Joel & Kelly Kaylor

Mark Batterson said this on his blog. I thought it was worth posting.

 ”If you aren’t willing to look foolish you’re foolish. “

Late last year I had the privilege of meeting Luke Kennedy and ever since then we have become great friends. Luke recently started a church in Osaka and is doing an incredible job!!!  Every time I go down to Osaka he carves time out of his busy schedule to get together with me. If you get us talking about church planting, Osaka, leadership, young people, etc we can talk for hours. I am grateful for Luke and I am looking forward to a growing relationship with him and JLH Osaka!

Luke had a workshop at the JLH Conference  and I was able to make it to his session. He shared some valuable principles about reaching young people and lessons he is learning as he is planting his church. He was very challenging, inspiring and stimulating at the same time. I thought it was worth posting some of the notes that I took:

1. Young people are open when presented with a clear relevant gospel.–They surveyed 50 youth from Shinsaibashi. 48 out of 50 said if God is good they want to be friends with Him. 2 said no because they thought God was too far away and couldn’t get to know Him. Japan is far more open to the gospel than Australia is.
2. Family life in Japan is difficult and the church needs to model what a good family is.–Most young people have family problems (house of sadness). The church needs to be a house of joy. So many preachers preach people down and put burdens on them. We need to preach people up. Gospel takes burdens off of people.
3. We must reject negative voices about the young peopel.–We need friends that tell us “you can do it!” Start speaking well about Japan! A pastor told him on his first night in Osaka that Osaka young people are cold and hard hearted towards God so be careful. (Luke and JLH Osaka has seen around 50 people respond to the Gospel since their first service on Easter, 2008)
4. We must speak well about Japan–make a habit about speaking well. People are not drawn to criticism. They don’t celebrate negativity. Greatest weapon we have as youth leaders is our mouth. Young people are not getting positive reinforcement anywhere else so you better give it to them in church. Only secure leaders can life people up.
5. Young Japanese are the best disciples in the world.–The strength of your ministry is not how many come. It is in the disciples. Future depends on how we disciple the young people.
6. Gotta learn how to build a team culture in a church–Team is an awesome place to build leadership (a place of failing and succeeding). Team are a great place where you can push down the age of leadership. Push them into the deep end. “Just get in there and do it”
7. Answers in reaching young people is found in doing it.–We struggle when we get into a rut and stop doing new things. The best idea in reaching the youth is yet to be discovered. Rod Plumer’s secret is “We don’t know what we are doing.” Try new things and learn all the time!
8. Keep thing simple!–We want people to say “we can do that”. We need to model how we do it simply. Simple leadership, prayer, journaling, etc. If you do the simple things well, everything else will take care of it self.
9. Create a culture where failure is not the end–when new ideas are presented don’t shut them down. Luke and JLH Osaka team do more things that fail than succeed. They are afraid to make mistakes and once they are made they learn and do it better the next time.

This last week JesusLifeHouse put on their first annual conference. They had Brian Houston and the United Band come. It was such a great time of worship, inspiration, teaching, connection and networking!! JesusLifeHouse was pioneered by Rod Plumer who came out of Hillsong in Sydney, Australia. They are doing an amazing job in

Japan planting churches and raising up a new generation. We are honored to be associated with them! 

My highlights from the conference:

•  Incredible Worship (God) experience on the 2^nd row as Joel Houston and the United Band lead worship. Thanks to JLH for saving seats for the New Generation Pastors Network. Funny true story: Kelly couldn’t go, but I took Elisa and Joshua with me. Elisa and Joshua had their own saved seats on the 2^nd row, but I didn’t have a personalized saved seat. I was still able to sit with my kids on the 2^nd row though. How in the world did my kids their own saved seats and I didn’t?J

•  Worship with almost 2000 Japanese young people on a Wednesday evening. There is nothing like filling up a large Japanese auditorium for The Church! Simply stimulating!

• Listening to Brian Houston live…..twice. 

• Attending Luke Kennedy’s workshop. (see next post)

• Connecting and networking with other like minded, young pastors from all over

  Japan! I am realizing that I LOVE these types of gatherings for the network and connection with leaders and pastors!!

 

Today was Undokai (school sports day) at the kids school.  The weather was perfect, actually quite hot. We all got a little sun burn. Once a year Japanese schools have a sports day called Undokai. The entire school is divided into two teams (White and Red) and each grade completes with various sports activities. Elisa and Joshua were both on the red team which made it easy who to root for. We took some photos and video and put them on flickr. Click here and then click on “Undokai-School Sports Day” for videos and photos. For the record the score was White Team 1564 and Red Team 1572. We won by 8 points! Joshua came in first on his 50 meter dash (I have the video to prove it). If Joshua didn’t win his race we would have lost. The entire Undokai came down to Joshua’s raceJ That is my story and I am sticking to itJ 

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