Conferences
One in North America each new year, one in Japan every other spring, one in Chicago every Memorial Day. Between them they are where most returnees first meet each other. A handful of smaller gatherings have grown up around them, listed at the end.
A conference group photo, from JCFN's own archive.
EC began in 1997 as a “Returnee Preparation Retreat” for people who'd become Christians outside Japan and knew they were going back. It is now JCFN's largest annual gathering. EC24 sold out at 325 attendees, with four people coming to faith during the week.
Everything runs bilingually. Not just the messages: Bible studies, and even the game instructions, are interpreted, because the room holds people who speak only Japanese, only English, and both. A dedicated youth track has grown alongside the main conference. EC25 Youth drew 82 middle and high schoolers and 55 youth leaders to Pine Summit, near Big Bear.
GRC is EC's counterpart inside Japan, usually at Hotel Evergreen Fuji beneath Mt. Fuji. The first conference under this name met at Lake Kawaguchi in September 2015, picking up from the All Nations Returnees Conference that JCFN had run in Japan since 2009. GRC25 drew about 340 people under the theme “CONNECT.” It ran a day shorter than usual, with the freed-up time deliberately spent on networking by region and interest rather than seminars.
Alongside it runs C-Link, a working session where pastors, missionaries and returnees argue through the harder questions: what overseas Japanese missions can teach ministry inside Japan, and what happens to a returnee when the visa runs out. GRC27 is being planned for May 2027.
CC was planted in 2003 by EC alumni who wanted something for the Midwest specifically, and has run every Memorial Day weekend since, twenty-three years as of CC26's theme, “Follow Me.”
That continuity was not guaranteed. With Trinity Evangelical Divinity School closing and several Japanese churches in the area shutting, organisers seriously weighed moving the conference out of Chicago. At CC26 they decided to stay. Two young people who had grown up attending CC were baptised that weekend.
Three flagships are not the whole picture. CoCo (Connect Conference) is co-hosted with OMF Returnee Focus for Christians heading back to Japan from Europe. CoCo25 launched in London with around 100 people from ten countries. CoCo26 followed with roughly 110 from nine.
WIT in North America and BBWIT in Japan are short leadership camps, around twenty young adults at a time, feeding the volunteer base that runs everything above.
Attendance figures, themes and locations are drawn from JCFN's own Directors Letters. Search the archive