Warm greetings from the City of Peace! With a steadily growing population of 1.2 million and located centrally in the Chugoku region, Hiroshima is most well-known as the first city bombed with a nuclear weapon. Networking with established churches and like-minded missionaries within the locally branded HSK (Hiroshima Cooperative Mission Fellowship), our team is prayerfully working toward serving our communities, raising up Japanese leadership, and reaching missionally into new areas. With an evangelical Christian population of less than 0.2%, the urgency of sharing the gospel of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, has never been greater!
Where are we?
Hiroshima is a thriving coastal city centrally located within Hiroshima prefecture, home to a largely unreached harvest field of 2.8 million people. With easy access to downtown, suburban, and rural communities, we’re perfectly situated for exploring beautiful forests, mountains, and beaches, enjoying rich culture and history, and sending out church-planting teams into even less reached areas.
Team Ministries
Community outreach
To reach our communities, we make the most of the relationships God gives us in our everyday lifestyle activities. We get to know the neighbors and families of our children, meet people in nearby parks, and engage with local groups (like a men’s basketball club). We share our lives with friends, inviting them to connect with the gospel through gatherings like “Enjoy English,” kimono club, guitar club, men’s ministry, and more.
ABC
Asaminami Bilingual Chapel is a monthly evangelistic outreach where we combine fun English and cultural activities with testimonies, music, multimedia, and biblical content, while giving seekers friendly opportunities to connect with believers.
For many in attendance, this is the first time they’re setting foot in a church building.
Gospel-centered multiplication
We missionally support three partnering chapels in evangelistic outreach and multiplying disciples among children, youth, and adult men and women. We encourage, equip, and challenge Japanese believers to grow in the ministries of evangelism and discipleship to multiply disciples and workers across Japan.
Ministry Opportunities
Rural church planting
Rural Hiroshima prefecture is one of the most unchurched in all of Japan. Our partner churches are already taking steps to see these small communities reached with the gospel. Has God called and equipped you to help us establish missional communities in the countryside, characterized by prayer, outreach, disciple making, long-term community service, or even pastoring?
Children’s and youth ministry
Children and youth are the key to raising up the next generation of godly Japanese leaders.
We’re seeking new team members with experience and a burden to reach out to young people and their families who’ve never had a chance to hear and be transformed by the gospel!
Digital ministry
With the rapid expansion of social media, online advertising, and virtual communications, we’re seeking new team members with passion and experience in using online platforms to share resources, promote events, and multiply the spread of the gospel across our region.
Team Vision
The LoveHiroshima! team exists to multiply missional communities in family-friendly churches that pray, love, and multiply disciples everywhere!
Missional communities
We strive to multiply small group communities of believers and non-believers together such that the gospel is deeply experienced through connecting with one another, growing together in relationship with Jesus, and going out missionally to those who’ve never had a chance to hear and be transformed by the gospel.
Multiplying disciples
We strive, as a primary focus in everything we do, to multiply disciples of Jesus who pray dependently, love sacrificially, and multiply courageously—just like Jesus!
Family-friendly churches
Our long-term vision is to multiply churches (friendly to whole families and singles of all ages) which are multiplying disciples in missional communities throughout Hiroshima and our region.
Loving Hiroshima
Our team has, as its ultimate purpose, the glory of our Father in heaven as we love and serve the people of Hiroshima the way Jesus does, such that all people everywhere have a chance to know and follow Him!
Team Values
Pray!
We demonstrate abiding dependence on our Heavenly Father by praying to Him, both privately and in community, about everything!
Love!
We seek to love others intentionally, compassionately, and sacrificially, both within and outside our gospel community, just like Jesus!
Multiply!
We prioritize multi-generational gospel impact by multiplying movements of dependent prayer, sacrificial love, and courageous disciple making!
Team Members
John & Kyoko Clendinnen
John grew up in New York as an unhappy pagan until Jesus transformed his life at the age of 19. After graduating from Penn State, he served for five years as a naval officer before joining Cru as a missionary to teenagers for 12 years in San Diego, Philly, and Orlando.
Kyoko grew up on the west side of Hiroshima in a Shinto home. She became the first in her family to believe in Jesus at the age of 24 while in Sydney, Australia, on a working holiday visa. Returning to Hiroshima, she grew and served within a newly planted church until the Lord called her to missions. John and Kyoko met on a short-term mission in Hiroshima and were married in 2003.
They have three teenage boys, JJ, Micah, and Andrew, whom they homeschool bilingually. Serving together in Japan for 20 years, they’ve been leading the LoveHiroshima! Team since January 2015.
Jan & Krystal Workman
Hi, we are The Workmans, Jan, Krystal and 5 fantastic kiddos. We both grew up in Portland, Oregon where we met in high school. After marriage, Jan commissioned into the US Air Force and our adventure began. We have lived many places within the US, including Hawaii where we attended a hospitality house run by a missionary family serving the military community. They had such an impact on our lives that we too wanted to serve in full time ministry and in 2013 God began calling us to leave the Air Force and move toward pursuing that dream. God gave Jan a heart for the unreached and Krystal a heart for Asia leading us to Japan in 2017.
Hi, we are the Workmans: Jan, Krystal, and five fantastic kiddos. We both grew up in Portland, Oregon where we met in high school.
After marriage, Jan commissioned into the US Air Force and our adventure began. We have lived in many places within the US, including Hawaii where we attended a hospitality house run by a missionary family serving the military community. They had such an impact on our lives that we too wanted to serve in full-time ministry.
In 2013 God began calling us to leave the Air Force and to pursue that dream. God gave Jan a heart for the unreached and Krystal a heart for Asia, leading us to Japan in 2017.
YoungAh Yang
Hello! I am YoungAh Yang, and I have been serving in Japan since 2018. I was born and raised in South Korea and moved to New Zealand in 2007. I started my relationship with God in 2007 and God naturally led me to the mission field. I had a chance to go to Cambodia for a mission trip and I realized the needs of missionaries overseas.
Japan was in my radar since I had heard that Japan’s population is less than 1% Christian. I lived in Hiroshima for six months in 2014 and came back long-term in 2018.
I studied computer science and information systems, and I previously worked as a barista for about ten years in New Zealand.
Andrew Adams
I’m Andrew, from Melbourne, Australia, a very multicultural and coffee-loving city! After studying Japanese in school, as well as experiencing a home-stay in Hiroshima, and being involved with a Japanese church in Melbourne, I developed a love for the precious Japanese people.
I was saved during my college years (where I studied music) and have a big heart to share Jesus’ love and grace with those who feel like “misfits,” and those burdened by shame.
After being part of the Launch team, which included a one year internship with KGK, I joined the LoveHiroshima! team in 2021.
I’m passionate about local-church partnership, discipling and equipping local believers, men’s and student ministry. I enjoy hospitality, basketball, hiking, music, and movies. Let’s get a cuppa sometime! (cuppa = Aussie for hot beverage).
Get in touch if you’re curious about any of these programs or have questions for our team. We’d love to hear from you.