Emmaus Worship Introduction

Part of the vision for the Tohoku Church District Emmaus Center was that it could be a shared space for all of the churches in the Tohoku Church District. So, we hold a worship service every 2nd Sunday in the evening which is open to the public but mainly attended by pastors and church members who attend worship services or preach at their own churches in the mornings.

It's an ecumenical service open to all sorts of varieties of Christian. We've had guests from the First Presbytarian Church of Hollywood among others from outside Japan. There have also been Baptist and Catholic pastors that have come from churches outside of our denomination within Japan. However, this worship service is usually rotated between the pastors of the Tohoku District of the United Church of Christ-Japan (Nihon Kirisuto Kyodon / 日本キリスト教団). Twice there have been guests from the Asian Rural Institute that talked about their work at ARI (http://www.ari-edu.org/).


As a staff member at the Emmaus Center, I knew that I would be asked to present a message at some point during my time in Sendai. I decided to break the message into 2 parts in order to make it easier to read.

The passage I chose to read was the story of the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus after they discover the empty tomb and the message was entitled, '誰と共に歩んでいる?' or 'Who is walking beside you?'

Luke 24:13-16
Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jeruselem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.