Turning bad news
into good news.How I have served with the film I found at church

This page is a record of how I have walked as a Christian and kept going in a ministry of film.

Through discrimination and so many other experiences, I was close to giving up on my life. Then, at my high school festival, I discovered film. For the first time, here was something I could do.

But because of my family situation, I had to give up on going to college, and my hope ran out.

Then, on the streets of Sakae in Nagoya, at a church street concert, I met people from a church for the first time. Afterwards we went to McDonald's, and while we were talking, someone asked me, "Jun, isn't there something you want to do?"

As it turned out, the church was looking for someone who could make videos. That was how I started making films again.

Soon after, I was baptized, and a life of working at a supermarket and going to church began. My coming-of-age ceremony at 20 was the same: surrounded by my brothers and sisters, I grew up in the church.

Besides film, the church gave me so many chances: photography, live streaming, lighting, websites, social media.

Then one summer, in 2016, at a message during summer camp, I received the words "the calling God gives each of us personally." From then on, I wanted to turn bad news into good news, and to use my gifts in the world.

After that I quit the supermarket and, for one year, worked at the church: part-time video jobs, part-time work for the religious corporation, and the church's own businesses.

While I was working at the church, I sensed I was being sent out into society, and in 2018 my training and learning in Tokyo began.

Around the same time, trouble arose at the church, and for a few years I could not go to church.

Out in the world, I was blessed with opportunities and work, but I could also feel myself being pulled more and more into the world.

On Tokyo trains, when I was scared and afraid, I listened to worship in tears, and I prayed to God in the car on the way to shoots.

That was when I was given the chance to make "Thank You for Being Alive." It was during COVID, and the number of people taking their own lives had risen sharply. It was a music video for Hokkaido Inochi no Denwa (a suicide prevention helpline) and the Christian rock band Night de Light. I felt God's calling.

When the production was over, I stood at a fork in the road. One path was to work hard in the world as a film director. The other was to answer the calling I had been given. I struggled a lot, and I prayed.

Then, while journaling, reading the Bible and praying, I heard God's voice say, "Clearly, a journalist."

The word "journalist" had never been part of my life, so at first I was surprised. But soon after, through Instagram, I met Konishi, a journalist who was a university student at the time.

He showed me places where all kinds of social problems and climate change were happening. The first was plastic waste in Ehime.

Next came the sea lion problem on the Shakotan Peninsula in Hokkaido. Through conversations with Mr. Fujita, whom I met there, I started to sense what God wanted from me. But I paid for everything myself, so I was barely getting by. It was tough, ha. I was living two lives, doing my own work at the same time.

Then I went to Bangladesh for a month, my first time in a country other than my own. There I learned about every kind of social problem: the Rohingya refugee camps, climate refugees, climate pirates, child marriage.

In the middle of problems far too big, there were days I felt small and depressed. I had always lived so desperately, and the people there lived loosely, in a good way. I was angry almost every day. But the time I spent with my friends and the views from the boat as we left Cox's Bazar for the next town are treasures for life.

Then, just before I was due to fly home, I caught COVID there and was hospitalized. Including the hospital bills, more than 1 million yen was gone, and work was cancelled. I was in despair.

On the flight home, sobbing, this was what I prayed to God:

And after that, a miracle happened.

Right around the time I got back, NHK broadcast a nationwide feature on "Thank You for Being Alive." When I went to an outdoor gear shop, as usual, to look at clothes for reporting, the store manager had seen the broadcast. He said to me, "John, if this is the work you're doing, let's do it together." From there came a contract with that outdoor brand and a grant to make films. I was truly amazed.

Ever since I started going to church at 18, I had celebrated Christmas at church every year. But after many things happened at the church I used to attend, I spent two Christmases alone.

Then, around this time, I had a reunion at Kansai Bible Institute. In January 2022, I was asked to make an anniversary film for the institute, together with my old friend Yu, who was studying theology there.

Then I began going to Parkside Chapel. During worship, I remembered my old church and kept telling myself, "I'm fine. I'm not hurt." But that wasn't true at all. I was held up by each person at Parkside, who never blamed me, never pried, waited for me as long as it took, and believed in me. These years were a season of recovery.

I learned for the first time that Kansai Bible Institute was a school of mission, and I decided to take the Kairos course. There I sensed God might be telling me I was a "media missionary," and everything I had hated about myself turned into something good.

Then, through a camp, I met Pastor Komori, a missionary, and through him I met the Antioch Mission. God's leading.

From spring 2024, I became officially involved with the Antioch Mission in the area of media. At the summer youth camp "JAM Camp," I made the record film as media staff, and at the "Yuiki Special" in October, I spoke on "cross-cultural mission through social media."

In that season of my faith being restored at Parkside, I found out about QQ English's influencer study program in the Philippines and went to study there for a month. I let go of the laptop and phone I was always glued to, and what I held instead was a notebook, a pen and a Bible. Becoming just myself, nobody in particular, and quieting my heart, the sense came back slowly: "I really am being sent out."

After that, I went home with my mother to her hometown in the Philippines.

Around the time I came back from the Philippines, the church was in a Christmas mood. At Sunday service as usual, I got to talking with someone who was visiting. He worked for an NGO fighting hunger around the world, and, of all things, his son was a "frontline cameraman."

The NGO happened to be hiring video staff, and I applied, praying, "If it is Your will, please lead me." The way to the international NGO began to open.

At the same time, I joined the Indonesia mission, also serving in the Antioch Mission's media work. In August 2025, together with friends of many generations, I traveled through the mission field with Pastor Megumi, who has served as a missionary in Kalimantan for 18 years. When I watched mission films at church camps and events, I often couldn't really understand them or picture the place. For a few years I had been praying something.

"Respect the culture of the country and adapt to it." In my mission studies, this was really hard. When I report abroad, people always tease me the moment we meet: "Why are you on that side? You're one of us!" Maybe the roots I was born with are themselves a strength. The part of me I struggled with most had become, before I knew it, my strongest part.

In May and June 2025, the TV program "Life Line" introduced my journey so far in two episodes.

In July 2025, it was decided that I would join an international NGO as video staff. I started in November. My reason for applying was very simple: "I want to use this gift, the film I have followed since my teens, for society."

That summer, too, I went to the church kids' camp and youth camp. The church's big summer event, which I have never once missed since my teens. As always, as the media person.

What I learned most at Parkside Chapel came when I was sent out.

In November, everyone at Parkside Chapel sent me out. I had told Koike-cchi, "I'm definitely going to cry, so I'll just say a short hello," but about a quarter of the way through my notes, sure enough, my words caught and the tears wouldn't stop. Pushed along by shouts of "You can do it!" from the back, I somehow managed to say thank you.

What I learned at Parkside Chapel was not to strain, but to become natural. Not to try to do it myself, but to entrust it. If I keep straining through the life I have been given, I will wear out. And when I admit my weakness, overwhelming grace comes flooding in.

And now I am on the front lines of an international NGO. Since starting, I have left my hometown, and there are hard times, unfamiliar surroundings and loneliness. But there are far more Christians here than I expected, what I learned is being put to use, and I feel that coming here is all connected within God's will.