By Gary Bennett

Victoria pastor Gary Bennett with his Japanese friends Hajime Kurihara and his mother Fumiko. Since he visited them earlier this year, both have been baptised at Kunitchi Church of the Nazarene.

“What did you name your new little boy?” she asked.  

“We named him Gary,” replied my proud mother.  

“Oh no!” the other missionary exclaimed. “‘Gary’ in Japanese means ‘diarrhea’!”

The title character in Johnny Cash’s classic ‘A Boy Named Sue’ had his issues, to be sure. But he didn’t have anything on me.  

So, whom would I approach to straighten the warp in my personality? A psychologist? A psychiatrist? I found my choice of therapist in an etymologist.  

“Getting ‘diarrhea’ from ‘Gary’ requires a very loose translation” the language doctor assured me. My comfort was short-lived as I watched him exit the room with hand over mouth to suppress his laughter.

A rather humbling beginning, indeed, for a missionary kid.  

I lived an adventure for the first 18 years of my life, on the various islands of Japan and Okinawa.

When I left Japan as a teenager in 1972, I wondered if I would ever see the familiar sights of my childhood again: the Tokyo Tower, Mount Fuji, the Ginza shopping district, the electrical gadget shops of Akihabara, the subway trains with their stations surrounded by sushi bars and soba shops.

Last month, after an absence of 38 years, my dream of experiencing it all again was realized.  

The excuse for my return to Japan was to run the 2010 Tokyo Marathon. There is something about the solitude of long-distance training runs that I find therapeutic. So last August, it seemed natural to apply to run in the marathon.  

More than a quarter-million other people had the same idea; but in October I received the notification that I had been selected to be one of the 32,000 that would run the streets of Tokyo February 28.

The weather on race day couldn’t have been worse.  Pelting rain, driving wind and a five degree temperature greeted the jittery throng of runners. Standing at our assigned starting sections for 45 minutes, we were soaked to the skin. Wet feet and stiff, shivering bodies gratefully responded to the start line cannons spewing confetti fodder into the soggy air.

Once my body warmed up and I found my pace, most of my discomfort was forgotten. Running by the grounds of the Imperial Palace, along the Ginza shopping district and through the renowned Tsukiji fish market, I found myself overwhelmed with bouts of joyful nostalgia.  

One of the occupational hazards of a pastor is the inclination to distill one’s experiences into sermon illustrations and metaphors for life. As I ran I couldn’t help but compare my marathon to the 30-year ministry of my parents in Japan as missionaries.

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I also reflected more generally on the progress of the Christian church in Japan since World War II. Words that came to mind were: persistence, determination, obstacles, distractions and challenges.  

In marked contrast to the rapid and pervasive growth of the church in neighbouring Korea, the progress of the church in Japan has been slow and laborious.

Counting Japanese Christians of all stripes nets an amount of only one percent of the total population. But the strength and vibrancy of that one percent must not be discounted.

A week before the Tokyo Marathon, on February 21, I worshipped with the congregation of the Kunitachi Church of the Nazarene.  As an 11 year old, I had attended its inaugural service in 1965.  

At that time, my father pastored a neighbouring English-speaking congregation meeting in the rented facilities of an old kindergarten. His congregation, consisting mostly of U.S. service personnel from Tachikawa Air Base, was raising money to purchase land upon which to build a church.

When the need arose to plant a Japanese congregation in neighboring Kunitachi, these servicemen decided to donate their building fund to them.

Forty-five years later, the Kunitachi Church is now led by Pastor Taka and Keiko Kajiwara, who up until a couple of years ago provided leadership to the Japanese church in Victoria.  

During the worship service that morning, Pastor Taka invited me to share my story.  

In very rusty Japanese, I told of those early days of worshipping in the kindergarten.

There were about 30 people in the congregation that morning, and I was floored to see one particular woman and her son – amazingly, the daughter and grandson of the original owner of that old kindergarten.  

The grandson, Hajime, and I are of the same age, and we figured out that over 40 years ago we had been in Sunday school together. The kindergarten building is long gone; but in the same location, run by the same family, there is a thriving preschool of 120 children and 25 staff.  

This past September that daughter, who is now in her 70s, committed her life to Christ – along with her son Hajime and his wife.  

Upon my return to Victoria, I received this heart-warming email: “It was a great pleasure for me to meet you in Kunitachi. We were pleased that you were able to visit our preschool where you worshipped many years ago. I would like to inform you that we – my mother, Fumiko Kurihara, my wife, Michiyo, and I, Hajime – got baptism on March 7 by Pastor Kajiwara in Kunitachi Nazarene Church. We give thanks to God. Yours sincerely, Hajime Kurihara.”  

I think a marathon is an apt description of how seeds of God’s persistent grace, planted decades ago, can spring to life. Along with Hajime – my new brother in Christ – I, too, give thanks to God!  

Gary Bennett is senior pastor of Victoria First Church of the Nazarene.

April 2010