OMF Japan

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OMF Japan Posts about life and ministry in Japan, including regular blog posts by missionaries on the field. Please note: this page is not monitored 24/7.

Around 18 months ago, I joined the Japan field’s Third Culture Kids (TCK) Advisors team. We aim to encourage and support...
20/10/2026

Around 18 months ago, I joined the Japan field’s Third Culture Kids (TCK) Advisors team. We aim to encourage and support missionary families as they raise their children, with all the blessings and challenges that cross-cultural missionary life brings.

Until I joined this team, my only experience of TCK support was raising my own children. The only training I’d receive was the support and encouragement of the TCK advisors supporting my family.

But since taking on this role, I have learned much from my fellow team members. They’ve come alongside me and helped me to understand, learn, and grow as I seek to serve our missionary families. A few months ago I had the opportunity to observe a family debriefing session. I observed my team leader help a missionary family prepare for their upcoming home assignment. It was an eye-opening experience to see her create a safe space where each family member could openly share their experiences, joys, and struggles.

I have also been receiving formal training to learn more about understanding and debriefing missionary kids and their families. I am learning how to help them prepare for and work through the many stresses and emotional challenges that come as part of missionary life.

Being asked to serve in this role was daunting, but I am growing through the support and guidance of my teammates and leaders, and through the formal training I can receive. I still have much to learn, but the Lord is faithfully providing all I need to take on the task he has given me.

By Emily, an OMF missionary

Read the blog post here: https://omf.org/learning-to-walk-alongside-tck-families/

Let’s pray for OMF Japan’s Third Culture Kid (TCK) Advisor Team as they help missionary families navigate life and minis...
19/10/2026

Let’s pray for OMF Japan’s Third Culture Kid (TCK) Advisor Team as they help missionary families navigate life and ministry.

Ask God to clearly guide families exploring future schooling options.

Some parents are dealing with neurodiverse kids. Pray for wisdom across different systems, for helpful resources, and strong support from the team.

Pray for families in the midst of transition. Two families graduate from full-time language study and prepare to move this month.

Pray for all our missionary kids: that they would know God’s love and grace through the shared support of parents, peers, and the church.

One of OMF International's values is learning the culture, language, and worldview of the people we serve. Therefore, fr...
15/10/2026

One of OMF International's values is learning the culture, language, and worldview of the people we serve. Therefore, from the early days of OMF's work in Japan (in the 1950s) the mission has maintained its own language school. It's now called the Japan Language and Culture Centre (JLCC) and is located in Sapporo, Hokkaido.*

Most long-term missionaries spend around two years studying language and culture full-time at JLCC. After graduating they spend the rest of their first term of service training in a church, while continuing to study Japanese part-time.

Japanese is a rich, complex language. It's one of the hardest language in the world for English speakers to learn (noting that not all our missionaries are native English speakers). Most missionaries continue learning Japanese for the entire time that they serve in Japan.

Please pray for our missionaries as they study Japanese.

*Pray for good perspective on language learning, especially when progress is slow and missionaries just want to "get on" with the work.

Pray for the leaders who oversee language and culture learning for our first-term missionaries.

Pray for our Japanese teachers and language partners, that they would be wise in how they teach and provide feedback.



JLCC is not currently accepting non-OMF students.

Although we sometimes focus on the training we receive on the Field, for many of us the training needed before we applie...
14/10/2026

Although we sometimes focus on the training we receive on the Field, for many of us the training needed before we applied was the hardest time.

Thirty-seven years ago, my wife Renate and I had finished one term in Sapporo with a different mission organisation, and we were seeking the Lord for a new way forward. I sensed that my theological qualifications were a bit weak compared with the Japanese pastors I knew, so I signed on for the MA in Biblical Interpretation at London School of Theology.

Paying for this course, term by term, drained our savings to the last penny. We stayed with my parents in London. We and our two-year-old son Daniel had bed and board—but that was it. Renate took on one, sometimes two newspaper rounds; she cleaned the church; she played the organ at funerals; she even flew to her home village in Germany to earn money in the harvest while her parents cared for Daniel.

My parents’ neighbour gave us a car; a friend at church helped me buy a word processor; but every week we were just scraping by. There was a fine big supermarket nearby, but why go there with nothing in our pockets? Books for my course—forget it.

