Hello and thank you for visiting our site!
I am Naoto Funada and I am currently a pastoral intern at Faith Church in Lafayette, IN. As you will read in my bio below, I have had the privilege of attending two great seminaries - The Master's Seminary (Sun Valley, CA) and Faith Bible Seminary (Lafayette, IN). Through both of these excellent institutions, I have been trained well and continue to be trained in God's Word in the context of both, preaching and biblical counseling. I am planned to graduate Faith Bible Seminary MDiv program in May/June of 2022.
My wife, Erisa and I have been pursuing missions in Japan for quite a while (mainly through translating materials, some teaching and receiving Bible and counseling training). I have my B.A. in Biblical Counseling from the Master’s University and studied at the Master’s Seminary MDiv program for two years. I decided to transfer to Faith Bible Seminary in order to receive more biblical counseling training while pursuing my MDiv. I am pursuing ACBC certification and now in the phase of counseling under supervision. My goal is to become a missionary/missionary pastor and plant churches as well as equip as many Japanese leaders to counsel from the Bible.
Before we got married, Erisa had just been accepted by a mission agency and had started raising support to be a single missionary in Japan. Her vision was to be a part of making biblical counseling available to Japan. She has her B.A. in biblical counseling from Maranatha Baptist Bible Univ and finished her M.A. in biblical counseling from the Master’s Univ. She is an ACBC certified counselor. She has been part of many Bible and biblical counseling material translating projects such as “Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands,” “Caring for One Another,” parts of the OIC website and over 40 biblical counseling articles by the Biblical Counseling Coalition, John Piper, Sola and etc. She is in contact with Pastor Joe Miller and Dr. Wayne Vanderwier from OIC and has taught about hikikomori (shut-ins) in an OIC webinar. We have two children (3 years old and 5 months old), and she is a stay at home mom.
We are currently in the process of applying to a mission agency to be sent as missionaries. Lord willing, we hope to start raising support from the year 2022. Currently, we are looking to connect with like-minded churches and individuals, so as to see if we could start a partnership once we are accepted by our mission agency. We also would like to connect with individuals who may be looking to serve in Japan, especially in the area of biblical counseling. It is true. The harvest is great, but the laborers are few.
Our Vision is to follow the great commission by planting churches and making biblical counseling available to churches in Japan.
Our mission is to assist Japanese churches in strengthening discipleship and developing a counseling ministry, by building a strong biblical counseling team based from a local church in Saitama, Japan.
We hope that you would prayerfully consider partnering with us in the near future, to fulfill the Great Commission through church planting and biblical counseling in Japan.
Thank you!
In Jesus Christ,
Naoto and Erisa Funada
(I have the privilege of serving as one of the pastoral interns alongside with this wonderful group of men. Faith Church of Lafayette, IN, 2020)
(Mt. Fuji in Shizuoka, Japan)