Who We Are

Eikou means glory in Japanese.

The glory of God captures the essence of the beauty, majesty, and wonder of who God is and what He has done through Jesus Christ.

We are called to declare and demonstrate His glory, that is, His goodness, grace, love, and truth in Puget Sound. In doing so, we honor Him, glorifying His name.

Eikou Christian Church started in 1990 reaching out to the Japanese community in the Seattle Eastside. Services are bilingual enabling the church to reach the many Japanese and Japanese/American families in the area with the Good News of Jesus Christ. The church also provides a number of opportunities for people to enjoy fellowship with one another, through home Bible studies, and eating lunch together after the worship service on Sundays.

Eikou also periodically worships and fellowships with the members of Lakeside Christian Church.

Jonathan Kobayashi

Lead Minister

Jonathan has a wide range of experience in overseas missions, pastoral ministry, church planting, leadership training and church consulting. In addition to leading Eikou Christian Church as Lead Minister, Jonathan serves as Discipleship Pastor for JesusOnline Ministries [jesusonlineministries.org], a digital discipleship ministry. He and his wife, Kim, also founded Acts 8 Ministries, a Christian training organization working in Ethiopia. They moved to Montana in 2022, and Jonathan serves as the “remote” minister.

They have four grown children. He holds M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary.

Contact: jonathan@eikou-church.org

Missionaries

Born and raised in Japan, it was while studying in America in the 1960s that God gave Mike Kumai a special burden to bring the Gospel to Japanese living overseas. Since that time, the Kumais have been involved in preaching the Good News to the Japanese communities in the Amazon area of South America and in Anchorage, Alaska.

With its large Japanese community of business families and students, the Eastside has provided a fruitful ministry for the Kumais, and many Japanese have become Christians through hearing the Gospel.

Eikou Christian Church Doctrinal Statement

The final authority for all things related to our faith and practice as Christians is the Bible. It alone is able to make us “wise for salvation”, and “thoroughly equipped for every good work”. 2 Timothy 3:15-17

Doctrinal statements are an attempt to set down in an orderly and concise way what the Bible teaches concerning important matters. They are also a rule by which we measure both what we believe as individuals and what we stand for as a church. Created by sinful men and not by God, they are, at best imperfect.

  1. We believe in one God, eternally existing in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and these three are the same in substance, equal in power and glory.
  2. We believe in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments as verbally and plenarily inspired by God, and inerrant in the original writings, and that they are of supreme and final authority in faith and life.
  3. We believe that JESUS CHRIST was begotten by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, and is true God and true Man.
  4. We believe that man was created in the image of God; that he sinned, and thereby incurred not only physical death, but also that spiritual death which is separation from God; and that all human beings are born with a sinful nature, and, in the case of those who reach moral responsibility, become sinners in thought, word, and deed.
  5. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice; and that all who believe in Him are justified on the ground of His shed blood.
  6. We believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of our Lord, in His ascension into heaven, and in His present life there for us, as High Priest and Advocate.
  7. We believe in the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit, Who convicts the sinner, regenerates, indwells, enlightens and guides the believer.
  8. We believe that all who receive by faith the Lord Jesus Christ are born again of the Holy Spirit, and thereby become children of God.
  9. We believe in the eternal security of the believers; that God, by His sovereign good pleasure, will keep them safe until the day of redemption.
  10. We believe in “that blessed hope”, the personal and premillenial and imminent return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
  11. We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust; the everlasting blessedness of the saved, and the everlasting punishment of the lost.