It’s true we have been hard up a few times since then, and it isn’t an unusual experience for missionaries! But those years of theological study are the time of need we remember most, and it was a vital training time for us. We learnt: (1) to rejoice in small signs of the Lord’s provision when it really counts; (2) to appreciate and respect the people who clean the streets and the public toilets; (3) to be sensitive to signs of financial hardship even among the apparently affluent Japanese around us. We consciously avoid taking our present situation for granted; and likewise that of the people we meet.

Have you sung these words? “We will praise Him for all that is past, and trust Him for all that’s to come.” It’s true, it really is!

By Peter, an OMF Missionary

Before coming as missionaries to Japan my husband and I studied at theological college. We gained valuable ministry expe...
13/10/2026

Before coming as missionaries to Japan my husband and I studied at theological college. We gained valuable ministry experience serving in our churches and other ministries in our home country. Then, when we arrived in Japan, we had to do two years of full-time language and culture study. At each stage we felt we were doing what God had called us to do for that time and we also trusted he would use lessons we learnt at this stage as preparation for things he had for us to do in future.

Even though it felt like a lot, it was all useful training to be able to do life and ministry in Japanese. We needed that training to do simple daily activities and get to know people, to serve in churches or start new churches. We needed it to teach the Bible and to have conversations about the God who made the heavens and earth and everything in it, who offers salvation through Jesus and calls us to know and follow him.

OMF’s ongoing training

I’m so grateful for all that initial training, but I’m also thankful that OMF encourages us to be life-long learners and for the ongoing training courses that OMF offers us in subsequent years. These courses teach practical skills, but they also encourage us to take a step back and look to who God is and how he has worked in the past.

Some of OMF’s training provides teaching and reflection on continuing personal and spiritual development, sharing our faith, discipling, teamwork, cross-cultural communication, leadership, and being goal-directed, just to list a few.

Encouragement from meeting together

At a recent course, someone said “I thought I was the only one [who had had these kinds of experiences]”. That stuck with me. Many missionaries work in isolation from others. It’s so good to meet in community with others, to share ideas, and learn from each other’s experiences.

God did not call us to struggle alone. Training courses provide a wonderful opportunity for community, mutual sharpening, and spurring one another on. The Bible says, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24–25 ESV). Of course this applies to meeting together with other believers in other ways too, but I have found a special encouragement from meeting with fellow workers at training courses.

God’s training throughout life

God’s training perspective extends beyond the initial studies, the ongoing courses, or the mentoring opportunities and feedback we might get. We might be surprised by distractions, like relationship misunderstandings, bureaucratic hurdles, or health issues. All of these can drain our energy and leave us feeling disheartened, but even unexpected events serve as tools that are training us too—stretching our spiritual muscles and growing our character under the loving guidance of our ultimate trainer, the Lord.

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11 ESV).

By Naomi, an OMF missionary

Read the blog post here: https://omf.org/life-long-learning-opportunities/

Let’s pray for OMF Japan’s finance and administration team, OMF Japan couldn’t function without their support.September ...
12/10/2026

Let’s pray for OMF Japan’s finance and administration team, OMF Japan couldn’t function without their support.

September was a busy month as they prepared budgets for the field. Praise the Lord for his boundless grace and mercy and hand of protection over our team.

Pray for continued joy and strength as this busy season continues into October.

Pray for the team as they juggle usual finance and admin work alongside budget-season work, that nothing important will be missed.

Pray for them as they work with a new finance system and new tax system too.

09/10/2026

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.
- 2 Timothy 2:2

The way in which the gospel is spread is through relationship and discipleship. 2 Timothy 2:2 puts four generations of discipleship into view: from Paul to Timothy to teachers to others.

Passing on the faith is not a single step, but a multi-generational process. Christian discipleship has a long view, reaching out to others who will then reach still others.

OMF is an international, interdenominational mission. Workers come from many different countries and serve in various co...
08/10/2026

OMF is an international, interdenominational mission. Workers come from many different countries and serve in various contexts around the world. One way that we seek to maintain unity as an organization is by having all long-term workers attend a residential orientation course (OC) at our international center in Singapore around the time they first begin to serve with our mission.⁠

This orientation course is a key part of training for our new members. It’s a cross-cultural experience that helps them better understand OMF and for OMF to get to know them, building mutual trust. It aims to provide spiritual refreshment and preparation for life in Asia. It also serves as a place to get practical help by preparing them for language learning, maintaining their health as a missionary, handling stress on the mission field, and understanding the mission’s finance and personnel systems.⁠

Pray for new missionaries as they attend this course that all these goals will be achieved.

