe that people find their purpose in Christ and express that purpose through service in the kingdom of God. Thus, purpose also functions as an important characteristic of the church. And finally, power speaks to our Pentecostal identity.
Although we are an international church, our ministry target is not foreigners or even English speakers. Everything we do is bi-lingual, and every aspect of our services is designed with non-Christian Japanese people in mind. Our goal as a church is to mobilize and equip the whole church including both internationals and Japanese to reach their Japanese friends and neighbors with the gospel. To do this, our church must be a place where the Japanese feel comfortable and can understand everything that is happening. This approach is working, and many of the people we have seen saved and baptized are Japanese men and women who do not speak English.
Over the years, we have also discovered that Japanese people rarely come to church for church. They usually come to church for something else, so we try to offer people things that aren’t church that lead to church. For us, music, English, and Science are the most important non-church things that lead to church. It is no secret that Japanese people love music. We have great music on Sunday morning. We invite people who are not yet Christians to participate fully in worship. We also promote concerts, and we organize worship cafes. At these events, we have live music, and we invite people to make art as they listen to music. We also use English as an outreach tool. We have an English conversation café during our Sunday school time, and we invite participants to come to church afterward. Our worship and sermons are bi-lingual, so we tell the English students that it is a good chance to work on their listening skills. We also offer a kid’s English camp during the summers. Many families have connected to our church through the English camp. Finally, we use science. Tsukuba is known for its scientific research, and our church is full of researchers. So, I incorporate science experiments into my sermons. And we have a telescope we use for astronomy outreach events.
Another part of our philosophy of ministry is that we believe church should be fun. We hope that when people come to church on Sunday morning, it is the most fun they have had all week.
They were trying to catch a ball with the world upside down.
We were talking about how hard it is to live if we can’t see the world the right way.
DEVELOPING A VISION
As TICA began to grow, it became apparent we needed help. We had too many ideas and too much to do to do it alone, and God gave us a clear word. He said, “build a team.” Along the way, this word from God about a team developed into something bigger. We call it the TEDS vision. (TEDS means Tsukuba Express Disciple Station.) Our vision is to plant a branch of TICA at every stop of the Tsukuba Express train line that connects Tsukuba with Akihabara. We also want each church to start with a congregation of 100 and a pastoral staff of 10. This means we need to recruit 200 missionaries. To find these missionaries, we have started an internship program, a semester abroad program for American University students, and we invite churches to bring teams to work with us. We have seen that God calls about 10% of the people who come to work with us for a short time into missions. And he has called many of them to Japan. We have recently renovated a building with apartments in it to accommodate those who are coming to serve with us. The building also contains our church offices, church kitchen, and English café.
Picture : The Carter Family (left to right): Wesley, Hudson, Chris, Lindsey, Adelaide
PRESENT CONDITION
So far, we have received a total of 158 short term workers at TICA. We have 7 missionaries who have committed to our permanent long-term team, and we have many more who have served with us and are now praying about making a commitment to our team. By this fall, we will have a total of 10 medium and long-term team members working with us. God has been moving mightily at TICA in recent months. In April, we had a record attendance of 211 people, and we are now averaging around 150 in our Sunday worship services. In the last 8 months, we have seen 3 people saved, 2 baptized in the Holy Spirit, and we have baptized 6 in water. Of the 6 we baptized, 3 of them are new Japanese believers, and two of them don’t speak English.
We are excited about what God is doing in Tsukuba and throughout the nation of Japan. We believe the JAG is standing on the edge of the greatest spiritual harvest Japan has ever seen! Please pray with us that God will move on the hearts of the people of Tsukuba. Pray that he will call more missionaries to join our team. Pray that we will see God do things thought to be impossible in Japan. And pray that the Holy Spirit will continue to reveal to us new and creative ways of reaching the people of Japan.
Picture : The Carter Family (left to right): Wesley, Hudson, Chris, Lindsey, Adelaide
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