Moving to Kyoto

Hi there, my name is Chris McKee and together with my wife Maiko and boys Daniel (aged 6) and Sion (aged 2), we are part of the Liberty Church Kyoto team!

We never really imagined ourselves living in Kyoto but now that we are here we can say that God is faithful and always always always has a great plan for us! We are so delighted to be teaming up with the amazing Wogsland family to help with LCK.

Let me tell you how we got here…

Maiko and I met in Manchester University in the UK where we both studied theology. After getting married (I’m skipping so much here as you can guess!) we moved to Maiko’s hometown, Osaka. In Osaka, where we stayed for eight years, we were in involved in a church planting ministry and eventually began pastoring one of the churches we helped plant.

Hope Chapel Sakai was a church focused on one thing: sharing the love of God with children and young people. It is kind of unique to have a children’s/youth ministry without a main church to support us but we strongly felt that that was what God wanted us to do. He sent us so many children and young people from broken families; and in so many cases the parent’s (mostly just moms) were delighted to have a place to send their kids on the weekend and know that they would be safe. God did some amazing work there and we learnt so much about serving God through all the ups and downs of ministry!

After more than five years at Hope Chapel Sakai we felt it was time to hand over the church to a Japanese leader, which we did in June 2013. At that time we returned to my native UK for what we thought was going to be a minimum of a year. However, after seven months Maiko was refused an extended visa and we kind of had to move back to Japan!

This was a huge shock for us but it was no a shock at all for for God! He had a better plan. We had met Mike and Seira the previous year and were just blown away by their vision and commitment to it. I immediately felt like Mike was a guy I could work with. Not just ‘could’ work with, but ‘really really wanted to work with’! So when we returned to Japan we met up with the Wogslands and have now teamed up with them at Liberty Church Kyoto.

When we think about these last few years we can only praise God for always knowing best, always guiding in the best way and always providing the best. Our prayer for Kyoto is that this city too would experience God’s love and power and sheer awesomeness in a way it never has before.

Please pray with us as we live and work here and also please come visit anytime! God bless!