TAJIMI HOPE CHAPEL GIFU, JAPAN
A little space to be yourself.
When your days are spent caring for others,
make a little room to care for yourself.
A small community in Tajimi, Japan.
Care for caregivers
All faith backgrounds welcome
Tajimi, Gifu · Japan
01 / OUR PURPOSE
Well-being, together.
Emotional resilience. Healthy boundaries. The capacity to process work-related stress without carrying it alone. These are at the heart of the well-being we hope to nurture.
For medical professionals, teachers, pastors and others who work closely with people, caring for yourself is an ongoing practice. It takes more than knowledge. We hope to create a community where we can practise rest, reflection and well-being together.
Tajimi Hope Chapel aspires to be a grace-based, Christ-led community offering care for caregivers. By loving and caring for you, we hope that care will also reach the people you support in your professional and personal life.
We hope to love you
so you can love others.
RELATIONAL, PERSONAL, LOCAL
We are a volunteer association based in the personal home of John Lewis, an American-trained pastor. Our focus is small-group care for people with shared experiences in their working lives, including nearby medical professionals, administrators and support personnel.
We are not a church: we do not hold worship services or administer the sacraments. We have no dedicated staff or outside financial support, and we are not missionaries. We welcome Christians and non-Christians alike. For Christians, we hope our time together will deepen your commitment to your local church. For those without a Christian faith, we hope to offer a grace-based community where trauma and grief are not experienced alone.
02 / OUR ACTIVITIES
A conversation. A new experience. A quiet moment.
Three ways to make space for your own well-being.
A little time to let go, together
Practise mentally switching off from caregiving when you are off the clock, giving your mind and body room to recover. Let go of some stress and share a smile in an easy-to-access, small-group setting.
Our base is John Lewis’s home, next to the JA Bank. We aim to arrange group and individual time around shifts, and can also meet for lunch at the hospital’s public cafeteria.
New words. New experiences. A new perspective.
Discover a world beyond your daily routine through bilingual small-group experiences and opportunities to travel. Learning and connecting across languages can offer a fresh focus away from the demands of caregiving.
Together, we hope to explore experiences that open up a different emotional world, with room for curiosity and personal growth.
Quiet time, without being alone
In an ageing society, end-of-life issues are an increasingly familiar part of caregiving. When trauma or grief feels overwhelming, we hope to offer a space to sit quietly, reflect and meditate.
A place where you can be still, while knowing that you are not alone. We want to make room for the experiences that are difficult to put into words.
03 / MEET JOHN
Chapel director
“I look forward to meeting you and hearing your story.”
My brother’s illness and death, my life of faith, and my work as an educator in Japan have all shaped the way I hope to care for people who care for others.
My teaching career includes more than five years of basic medical English instruction at a local nursing school. My wife, Kazumi, currently teaches English at a local nursing school. Through that work, we have both seen a need for a community that cares for caregivers.
I was not yet two when my younger brother was born with transposition of the major vessels. It was 1972, and he was among the early generation of newborns receiving open-heart surgery. I have almost no memories of my early childhood, a time of immense stress for my parents as they managed his care. My brother and I were very close. When he died at 22, he had lived a long time considering the treatment available to him. Facing my own limitations, his illness and later his death led me towards a life of faith.
Looking back, I believe that early stress shaped how I experienced everyday life. It often felt as though my background level of stress was already high, leaving little room before I became overwhelmed. During seminary, I came to understand my temperament and my interest in church leadership in the context of a journey through trauma. My life of faith centres more on calming and quieting myself than on emotionally charged experiences.
I moved to Japan at 26, not long after my brother’s death. Perhaps that, too, was part of this journey. Japan was a new world, and I enjoyed learning here. Through the JET Programme, I taught on Ikitsuki Island from 1996 to 1998. Known for its history of Hidden Christianity, the area around Hirado and Ikitsuki felt meaningful to me in light of my Dutch heritage and Christian faith. This was before the internet and smartphones of today. Those memories are among my most treasured. I have not returned since 2001, and the area has been affected by depopulation.
I studied history at Calvin University in Michigan and earned my Master of Divinity at Covenant Seminary in Missouri. I have continued with shorter programmes in language and theology. I am rostered with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ and associated with the EPIC Network in Nagoya, which has strong ties to the Free Church of Norway. I also belong to the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church and worship at Kozoji Lutheran Church, which is led by a Japanese pastor. An Indonesian pastor lives in the parsonage and offers local and online pastoral care to Indonesian Christians working in care. I look forward to sharing a journey of growth and well-being with you.
04 / FIND US
We are close to the staff parking areas of Tajimi Prefectural Hospital and not far from Tajimi City Hospital. We hope to make it easy for people working nearby to join us before or after a shift.
CARING FOR YOU AS YOU CARE FOR OTHERS
Tajimi Hope Chapel