By Marv Knox
Laura and Carson Foushee’s Cooperative Baptist Fellowship mission assignment and its job description provided a perfect fit for the calling and personalities of a young couple who seemed to be following contradictory ministry paths.
In 2013, they moved to Kanazawa, Japan, where they began serving alongside Kanazawa Baptist Church. Carson got to minister on an international mission field, and Laura got to labor with a local congregation.
From the start, they followed their job description—make friends on Jesus’ behalf—a natural feat for the outgoing, affable couple.
But their journey to Japan began long before they stood on a General Assembly stage and accepted their commission as some of CBF’s youngest field personnel. In fact, they were so young—Laura was 29 and Carson was 28—CBF had comprised their Baptist universe.
“We grew up in CBF churches,” she explained. “Our generation is among the first to have seen CBF all the way through,” he added.
“I’ve been part of CBF a very long time in very different capacities,” Laura noted, calling CBF “a trusted organization.” Her relationship with CBF expanded during her college years working for Passport Camps and during seminary studies at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, both CBF partners. The relationship deepened when she worked for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Georgia.
Meanwhile, “as a child, I learned about CBF field personnel serving around the world,” Carson said. His passion for missions multiplied through internships with CBF’s Student.Go—now StudentServe—program in China, Southeast Asia and “five countries in seven weeks” to study Millennium Development Goals. “I was exposed to so many ways God is on mission in the world, and CBF field personnel are engaging them. I said, ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life,’” he recalled.
While studying at McAfee, Laura and Carson met, fell in love and got engaged. All along, they knew. “I felt called to the local church, and Carson felt called to international missions,” Laura explained. Their perspectives presented a potential problem.
“We were trying to figure out, ‘How does this work?’” Carson acknowledged. “Laura wants to do local-church ministry in the United States, and I want to do cross-cultural ministry outside the United States. How do we make this work?”
Kanazawa Baptist Church hung around the periphery of their lives for a few years, offering an option.
When they were engaged and studying at McAfee, “we first saw a flyer about this new position that CBF had in Japan,” Laura said. Carson added: “We thought: ‘Oh, that might be nice someday. But it’s down the road. We’re not married yet.’ And so, we put that one on the back burner.”
The Kanazawa option moved to the front burner a bit later, after they married. While working at CBF of Georgia, Laura received a phone call asking if she knew anyone who might serve alongside a congregation in Japan. The call piqued their interest in Kanazawa—for the second time.
“We thought it would be a really unique way to combine our giftedness and our calling,” Laura recalled.
“It was a perfect marriage of our interests in global church in a local setting,” Carson explained. “So, we were able to work in an international location with people from Japan and people from around the world in harmony together, serving in the name of Jesus.”
Kanazawa is home to about 450,000 people, located on the west coast of central Japan, between the mountains and the sea. Historically, it has been a castle town, known for its proliferation of traditional arts and culture, as well as wealth associated with abundant rice harvests. Reflecting its continued vibrancy, Kanazawa is an educational center that boasts a 21st century art museum as well as ancient culture, with modern cafes serving food from around the globe alongside world-class sushi restaurants.
Like the country at large, about one to two percent of Kanazawa’s population are internationals. They study or teach in the city’s research universities, work in factories or the tech industry, teach English or came because they like following Japanese culture in a beautiful mid-sized city.
Kanazawa’s international residents, as well as local Japanese interested in American culture and learning English, figured into the Foushees’ invitation to Japan, as well as their rather unique job description.
They arrived as CBF field personnel in 2013, working with Baptist churches in Kanazawa and nearby Toyama, in cooperation with the Japan Baptist Convention.
“Originally, our call was to come and make friends,” Carson said. “That was on the job description—that screamed out to us about the type of work we want to do. Kanazawa Baptist Church understands this is a need, and their community is connecting. They’re looking for more people to join them in this work. And so, ‘Come and make friends’ was the call.”
That’s exactly right, noted Akinori Taguchi, who had been a Japan Baptist Convention home missionary and pastor in Kanazawa more than 20 years when the Foushees arrived.
“The CBF asked us to write a job description,” Taguchi recalled. “I told Carson and Laura: ‘Go out to Kanazawa and meet all kinds of people. Hang out and be friends, and invite them to church meetings and worship services.’ Since there are many foreigners in Kanazawa, we wanted to invite them to the church.
“And they did it brilliantly. They also made full use of the Internet to make sure people who come to Kanazawa from abroad (find) this church when they search on the Internet.”
For their first three years in Kanazawa and Toyama, the Foushees led English worship services for people who were interested in English—both Japanese and expatriates from around the world who wanted to worship with an international community.
So, they shared preaching and teaching responsibilities in the churches, led Bible studies and taught English to mothers and children from the Kanazawa church’s preschool program.
