Concrete, Steel, and the Gospel

There are a number of things that forcefully strike you as you spend time in Seoul, Korea. On the road one rarely sees a Japanese or American car, but the Hyundai and Kia and Daewoo vehicles are everywhere. Along the river that bisects the city are more bridges than you can keep count of as you drive, and most of them have more than 6 lanes of traffic. The investment in infrastructure like bridges and subways and roads and utilities is enormous and is continuing. To an engineer like me, these things jump out at you immediately.

Even more dramatic, though, is the skyline. While the tallest building in Seoul is 63 stories, certainly not a threat to the now several 100+ story buildings scattered around the world, still the skyline grabs your attention. High rise buildings are everywhere, and the apartment/condo buildings with the resultant population density are amazing. There are literally thousands of 20-30 story apartment buildings in this metro area and many more being constructed. Contruction cranes dot the skyline in every direction. In this metro area of about 20 million, there are hundreds if not thousands of complexes with many buildings, each of which have 10 -20 or more floors and would themselves make a small city. Each has an underground garage for the cars, though the subway system is crowded as well. The amount of concrete and steel already in place as well as under construction makes it easy to see why so much steel, concrete and other construction materials are flowing so strongly to Asia.

I suppose it is this population density that helps explain how a church of 800,000 like Yoido Full Gospel Church can come to be, and there are now several other churches that are over 100,000 each in Seoul. The enormous housing complexes can often house 20,000 or more on a rather small footprint of land. I would expect that a couple of million people live within a very few miles of the Yoido church. While I am not at all used to living this way, this density does seem to foster the development of churches with great impact.

After a week in Seoul, I am VERY ready to return to Roswell, GA, and my suburban house where the population density is a small fraction of Seoul though the traffic might make you think otherwise. Being constantly in a crowd and a traffic jam does weigh on me after a while. I guess I have enough of the ‘country boy’ in me to become stressed by the crowds and hurry when it never lets up. Still, I am amazed at the growth, the infrastructure, and the way the gospel is getting out in Seoul.