The World's Largest Church

While I was in Seoul I had the opportunity to attend worship at the world’s largest church on a Sunday morning. The church, Yoido Full Gospel Church, began shortly after the Korean War in a makeshift army surplus tent with about 5 people. It now has something over 800,000 members across 150 satellite campuses. The main campus is still in the Yoido section of town and has over 100,000 or so attendance on a given Sunday. That includes about 7 worship services for adults and Sunday School for the children during worship. There are about 30,000 children in that number. Each service seats about 12,000 adults. The church is located in a downtown area and is just a few blocks from the seat of government, the National Assembly building. The church owns 5 large buildings downtown, including one for running their daily newspaper which has a readership of about one million. It is, needless to say, quite an operation.

The crowd begins assembling outside the church quite a bit before the worship time arrives. Once the prior service ends, those inside the building all leave so the flow of people is one-way. Then the crowd for the next service streams in, many of them literally running into the auditorium. The crowd turns over very quickly with 24,000 people (12,000 going out and 12,000 going in) handled in about 20 minutes. Besides the folks running into the sanctuary, perhaps the most unusual part of the service to western non-charismatic ears is the prayer time when all 12,000 pray aloud at once. Not in unison, but everyone praying their own prayers aloud at once. I had been used to that as a child in a small church, but not in huge church. It definitely grabs your attention!

The sermon was on how we Christians of all people should be demonstrating hope despite the financial meltdown going on around us. It was in fact a very encouraging sermon and a strong reminder that our hope needs to focused on ultimate things not on our circumstances.
After the service there was a reception for foreigners since the church has lots of visitors. The church is built around home cell groups and that is where the members minister to each other. Those home groups occur any day of the week. The church also operates Prayer Mountain about an hour north of Seoul and not far from the Demilitarized Zone. They have 24-hour prayer there as well as retreats and a center for rehabilitation for both youth and those with addictions. They run buses several times a day, every day, to Prayer Mountain.

It was a very interesting visit, and one has to marvel at the impact they have had in Korea. Christianity has taken hold there in the past 50 years. Korea has a historic of Buddhist and Confucianist religion but is now about 30% Christian, which is much more than any of it’s neighboring Asian countries. This church has been a significant part of that growth, with about 1 in 20 residents of Seoul belonging to this church. They claim that about 80% of the members tithe, which an amazing difference from the roughly 14% in American evangelical churches. That certainly reflects that this is not just a social gathering!

Despite this impact I admit to still having some reservations about such enormous churches. Clearly they have done things a small church could not do, such as the major daily newspaper and Prayer Mountain. However, they still have needed 150 satellite churches, each with a pastor. It seems more like a denomination than a single church in that regard. Yet, the impact has been great and one has to rejoice at the way they are making a difference in that country!