When their initial commitment ended, the responses they had received about their ministry—as well as the joy they felt in their hearts—led them to approach the Japan Baptist Convention’s leaders and say: “We feel like God is leading us to stay here long-term. How can we move forward together?”
Their Japanese partners suggested full-time language school. So, they moved to Tokyo and spent two years learning Japanese and participating in a local congregation, Tokiwadai Baptist Church. Next, the Japanese leaders suggested they participate in a ministry practicum, and the Foushees continued at the Tokiwadai church, under Pastor Yasushi Tomono.
Tomono and Taguchi “were the ones who were taking us in and showing us the ropes as we learned ministry in Japan—equipping us to do the work for the long term,” Carson said.
Staying for the long term meant returning to Kanazawa in 2022. The pastor resigned due to health issues soon after their return. Laura and Carson offered support to the Japanese worship service and community in traditional roles—such as taking their turns in the preaching rotation, serving communion and officiating baptisms and weddings. The Foushees respect the congregation’s deacons and other key laity and work closely with them to support their leadership. Laura and Carson also lead the church’s 1 p.m. Sunday English worship service.
Several trends in Japan validate the wisdom of maintaining a ministry that understands and affirms Japanese culture and language while offering outreach that capitalizes on a multiethnic culture and the English language.
First, fewer than two percent of Japanese are Christian, and few of the other 98 percent are open to Christianity. Second, family loyalty and cultural hegemony compound the challenges of Japanese thinking about leaving their Shinto or Buddhist faiths and embracing Christianity. Third, Japan has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, and that covers Christian families; so raising new generations of leaders is difficult. Fourth, the international population will grow, because Japan will need more workers to fill in its declining population. And fifth, internationals and Japanese interested in English and American culture are the portion of the population most open to Christianity.
Consequently, “meeting the spiritual and material needs of the international population of our city and our region” is particularly important, Laura said. That work is vital for people’s current needs, and it’s significant for the ongoing vibrancy of the congregation, which they call Kanazawa International Baptist Church.
“We have people from all over the world,” Laura said. “On a given Sunday, we have people who represent Europe, other parts of Asia, North America, Africa and Oceania in our services. We have just a wonderful mix.
“And over the last couple of years, the Japanese service also includes internationals who attend every week, and the English service has Japanese people. There’s very much a blending, a beautiful image of serving both the Japanese and international populations.”
The Foushees expand that “beautiful image” by continuing to lean into their initial job description—make friends. It’s a joyful task that transcends language, culture and religion.
Opportunities to make friends open up wherever Laura and Carson turn: Parents of their children’s friends. Folks they meet in coffee shops and grocery stores. People who show up at church curious about faith. Other people who show up at church wanting to learn English or aching to hear someone speak English for an hour or so.
“People are looking for friendship, because they might not have any sort of community they’re connected to,” Carson observed. “The church has the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, here we are, and we welcome you with open arms.’ So, it provides friendship to people who are often very isolated.”
For example, they met Mirea Takahashi, a college student, who first visited the congregation because a Christian family from her past urged her to find a church in Kanazawa.
Carson and Laura “asked me to come to their home to know about me more,” she recalled. Now, “they’re like my family. They became my family in Kanazawa.” Laura baptized Mirea last December.
The Foushees met Adam Glymph, a Virginia native who moved to Japan because he was fascinated by the culture, when he repaired Carson’s bicycle. He accepted an invitation to visit the church, and now he counts Carson as one of his best friends.
“Carson and Laura are some of the best listeners and nicest people I’ve ever met,” he said. “It’s hard not to feel better after having a conversation with them because they elevate anyone they talk to.”
Across a dozen years, the people they’ve met—like Mirea and Adam—and the experiences they’ve encountered—like seeing chance meetings turn into deep friendships—confirm the Foushees’ call to Japan.
“Carson and I came to Japan only having been married for two years. Both of our children (Ada, 6, and Judah, 3) were born here. All their big moments have happened here in Japan,” Laura said. “That provides a sense of rootedness, when your entire family celebrates some of those big moments outside your home culture.
“Over the years, we feel even a stronger tie to Japan because we started here so early and have had some of those big transition moments as a family here.”
They’re grateful for CBF’s commitment to long-term presence. It’s given them time to confirm their calling, learn the language and culture and prove to Japanese and internationals alike they’re there to stay.
And they’re grateful for CBF’s Offering for Global Missions, which supports field personnel around the world by providing salaries, benefits, housing costs and other living expenses.
“This is a huge weight off our shoulders, that churches and individuals in America and around the world are giving so that we can focus on our ministries,” Carson said. “CBF commissioned us to go out and be servants alongside local believers here in Japan. And we don’t always have to turn and say, ‘What about our housing this month?’
“Through the Offering for Global Missions, we can be present to do the good work and continue to be present to the people we’ve been called to serve.”
Those are people Carson and Laura happily—and thankfully—call friends.