God has a habit of using the telephone when trying to reach Jeff and Barb Chapman.
One morning in 1987, the phone rang as Jeff got ready for work in Iowa City, Iowa. John Marrs of the Baptist General Conference, now Converge, was on the line.
Chapman attended the Urbana missions conference a few years before. At the event, he felt motivated to serve in a foreign country. So, Chapman gave his name to a ministry that later shared Chapman’s contact with Marrs.
“Jeff, we’ve got an opportunity for you to go to Japan for a year,” Marrs said. “How would you like to go?”
“I need a week to pray about it,” Chapman answered. “As soon as I hung up the phone, the Lord hit me over the head with a two-by-four. I realized what God had been setting me up for my entire time at Bethel College. I literally got the call.”
Chapman’s roommate at Bethel College (now University) grew up in Japan. So, Chapman, a native Iowan, ate Japanese food, learned about the culture and sang Japanese songs.
“For some reason, I never put the pieces together that God was preparing me to go to Japan,” he said.
A short-term trip reveals the Chapmans are passionate and prepared
That one-year trip included four other believers flying together to the island nation. One of those disciples was Barb, who also answered God’s call to missions.
“My heartbeat is evangelism,” she said. “Give me half a day at the food court or the coffee shop with non-Christian friends and acquaintances, and that’s where my heart is.”
Two specific struggles appeared when Barb first attempted global work. One, she would become homesick while away from family. Secondly, she felt tremendous doubt about her ability to learn a language.
But God taught her to take one day at a time with the homesickness and he supplied her with an incredibly supportive community in Japan.
“If it’s bad tomorrow, I can just go home,” she would tell herself. “But every day just brought more healing. I wasn’t trapped by anything but myself feeling so far from home.”
The Japanese people became incredibly close to her as well.
“I was so far in the depths of homesickness that I couldn’t do anything,” she said of that first year in Japan. “I reached out, and the Japanese people around me reached out to me. It completely changed my experience because I desperately needed them, and they desperately wanted to be there for me.”
Next, God engaged himself to strengthen Barb’s language skills. She was taking language classes from a woman at church.
“After several weeks, the teacher asked, ‘Where have you studied Japanese? Why is [your ability] so much better than all the other missionaries that come here?’
“God was showing me he had the ability and the strength and the power and foreknowledge to give me the language.”
Jeff Chapman’s expectations about missions didn’t align with what he experienced.
“I wanted to be a missionary somewhere where I had to build my own house, where I had to figure out how to get electricity, had to build my own water supply,” he said. “That’s what I thought missions was, and I was ready to go. I didn’t want to be in a place like Japan ― they were wealthy, had lots of things and seemed to live happy lives. Surely, they weren’t unreached.”
A year in Japan confirmed the two were meant to be life partners in love and God’s service. Their families visited at different times and yet sensed God’s plan for Barb and Jeff. Then, a pastor, Peter, offered them a three-year contract to start a youth ministry at the pastor’s church.
A call and a contract
Another dramatic phone call in December 1987 led Chapman to that youth ministry opportunity. Chapman’s college roommate dated a Japanese girl when he was at Bethel, and she and Jeff became friends. Jeff gave her a call when he expected her to return to Japan. She wasn’t home, but Jeff struck up a conversation with her dad, who turned out to be a Japanese pastor.
Peter, that Japanese pastor, had started seven churches. He was eager to see more and more people know Christ. He had been praying since December 1980 that God would send a young person to start a youth ministry.
“We prayed together, and I just had a feeling that that was what I was supposed to do,” Jeff said.
Years later, Jeff would find out why.
One day, Barb asked Jeff when he met that pastor. December 1987, Jeff answered.
“How long did he say he’d been praying?” Barb asked. Seven years, Jeff replied.
“What happened in your life seven years before you two met?” Barb asked next.
Jeff said he was a freshman at Bethel College, studying accounting. In December 1980, a guest speaker told the students that 97% of Christian ministers serve 3% of the world’s population. Most of those ministers choose to remain in places with a self-sustaining, self-reproducing church.
“In December [1980], God completely changed my trajectory,” he said. “That day, I decided I would go outside the Christian world to minister.”
After the Chapmans fulfilled their contracts as youth workers, they returned to the United States. Jeff studied at Bethel Seminary and worked at a Converge church in Minnesota until 1997. They were appointed that summer and began raising support a year later. Next, they arrived in February 2000 with an opportunity to start churches after two years of language study.
“Our ministry emphasizes church planting and evangelism,” he said. “That’s all we’ve ever done, that’s who we are, that’s what we’re about.”
The Chapmans have assisted in three church plants with partners and started a fourth church independently. Now, Barb is the outreach director for a Kyoto church. Meanwhile, Jeff continues evangelistic work as the Osaka project leader for Converge’s Japan Initiative.
Working together makes church plants possible
In Osaka, their denomination doesn’t have a church in the city’s center. They have 14 churches in that district, but all are in the suburbs. So, Chapman is working with those churches and Japanese ministry leaders to develop a system of church planting that could continue well into the future.
“The Osaka Project is a network church planting project,” he said. “There isn’t a church that has the resources to independently daughter a church. However, a church plant is possible if the churches network together.”
Currently, the Osaka project has people in leadership and evangelism training. There’s also an online prayer meeting once a month. English classes are in the mix, too.
“The important work is to network churches together and give them an opportunity for disciple-making movement training,” he said.
Making an impact in Japan has been a challenge. Japan is one of the least-reached nations in the world. The number of disciples in the country of 130 million equals less than .5 percent.
Converge International Ministries leaders have set a goal to see a gospel movement started among the least-reached peoples of the world within one generation. Opportunities to accomplish this will range from short-term trips like [IM]PACT Global Missions Service Internships to long-term activities from the U.S. or other nations.
“The church considers itself very small and very weak,” Jeff said. “So, part of my mission is to help them understand they have the strength of almighty God working through each believer through the Holy Spirit.”
Chapman said evangelism through a network of people is the best future method for reaching more Japanese.
“That’s how it’s going to happen,” he said. “We need more churches. I want the church planting in this area to continue long after I’m gone.”
So does Barb, which is why she’s committed to her role in Kyoto. She invests her gifts in casting vision to others at church so they can be evangelists and disciple-makers. For example, she helps Japanese believers understand how they can have activities for children or do other activities.
Many Japanese feel uncomfortable being the leader, but, like Jeff in his role, Barb is motivated to equip and encourage the Japanese to have confidence in God and themselves.
The couple has been called to help spread the gospel in Japan. And when the phone rings, they are ready to answer that call.
Converge is asking God for a gospel movement among every least-reached people group – in our generation. Learn how we are playing a role in accomplishing the Great Commission and how you can be involved.