The Beginning of OMS

Upon his arrival in Tokyo in 1901, Charles Cowman immediately began doing evangelism and church planting and training national leadership. In partnership with Pastor Juji Nakada and fellow OMS missionaries, Ernest Kilbourne and his wife, Lettie, the OMS team conducted evening evangelistic rallies on consecutive nights from 1901 to 1912 non-stop. Some 15,000 souls came to Christ through these nightly rallies. Thus, the work of OMS in Japan was founded on tireless and ceaseless evangelism efforts.

The Great Village Campaign

In 1912, God gave Charles Cowman a vision and bold plan to take the Gospel out of Tokyo and into every home in the nation of Japan. This was a bold plan indeed, considering that Japan at that time had 58 million people living in 10.3 million homes on 4,000 islands―all of them mountainous. With faith in God, the Great Village Campaign commenced, and by 1918, all of Japan had received the Gospel! The campaign was the predecessor to OMS’ evangelism and church planting movement, Every Community for Christ (ECC). In the January 1918 edition of the Oriental Missionary Standard (forerunner to the OMS Outreach magazine) Charles Cowman wrote:

“Shout the victory with us and give Jesus all the praise! 60,000,000 Japanese have had the gospel put into their individual homes. There awaits but the touch of fervent prayer to set this land aflame with a mighty awakening. Let us mingle with our shouts and prayers, ‘On to Korea!’”