including financial. This institution is now self-supporting!
Currently, 42 students attend the junior high school. In addition to
standard academics, they are learning New Church teachings and English in
the evenings and on weekends. They were fortunate enough to receive online
English lessons from a member of the General Church, with the generous
support of the Asian Mission Committee.
Of the 42 students,15 will begin a teachers training school program in
2015 to receive their teacher certifications. These students will train for five
years and then return to their hometowns to develop New Church schools and
missionary centers.
Because of the Chinese government’s regulation on religion, Tim has
not yet been able to open a public church. However, they are still working on
starting a Swedenborgian Society as a first step, where members can meet to
worship. In China the General Church has four adults and eight young people
who have been baptized.
The New Church in China has also been working on translating the
Writings and putting them on the Internet. Currently any translator can do the
work and put it online. However, once this initial step has been completed, a
group of translators (including some who are studying through the Theological
School) will work together to analyze all translations and choose one standard
version.
So far, any Chinese person can go online and read the following works in
their native language: Heaven and Hell, Divine Love and Wisdom, Conjugial
Love, True Christian Religion and Apocalypse Revealed I. Also available is
Helen Keller’s My Religion, as well as other secondary books. One very exciting
online development is a group of about 300 young people that meets online to
discuss the Writings.
Japanese New Churches
Sadly, in October 2014, our minister, the Rev. Jiro Kumazawa, passed into
the other world. He was ordained in the spring of 2013 and he served the
Tokyo group with love and gentle leadership. Now Rev. Seiich Sakae has taken
over the responsibility and is working hard.
Since the Japanese group is still quite small – in part due to the fact that
only 1% of the Japanese population are even Christians – Japanese ministers
and lay leaders have created a small group that gathers to diligently discuss
ways to grow the New Church in Japan.
One of the best ways this is happening is through translation work. Lay
members from the Japanese Church have been working on translating and
publishing the Writings, which they have been able to do without any financial
support from the General Church. They plan to translate and publish three to
95