by Ian Nagata

“Say you strike up a conversation with someone on the train who’s never heard of Jesus. How would you share the gospel with him?”

It was a great question. And like many of the other questions people asked about my missionary game plan, I hadn’t envisioned that far yet.

So I said the first thing that came to mind:

 “I’d try to find a way to get him to sit down and read the Bible with me, so He could encounter Jesus.”

Nine years later, ironically, it’s the only question that I would still answer the same way. The person of Jesus is our greatest evangelistic tool.[1]

I could share why I feel this way based on multiple conversations, Bible studies, and yes, random people I’ve met on the trains here in Tokyo. But the past three weeks I got to experience this not only in Japan, but on a global level.

For three Wednesdays, I participated in an online training on the Person of Jesus by seeJesus ministries. Participants logged in from Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, alongside trainers from Guatemala, Jordan, Philadelphia, and So. Cal. 

Besides the personal joy of seeing Evergreeners Jon Hori and Darren Inouye, we delighted in six hours of seeing and studying Jesus’ compassion, honesty, dependency, love, and ultimately, beauty throughout Scripture. (Though Jon and Darren are also quite lovely and beautiful.)

What struck me most however, wasn’t just Jesus’ beauty. Rather, His particular beauty in each of our cultural contexts.

For example, Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet is beautiful to those of us in America. But have you ever thought how shocking such humility would be in a hierarchical society like Taiwan?

Or take Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. Have you ever thought how the Father’s welcoming would resonate all the more in a shame culture, like Jordan? 

Or think of Jesus’ acknowledging Bartimaeus amidst a great crowd, asking what He could do for him. Can you imagine how courageous this would be in a culture like Japan, where people ignore each other on the trains in fear of disrupting the peace?

So pardon the seemingly sensational title. But I truly mean it when I say we have no greater evangelistic tool in the world. Because as the hymn says, only Jesus is our “Beautiful Savior, Lord of all the nations,” from Jordan to Japan, La Puente to the ends of the earth,

[1] Stole this phrase from Jon Hori’s teaching during the Person of Jesus online training!

by Matthew Christian

About six months ago, I waved goodbye to the typical (embarrassingly) enthusiastic Evergreen SGV church crowd that had come to send me off at the airport. With great excitement mingled with an equal amount of fear, I stepped—by myself—onto the first of three airplanes that would eventually take me over 10,000 miles away from home and everything I called normal, to a small, poverty-stricken, third-world country in Africa called Malawi. 

As an eighteen year-old, going for a six week vision trip, living with a family I hadn’t talked with in five years, and in a country (let alone continent) I had never visited, was terrifying. Yet I was also very excited because this trip was literally a dream come true for me.

Even as a young boy I had dreamed of going to Africa and serving there as a missionary one day -- a desire that has not faded with age. I had no idea what life or ministry would actually be like in Malawi, but I thought I had a decent enough picture of the missionary life.

Being a missionary meant leaving my home and traveling overseas, going to as many cities as possible to share the gospel with every single stranger I encounter on the road. Maybe in some cases, even confronting a false witch doctor in an impoverished village and leading an entire village to Christ. 

While these were not my exact thoughts going into this trip, I know I did carry pieces of that picture with me. However, I soon discovered (thankfully!) I was wrong and God’s plan of redemption is significantly much grander than preaching at pagans. 

As I mentioned previously, this trip was a vision trip, meaning my primary purpose for this endeavor was simply to observe the Malawian missionary life, ask questions about everything, and pray as much as I could throughout my stay in Malawi. With that goal in mind, what then did I observe and discover about being a missionary?

Through living with the amazing Hiroto family, who have faithfully served in Malawi for about 15 years, I discovered that being a missionary is so much more than preaching the gospel. It is living the gospel. For them, it meant being like Christ with whatever work he calls them to do, wherever he calls them to be, with whomever he calls them to be with. It is that simple. 

There were countless times where the Hiroto’s had people come over to their home (like me) to share a meal and share life together. From college students at African Bible College (ABC) to the other missionaries on the campus teaching there, all were welcomed. 

Other times, living the gospel meant going to visit the widow living in the brick hut of a remote village, sit on the dirt floor and listen to her story and pray for her. Or it could be being dominated in a game of football/soccer to a group of orphan boys in overly large and worn t-shirts and laughing with them at my own clumsy feet. 

To be a missionary is to live the gospel. This is a calling God has placed on all of us: to live out the gospel in the work of our hands, right where we live, and with those we interact with. 

Do I think I will go back to serve in Malawi one day? Maybe. I would love to. Yet the call I feel to the mission field is so much more than “traveling overseas to preach the gospel.” Being a missionary is to live out the gospel in whatever God gives me to do, wherever God places me, with whoever God brings to me. Whether that be in Malawi or in some other country in Africa or at home stuck in quarantine, that calling remains the same. And that calling is one I will strive to live for, no matter what God has in store for my future.