What’s Happening at Christmas (December Prayer Focus)

TEAM - The Evangelical Alliance Mission suzanne.pearson • Dec 01, 2019

The Christmas season is here — and that means great outreach opportunities for missionaries.

In many cultures, Christmas opens people up to the idea of faith in God. The decorations, the music and the events are all constant reminders that something important is going on. It makes people curious.

With this in mind, missionaries around the world will host Christmas parties at their churches and homes. They’ll hold choir concerts where unsaved neighbors can hear the Gospel. They may even invite friends to celebrate the actual holiday together.

Even if Christmas isn’t celebrated in a culture, missionaries can share about the holiday’s meaning as a way of sharing their own culture. The Christmas season opens up doors for conversation that may have been closed at any other time of the year .

Please pray with us this month that God will work powerfully through Christmas outreaches worldwide. Ask Him to transform lives as people hear His story of love.

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1. Ask God to open people’s hearts and minds to the real meaning of Christmas.

Planning Christmas parties, hosting events, organizing programs — these are all great ways to show people the meaning of Christmas, but none of it matters if people aren’t open to hearing it . And we know that only God can change people’s hearts.

Pray that the weeks and months of planning missionaries have put in won’t be in vain. These programs draw in people who wouldn’t normally attend church. A Christmas pageant may be the first time a child — or their family — has the opportunity to hear the Gospel. Not only that, but these programs help people feel familiar with the church — and more likely to return for a regular service.

This month, ask God to open people’s hearts to the true meaning behind the holiday. Pray that God will help missionaries handle conversations in ways that glorify Him and draw people into long-term relationships with the local church.

Kids dress up as characters from the nativity and perform the story

Christmas pageants are one of the many ways missionaries engage with the community during the Christmas season.

2. Pray against sickness during this season

Missionaries get sick just like the rest of us, but missionaries’ seasonal illnesses can lead to canceled programs — or make things harder on the teammates who keep things going.

Sickness can also affect the people missionaries are trying to minister to. A sick child means parents can’t go to the Christmas party the missionaries are hosting. It may mean that they can’t receive missionaries as visitors in their homes. And ultimately, they may miss out on meaningful conversations about why Jesus came to Earth.

Pray that missionaries will stay healthy so they can effectively minister to their communities. And pray that community members will stay healthy so they don’t miss out on anything that would point them to Christ.

3. Pray against holiday homesickness for missionaries far from home.

Missionaries often experience feelings of loneliness. And the Christmas season can intensify these feelings. Being far away from people you love, not being able to participate in your normal Christmas traditions, and being immersed in a culture with different traditions can lead to homesickness. On top of this, the stress and busyness of Christmas outreaches can exacerbate their homesickness.

Ask God to comfort missionaries and their families through the Christmas season. Pray that He will lessen their stress and that they will find new traditions that remind them of their home culture, while also embracing their host culture.

Thank you for partnering with us in prayer! Click here to get a print-out of this month’s Prayer Focus requests and praise reports.

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Bridging Dissonance: Finding Connection in Music and the Gospel

By Emily Sheddan • 18 Jul, 2024

TEAM worker Luke Standridge and his fellow musicians use music to build connections to faith in Japan. In music terms, dissonance creates movement or even suspense in a song. It invites tension. That tension is what helps grab our ear’s attention and the interchanging of these notes with pleasant melodious parts is what makes music such a delight. In a similar way, God is using music to grab people’s attention and catalyze Gospel impact in the largely unreached nation of Japan. TEAM Global Worker, Luke Standridge moved to Japan in 2019 with no clear direction on how he was going to use his passion for composing music while doing ministry. However, after Luke got involved with a local church and began developing deep friendships, the Lord opened unimaginable doors for Luke that in time, coordinating his creative skills with sharing the Word. “People Need to Come to Japan!” Growing up as one of ten kids in a family that was heavily involved in ministry and missions, Luke never considered that it would one day be a part of his own journey. In 2016, via a Japanese language learning class in Indiana, Luke and his brother had the opportunity to travel to Japan. Hearing, learning, and using the language in the context of Japanese culture was the goal. While it was Luke’s first international trip – even his first trip on a plane - it was also his first time hearing about the spiritual condition of the Japanese people. “And just through that, God did a huge 180 change on my heart,” says Luke. “More people should come here as global workers. People need to come to Japan!” The call God was laying on Luke’s heart is echoed when looking at the spiritual landscape of Japan. The nation is home to the second largest unreached people group in the world. It is one of the most difficult places for the Gospel to take hold and grow. Japan is also home to a deep and rich culture that prizes creative arts from pottery to ink to music to anime – a fact that would help Luke find his niche in life and ministry. God’s Guiding Hand In the short three-month timespan of that first trip, Luke found that opportunities came naturally to share about life, and people’s curiosity for Christianity grew. “I left Japan knowing I just had to come back,” Luke shares. “Even if I didn’t get back to the same area, I knew Japan was where God wanted me to be.” The Lord is good all the time and all the time the Lord is good. His plans do not fail. Luke returned to Japan in 2019, and less than a week after arriving, he was put in touch with a renowned composer in Japan. The composer saw some of Luke’s music and invited him to help write the music for a beloved in-country animated show. But God wasn’t finished yet! Fast forward a year, and more connections and opportunities allowed Luke to help with music for Pokémon - a franchise that has brand recognition around the world and was being developed into a TV series in Japan. Luke recalls how the Lord began using these connections in the production world to open doors for Gospel conversations. One night while having dinner in downtown Tokyo with famous artists and composers from all around the country, Luke was asked about his ministry-focused visa. This was a rare opportunity in a setting with people otherwise uninterested in Christianity. Luke shares, “The whole time I could see God’s hand in guiding the entire thing.”