A missionary never stops growing and being trained.You can imagine that there are always new words to learn (I learnt th...
07/10/2026

A missionary never stops growing and being trained.

You can imagine that there are always new words to learn (I learnt the Japanese word for 'bundle' or 'bind' today, 24 years after arriving in Japan). And new aspects of culture to learn—I recently learned about three types of Japanese doll.

But there is more to learn and be trained in. OMF Japan missionaries have various opportunities to access training to equip them for ministry and life.

There is a course to help missionaries think through the Japanese people’s true spiritual condition and how we can help bring Japanese people closer to Jesus. And a follow up course thinking about discipleship in a Japanese context.

All missionaries need to maintain a healthy life and ministry, so there is personal and spiritual development training. You can take the ‘Working Together’ course to learn how to work with different personalities, cultures and ways of doing things. Some may start new ministries or churches so our week-long course on maintaining a clear ministry focus will probably help.

A few will become leaders of churches or within OMF itself—we have training to help them work in organizations and how to improve them. It’s designed for gaining the skills and the character needed for leading.

There are many short e-courses too. Missionaries can learn about OMF finances and spiritual formation. We also have a course on the Theology of Suffering and Virtual Teams.

We have training for specific roles within OMF also. For Candidate Coordinators there’s ‘Doing Selection Well’. Medical advisors and Third Culture Kid advisors have courses to help them understand their role. If you are a leader you can get training that will help you manage a crisis, delegate, or mentor people.

Then there are courses to help potential book writers, how to train others using a virtual classroom, and to help missionaries prepare well for Home Assignment.

I suppose we could paraphrase motivational speaker Zig Ziglar: The only thing worse than training missionaries and losing them, is to not train them and keep them.

By Peter, director of training and development, OMF Japan

Repost from March 2022

An inevitable part of entering the mission field is language and culture learning. It’s a time of discovery and explorat...
06/10/2026

An inevitable part of entering the mission field is language and culture learning. It’s a time of discovery and exploration, but also a time of dependence and humility. I love listening to people’s stories and asking questions, but suddenly I no longer had the words to ask how someone’s day was, nor the ability to understand their answer.

The language-learning journey has many kinds of moments: excitement as comprehension grows; embarrassment as—by changing a single syllable—you proclaim that you love singleness rather than reading; despair at what feels like an insurmountable number of characters and alphabets; and frustration of words your mouth and ears refuse to recognise.

It was tempting to think that if things were different, it would be easier:

“If I were younger . . .”

“If I could have a different learning environment or received a different teaching style . . . ”

I was often so wrapped in thinking about these alternative possibilities that God could have done, that I nearly failed to see that this was God’s best place for me. That he’d put me here so he could do what he wanted to do in and through me.

Yes, language learning is important for preaching the gospel, but I was here, with people. I had a cohort of fellow new missionaries who needed encouragement and perhaps reassurance. I had experienced Christians to observe and learn from. And, by the Lord’s design, I had mostly non-Christian teachers with whom I had opportunities to share the gospel in faltering and broken Japanese.

At the end of my formal language and culture training I received a graduation card from one of my teachers—“I was able to understand more about Jesus. Jesus really is such a loving and kind person, isn’t he?”

I read this with tears in my eyes. What joy at seeing that the Lord had used my garbled Japanese to reveal more of himself to my non-Christian Japanese teacher.

Maybe it was for her, that God had placed me here.

Maybe it was for another teacher who is doing Bible studies with another missionary.

Maybe where we are isn’t just for us, but where we can best be used for God’s glory, despite our weakness.

I pray that you can see the Lord’s purposes where he has placed you in this season, and trust that this would be immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power at work in you.

By Meg, an OMF missionary

Read the blog post here: https://omf.org/serving-god-even-in-garbled-japanese/

住所

1-16/28
Ichikawa-shi, Chiba
2720035

営業時間

月曜日 09:00 - 17:00
火曜日 09:00 - 17:00
水曜日 09:00 - 17:00
木曜日 09:00 - 17:00
金曜日 09:00 - 17:00

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+81473243221

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