Over the last six years Nation Builders has played an essential part of enabling us to send key Hillsong pastors to connect with church leaders from across Asia, training them through Hillsong Leadership Network events that build the church in this region and support the Gospel being proclaimed.
One of the most exciting developments has been with a growing connection with leaders in Japan. There is so much potential in this country where less than 1% are Christian!
The relationship actually originated from a Hillsong College Alumni who’d returned to his home church in Hamamatsu (250km south of Tokyo), led by his father.
In 2018 we sent our first team including Chrishan Jeyaratnam and Matt Tickner to their Sunza Rock Festival to speak at a leadership training day. Over 60 pastors and leaders attended and the feedback was phenomenal – they had never heard „Kingdom culture“ described and taught like this before.
The team returned to Sunza Rock Festival in 2019 and saw the reach across Japan expand and meaningful connections develop. This led to a a group of 25 key pastors, including the Senior Pastor of the largest church in Japan, attend our annual Worship & Creative Conference at the Hills Campus.
Their collective goal was to learn more about Hillsong and catch the spirit of our ‚house‘, as many of the fundamental cultural principles of Hillsong are revolutionary to the church in Japan and increasingly necessary to connect with the younger generation. It resulted in the group leader, Ps Matsuya creating a 55 page document summarising his insights from the visit that he believes will bless the whole of Japan.
We are grateful for this open door and will continue to lean in to the opportunity to equip pastors and usher in a new day for the Church in Japan.