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Committed Japan is part of the Calvary
Chapel.
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| The
biginning |
Committed Japan started
in July of 1995 after the disastrous Hanshin earthquake.
One of Calvary Chapel's branches, in La Habra, California,
and Committed Japan gathered Gospel musicians from America
as well as Japan, and conducted a charity concert titled, "Gospel
Fest '95/Donีt forget Kobe". Our attempt was to
provide the city of Kobe with donations to rebuild the
city, but also to provide the people of Kobe with the
hope that the Gospel, the Good News, possesses. It had
much success and as the people of Kobe and the city were
so fond of the concert, we have been doing it annually
ever since.
After these events, we have moved our
headquarters to Choufu, Tokyo, in a place we named
the Kick Back Cafe. This place serves as a place
for our House of Praise, a place for counseling,
as well as many other functions, including as a cafe.
KICK
BACk CAFE web site
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| What's
Calvary Chapel? |
| In the midst of the
Vietnam War, there were cries of anti-war, anti-government
slogans. The concept of hope was lacking in a lot of
young men and women. A lot of them committed themselves
to drugs, proclaimed and practiced free sex, and devoted
themselves to hermetism of the Oriental culture. They
were called the "Flower Children" and the
movement of these "Flower Children" is known
as the "Hippy Movement".
During this movement, in the late
60ีs, those hippies who lost all hope in society
rose up in great numbers and made a long line to
enter a small church in southern California called
the Calvary Chapel. This was the beginning of the
Calvary Chapel movement. The hippies found the
bold and emphatic message of the Bible preached
by the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Chuck Smith, astounding
and inspiring and they were all captivated. As
they witnessed the work of Jesus up close and personal,
their actions radically changed and the drugs and
violence that conquered their lives before, no
long had any power on them. As the number of radically
changed hippies grew in the 70's, Time Magazine
and Look called this movement the Jesus Revolution.
It is still considered one of the largest movements
in the history of America. In the first ten years
of Calvary Chapel, the number of ex-hippy-Jesus-freaks
reached one hundred thousand.
Today, Calvary Chapel has become an international non-profit organization
that serves not only America but also the international community. It has
more than 1000 branches in 40 countries, including the renowned Calvary Chapel
high school, its international organization to fight starvation, the Bible
College, and different radio stations. It has been widely acclaimed by the
international society.
Calvary
Chapel web site
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| Concept |
1.We are devoted to clarifying the difference
between believing in Christianity and the Bible
Even though we believe that the Bible
is the Word of God, we do not believe that the Bible
is the "Word of Christianity". To rephrase
that, we believe the Gospel that the Bible simply states,
but we do not believe in the religion of Christianity.
We understand that we need a better explanation than this. That is exactly
what we want to clarify and explain to anyone who is curious; the difference
between believing in a religion and believing in the Bible.
2.Give the public
an opportunity to comprehensively learn the Bible
"in their own tongue"
One of our most important duties as Committed
Japan is to teach the Bible systematically and comprehensively
in a language that anyone could understand. Unfortunately
the Bible has a lot of aspects where it makes it hard
to understand. There are cultural and lingual differences
as well as the obvious difference in the life styles
of the Biblical times and those of today. These differences
cause the common sense and the ethnicity to be remarkably
different. This inevitably results in all sorts of
misconceptions.
Our difficulty in comprehending the Bible does not end here. There are people
standing in front of train stations yelling Christian slogans while some ladies
pass out Christian books. If you look at history, the imperialism movement
was motivated by Christian authorities. Nowadays, along with the word "Christianity" comes
the assumption of it being part of the Western culture. These examples and
much more alike have created misunderstandings and stereotypes of Christianity
that are abundant throughout the international society.
We want to try to eliminate them as much as possible and also try not adhere
to the Christian traditions that often bound people, but concentrate on the
essence that lie beneath those traditions. We believe that this is vital in
learning the Bible in the correct way. Therefore we have two worship services
a week, on Wednesday nights and on Sunday mornings, to give an opportunity
to learn the truth written in the Bible. We want everyone to have fun, relax
and enjoy, smelling the coffee, listening to music all the while cruising the
world of the Bible.
3.We live the
Bible
We believe that the essence of the Bible
is not only to understand it as knowledge, but to see
that it tells us to live it. As Jesus himself said; "I
have shown you an example", we intend to look
to him as an example and to follow after his footsteps.
This means to contemplate what Jesus said, apply it
to our lives and to change from within. This application
into our daily lives is a very important goal when
it comes to reading the Bible because it enables us
to work for Jesus effortlessly and in our own unique
ways. |
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What's
Committed Japan?