Connecting in a New Kind of “Neighborhood”

By Lorena de la Rosa and Suzanne Pearson • 13 Jun, 2024

Through creative arts and other forms of innovative outreach, “The Neighborhood” is creating connections to the Gospel and the love of Jesus. CONNECTION. It’s a common word with powerful implications. Dictionary.com defines connection as a joining or linking together; a relationship between people or objects that unites or binds them together. God has created each of us with a deep need for connection with Him as well as connection with others. Hebrews 10:24-25 speaks to this, as the writer exhorts, “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.” This God-given need for connection lies at the heart of a creative and innovative ministry in Japan known as “The Neighborhood.” TEAM Japan global worker, Kelly and her family created The Neighborhood as a place where connections are formed through creative arts, educational opportunities, and simply just providing a space for people to be together. A Family Calling The journey to the creation of The Neighborhood began over 5,000 miles away from Tokyo, in California where Kelly, her husband Jeff, and their five children were living. The kids were the first to sense God’s calling to missions, and asked why their family wasn’t serving in this way. How Kelly and her family came to TEAM is a God-story in and of itself. “God placed a TEAM Japan worker at our lunch table the same week that the kids posed that question to us,” Kelly recalls. “We had never heard of TEAM and so we thought, ‘let’s check this out.’ After that, God just kept confirming that we were supposed to be here.” After a period of fundraising and with much excitement, the family of seven moved to Japan in 2014. For the first five years, Kelly and Jeff served as a part of other TEAM ministry initiatives, but they began to sense a stirring for something new. Creating The Neighborhood Kelly and her family truly have a deep gift for hospitality, and regularly opened up their home to others they met in Tokyo. They saw a great need for people to have a place to gather and connect, and they wondered what doors the Lord might be opening for them to meet that need. “About a year before we were to return the States on home assignment, we were just really thinking about our future in Japan,” Kelly says. “We saw a need for people to have a ‘third place’ – a place that’s not home and it’s not work. They didn’t have a church community or any other place where they could meet people and just connect.” Kelly goes on to explain that in Japan, the culture is such that people don’t generally invite each other into their homes, but as her family did so, people embraced that opportunity. “This idea formed in all of our hearts of a student ministry center – a place where we can create community and learning,” says Kelly. “It was born out of what we were already doing in our home, but seeing how we could expand it and have better space.” God’s Provision What happened next is a true testament to God’s provision. Kelly, Jeff, and the kids returned to the States and began sharing their vision for The Neighborhood with their supporters and churches who responded generously. Upon returning to Japan, the search was on for the right space. “We had a Christian realtor that we told our dream to, and he just went looking for it,” Kelly recalls. When the realtor found a 5-story apartment building, he said, “It’s kind of out of your budget but it has what you need and want.” The Lord provided the funds and the family moved into the space in November 2019. They now occupy all but the ground floor, with living space for their family as well as classrooms, areas to study or hang out, and guest rooms for exchange students or others who need a place to stay overnight. The first floor is occupied by a pizza shop – a welcome amenity for the many groups and students who visit The Neighborhood. “It’s very convenient!” Kelly says with a laugh. The Neighborhood began to see lots of activity right away until the pandemic hit in early 2020. During the height of the quarantine, Kelly and Jeff used the time to redecorate the space and plant gardens outside the building. Then as the restrictions eased, they invited individual students or families over for meals and fellowship. It wasn’t until March 2023 that The Neighborhood was able to fully open again as intended. Kelly shares that despite the setbacks of COVID, the Lord continued to provide the funds to pay the rent.