About Asian Access

Asian Access is an inter-denominational missions agency that has a passion to identify, develop, and release emerging Japanese leaders to unite the church, multiply leaders and congregations, and extend the transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Founded in 1964 as LIFE Ministries, the organization switched to the name “Asian Access” in 2002. This signified the expansion of its scope to raising up leaders in other countries in addition to Japan, such as Sri Lanka, Mongolia, and Nepal.

One of the exciting things about Asian Access is the way that it approaches its church planting endeavours. It will not simply go uninvited to plant a church in a particular area of Japan. Instead, at least three Japanese churches in that area will join together in asking Asian Access to come and help plant a church. These three churches are termed a “church-planting network”.

The churches, helped by resources from Asian Access (including us!), will work together to plant a new church. Asian Access typically lends a network its missionaries for a term of three years. All work is spearheaded by the churches with Asian Access personnel acting as helpers. This ensures that the Japanese church does not become too dependent on Western workers for its survival. The new church will continue on with the help and guidance of the older Japanese churches after Asian Access left its initial role.

Asian Access’ current vision for its operations in Japan is to deploy 100 church multiplication teams, and establish 1,000 reproducing congregations by 2020. This vision is well under way, with many of the church multiplication teams being run by native Japanese people rather than missionaries!