Sunday, October 14, 2007

Yeouido Gospel

I decided to break from tradition today and check out the Yeouido Full Gospel Church. This is supposedly one of the world's largest churches with seven services each day and from what I could estimate, a regular attendance of 2,000+ at each service though they say membership is around 800,000.

Though they don't have an English service, they do offer translation services in English, Spanish and a few other languages. This is a mega-church and everything is high tech from the HD video display screens, to the song and dance praise team, to the 75+ member choir. You can even find all of the sermons online.

I give props to the church. The worshipers seemed devout and the service was uplifting and energetic. I was a little overwhelmed with the sheer scale of everything.

The founder and lead pastor of the church has some controversial points of view which incorporate a little of Korea's shamanistic heritage. I can't really blame him. It isn't the first time Christianity has incorporated pagan traditions to suit the needs of its constituents. Jesus wasn't really born on Dec. 25. The date is ceremonial and was started to replace the pagan Roman celebration of their god's birthdays.

At any rate, the sermon was decent and it was neat to just witness a huge congregation worshipping. What's the biggest congregation you've ever seen?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We're here at Meadow Lake. The trees are in full color (& so is Mom because she just had a glass of wine) & the weather is just perfect. We stayed Sat night at D & M's, then went to Ronan for an auction that Katie helped put together. Got to visit w/ Birch for awhile, then on Sun Morn we went to Polson & had breakfast w/ both of them. Today we went fishing at Lake Blaine, but the water was so low we couldn't put the boat in. Tomorrow we will have D & M, Trina & kids, & Kylan for dinner.