Church in a house

As we are renting a house here and using it for our worship services on Sundays, there are certain things we can't do to mark it out as a church. We cannot out up a sign outside. We cannot display a cross on the building -though we posted an entry last year showing the wonderful cross someone made for us which we display inside our second floor window to be visible to passers by. We had an idea of decorating the glass panel above our front door so that it somehow reflected that our home is also the church. We are blessed to have Sambi san as our first member and she is so talented at anything artistic. You can see from the photo what she designed for above the door - complete with a cross in the middle. It looks really good after dark with a light on behind. These are just little ways of our trying to show to those in the area that this is where our church meets while at the same time remembering that our home is rented out for the purpose of a home which restricts what we can do. Holding church services in our home has many plus points. Yet it is not so easy to make our presence as a church visible in the community with no obvious building as such. We trust that passers by will notice the cross in the window by day and the illuminated cross above the door by night.

A well used house

Eighteen months ago we moved into our house here. Just over a week before we were due to leave Scotland to return to Japan, still no house had been found for us. Then on the very day we were moving out of our 'Scottish' house, an e-mail came with details of a place for us in Hiragishi. It seemed perfect. And a year and a half down the road we realise just what a provision this place is. It's great for our worship services. We can host many people in our large lounge, with an extra tatami room off that too. Often we have hosted large gatherings of people whether these be church-related, OMF-related or just having several of the boys' friends for sleepovers. It's a very flexible place with so much space. It is not obviously a church building from the outside. But then again, it isn't - it is our home which doubles as our meeting place. And church is not about a building anyway (however helpful a building may be). It's about people. We are so glad that our home can be used as a place where people can come and go. We have had lots of precious times and fun times over these past eighteen months.