It started with a pastor on his knees.
My name is James. I'm a church planter, a worship musician, and a husband and father of two. A few years ago, my wife Eunice and I did something that made no logical sense — we packed up our lives in Singapore and moved our young family to Okinawa, Japan, to plant a church.
It wasn't our idea. At a missions summit in Singapore, a Japanese pastor named Pastor Yoji — who had flown in that very day — walked onto the stage. With tears streaming down his face, he knelt before a room of Singaporean pastors and said simply: "Please, don't forget Japan."
I wasn't even planning to attend that session. Missions wasn't my thing. Japan wasn't on my radar. But my wife Eunice had felt a strong prompting from God that I needed to be in that room. So I went.
"Please, don't forget Japan."
— Pastor Yoji, kneeling before a room of Singapore pastors
When Eunice saw a photo from the session online, she recognised Pastor Yoji immediately. He had been the coordinating pastor for her mission trip to Japan — thirteen years earlier. During that trip, she had quietly prayed: "God, if it is your will, open the door once again for me to come back to Japan." She got married, life moved on, and she forgot the prayer entirely.
God did not.
We made an exploration trip to Okinawa. We didn't know what we were walking into — we just knew we had to go.
A Chinese couple who had recently bought a house on Onaga street in Okinawa — believing God would one day use it for His kingdom — opened it up for us to stay in during those few days. It felt like a small kindness. It turned out to be much more than that.
Later, we discovered that "Onaga" in the house address means "God makes everything work together" in an African language. When we shared this with the Chinese couple, they were shocked — because the night before we arrived, they had hosted an African couple in that very house, and that couple had prophesied over it, declaring that this house would one day become the first Chinese church in Okinawa. They had no idea we were thinking of planting a Chinese church.
"They had no idea we were thinking of planting a Chinese church."
— Pastor JamesA few weeks later, I went for lunch at a restaurant with a friend. It was there, over that meal, that this friend told me she wanted to sponsor the full year's rent. We hadn't asked. It simply came.
When we finished, the waiter didn't bring us a bill. He handed us a key. We looked at the name of the restaurant. Ma Maison — French for "My House." And at that moment I knew — God had handed us the keys to His house.
"We weren't starting something. We were stepping into something that God had prepared for a long while."
— Pastor JamesAt that moment, I realised — we weren't starting something. We were stepping into something that God had prepared for a long while.
We went all in. We planted the church. And that's when the real challenge began.