I had an encouraging discussion with my pastor yesterday after the church service. It seems there has been a lot of miscommunication due to language issues. The actual required vows to join the church are very similar to the ones Kyle posted from the PCA. I will have no worries about taking those vows. The other "requirements" are really requirements but are the churches desires for their members, but there are no required promises. Actually, a lot of my confusion has been due to the Japanese word for promise having slightly different connotations then the English word for promise. When speaking of a binding promise, there is a different Japanese word altogether (which is used in the case of the actual membership vows). The regular Japanese word for promise (at least in this situation as explained by my pastor) has more of the idea of make an effort to but if you can't, that's ok. Since many of the requirements are things that I think were good things, but things that I would have deep reservations about making a promise (in the English sense) to do, I'm relieved to know that that is not the case.

I want to thank everyone for their encouragement and advice the last week. I apologize for taking up everyone times over an issue that doesn't seem to have been an issue at all. I also feel a bit bad to have possibly painted my church and PCJ in a poor light when it wasn't warranted, so I hope that everyone reading through this thread makes it to this post.

I'm very thankful right now that everything seems to be working out in a good way. I've decided to wait until the spring to join the church, however, so I can have more time to discuss the issue with the church leadership and resolve things that are due to language problems.

John