米沢興譲教会

Who is 米沢興譲教会 (Yonezawa Kojo Church)?

The church began in 1925 as a home prayer meeting at the Minamikumo family's house in the Izumi-cho district of Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture. Its name, 'Kojo,' comes from the Confucian classic the Daxue and was later used by feudal lord Uesugi Yozan for the domain school 'Kojokan,' making it a name familiar to the people of Yonezawa. The church stands in the Protestant tradition descending from the Lutheran Reformation, eighteenth century English Methodism, and the Holiness movement that grew out of it, and today it is an independent (tanritsu) congregation. In 1942 it was targeted by the crackdown on Holiness churches: forcibly dissolved and its members placed under surveillance, the community kept meeting in secret, including in a traditional restaurant, to preserve its faith. The current sanctuary, built after reconstructions in 1981 and 1995 and designed by an internationally renowned architect, won the city's landscape award in 2018.

From 1976, under pastor Nobuo Tanaka and his wife Yoshiko, the church grew rapidly, before leadership passed to its current pastor, Hiroki Takagi, born in Tokyo in 1960. A former hairdresser turned sales consultant, he was ordained after studying at Akutsu Theological Seminary and pastored the Sendai and Kansai Joyful Churches before coming to Yonezawa. Under the motto 'Living as One' (ichigen ni ikiru), the church also runs a counseling school (TCS) and an English school. Efficient Church summarizes here a selection of its sermons shared on its YouTube channel, with a link to the original video for each message.