When the alarm rang at 4:42am this past Sunday we were both dreaming about time. Wakako was dreaming it was 3:30 and she had just one more hour to sleep. In my dream it was 2:30 so I had two more.
But we'd run out of time to sleep and were up early to leave in time for the 7:00am service at Sapporo Bible Church. It took 55 minutes to slide across town, avoiding the many plows working hard to clear snow that had just fallen.
I gave the message at Bible Church at the 7:00 and 10:30 services. A highlight of the morning was hearing Watanabe-san tell her story in the second service...
She shared that her mother-in-law once expressed desire for a Christian funeral. So Watanabe-san and her husband called Bible Church when the time came. "Pastor Yahiro and his wife, Yoshiko-san spent so much time for the funeral," she said. "We came to worship the next Sunday to express our gratitude. I couldn’t understand anything about worship or the Bible. But Yoshiko-san invited me to Alpha. She said it would be easier to understand. During Alpha I could understand, and I believed."
Listening to her story, I thought about a similar story I heard just a week ago. A friend told us, "My grandfather would sometimes go to worship at a church near his home in Tokyo, the church that held my uncle’s funeral. I asked what he thought and he said the people were nice but it was like they were speaking a different language; he couldn’t understand what they were talking about at church. Recently the pastor retired and my grandfather stopped going."
This grandfather and Mrs. Watanabe had so much in common. Both went to church because of a funeral. Both couldn’t understand what was going on. And both have recently seen the church’s pastor retire.
But through Alpha, Mrs. Watanabe could understand the gospel. Through Alpha she found a place of belonging, believed and was baptized. She's continuing to grow and is excited to serve on the Alpha leadership team.
Sapporo Bible Church has had an amazingly fruitful Alpha ministry. About 80% of their guests have believed. And now the Bible Church team is helping a nearby church prepare to start its own Alpha ministry in June, 2009.
Pray God will continue to use Alpha to help many non-Christians understand and believe.
