Out of darkness

To mark such a special anniversary, a booklet has been produced which outlines this wonderful history. Compiled by IMM’s Hon. General Secretary, David Shillitoe, this testament to God’s work among the mining community makes very encouraging and inspiring reading. The extract below selected by Alicia Felce gives an example.

Having begun in a truly miraculous way with the conversion of a 70-year-old wealthy mine owner, the Mission has moved on to working in challenging situations to bring the gospel to dark places.

This is the story of Amy Burnet and Dorothy Parr in Japan.

The Japan General Mission offered to supervise the building of a mission hall in Japan’s oldest and largest copper mining town of Ashio, which was opened in October 1908 with a Japanese evangelist in charge.

The town, some nine miles long, was there because of the copper, which had been extracted form the hills around for some three centuries. Some 20,000 men were employed in the mines at the time the IMM started there. The forlorn-looking streets, the squalid living quarters of the miners, many built of wood, the degrading spectacle of wretchedly clad women doing extremely heavy work, the monotony and loneliness, all tended to lead to low moral standards.

The lowest of the low

An organisation known as the Japan Evangelistic Band took over the Mission in 1914 and a Mr. Wilkinson visiting Ashio reported the following depressing scene. ‘Leading souls to Christ in Ashio is a task that only the Holy Spirit can enable one to cope with successfully, for the difficulties facing the evangelist in this mining town are very great. Apart from the barrenness and desolation of the place and surrounding country caused by the poisonous gases which belch forth form the smelting house like smoke from the pit, withering trees and plant life for miles around and poisoning the air so as to affect the health of the inhabitants — apart from these naturally depressing features, the mines at Ashio are a rendezvous for the lowest of the low and a hiding place for many an escaped criminal.’

Into this scene stepped a most remarkable lady, Marguerite Amy Burnet. Born in 1878, this Christian woman had been challenged by God to offer her life for overseas mission. In her own personal testimony she wrote, ‘In 1914 through one of God’s missionary servants, God gave me a clear personal call to the foreign mission field and confirmed it with a definite experience of the filling of the Holy Spirit. But it was not until 1917 that I was free to obey the call and actually go forth. In April of that year God made it clear beyond all possibility of doubt that Japan was to be my sphere of service. A few weeks later I was an accepted missionary of the Japan Evangelistic Band. In November 1917, I sailed for Japan via America.

‘Last place I would chose’

Before I had been 12 months in Japan, the need of a specific place began to be laid on my heart. I heard two missionaries talking one day about a town in the mountains, the copper mining town of Ashio in Tochigi Ken province, where the Miners’ Mission had a station, a most difficult sphere from every point of view, where a foreign missionary was urgently needed. Of all the places in Japan it was the last that I should have chosen on my own account because of its trying and unhealthy climate, its utter desolation from any ordinary fellowship and the rough and degraded character of its population.’

But here is Amy Bernet reporting back from Ashio to the Miners’ Mission in 1920: ‘One afternoon a miner came to the hall with a letter of introduction from his neighbour, one of our members. Before crossing the threshold he told us that he was so burdened with the remembrance of his sins that he could not sleep. Could we help him? Ota San, the evangelist was out, so I explained the way of salvation to him from the word of God. He then poured out to the Lord a long confession of sin which I am thankful to say that I only partially understood. He then by faith laid his burden where God had placed it nearly 2,000 years ago, on the Christ of Calvary.

At this moment Ota San came in and explained things to him more fully. He went away after three hours with a smiling face, saying that his heart was now light and he had found peace . . . I later discovered that he was one of the strike leaders imprisoned during the recent disturbances here, and seemed to have openly committed every kind of sin . . . he was led to tell his troubles to his Christian neighbour by hearing hymn singing through the wall . . . I do not think I ever realised so clearly the wondrous power of the cross as I did when I saw this poor, half-demented, heathen sinner instantly able to lose his burden there before my eyes.’

A small six-year-old boy attending her first outreach tent mission watched with amazement as the foreign lady brought out a box and started to play it — a portable organ. This was probably the first step that was later to bring the Rev. Kobayashi to faith in Christ and into a position of Christian leadership.

Needed help

Amy Burnet decided under God’s leading to start a new Missionary Society, The Central Japan Pioneer Mission. She needed help and God answered by sending another young woman to join her. In 1926 Dorothy Parr applied to join the new missionary society.

In 1971, she spoke at the Miners’ Mission Annual Meeting: ‘The first time I heard about Ashio, the copper mining town in Japan, was when I applied to join Miss Burnet way back in 1926. Before I could speak very much Japanese I was sent up to Ashio to see the work among the copper miners there. Miss Burnet lived in Ashio for four years and when men from the mines got saved they wanted to get their families out of the atmosphere of sin and degradation so prevalent in the town. So they took jobs in other towns in the neighbouring prefecture. Miss Burnet and a Japanese worker tried to follow them up and put them in contact with a church, only to discover that there were no churches.

‘This was how Miss Burnet got the vision of reaching into three prefectures in Central Japan with the gospel. So it was that the church at Ashio, founded by International Miners’ Mission, is the parent of the Mission that I joined in 1926.

Down to today

‘Although the Central Japan Pioneer Mission has now closed down, it was used by God for the establishment of the churches in the three prefectures. It, in turn, became the parent of a group of Japanese Churches known as the Fukuin Dendo Kyodan. And so you see the Miners’ Mission is really the grandfather of a group of churches with which I am privileged to be working. Ashio is a very difficult place, and yet out of this squalid industrial mining town have come a number of full-time Christian workers in Japan today.

‘Men and women who have been saved up there in the copper mining valleys have heard God’s call and are preaching his word in other parts of Japan.’

The church at Ashio is still open to this day, even if the copper mines have since closed down in the area . . . a witness to the faithfulness of God and his people down the years.

This is just one example of God’s working through IMM; the booklet contains many wonderful accounts of God using his willing servants to change peoples’ lives in places such as Spain, France, Romania, Nigeria and Chile. The power of these faithful lives is striking and their willingness to selflessly serve God is an inspiration.

All enquires about IMM’s continuing work, and the centenary booklet, to: David Shillitoe, 53 High Street, Kimpton, Hitchin, Herts., SG4 8PU (http://www.minersmission.com or dshillitoe@minersmission.com).

Out of darkness - light

The International Miners' Mission celebrates its centenary year

The lowest of the low

‘Last place I would chose’

Needed help

Down to today

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