Archive: Seoul’s Burning Bush

What’s Their Secret?

By Carroll Ferguson Hunt

Our tour group of Westerners cowered against the wall at the top of the stairs, intimidated by the pushing, chattering throng of Koreans pouring past us. Even though for days we had inched through Seoul’s gridlock traffic in our van, confronting a solid river of people face-to-multiplied-faces was something else again—and outside Sunday school rooms of a Methodist church yet?

Our circuits crackled on overload.

But this is no ordinary Methodist church. We were visiting Seoul’s Kwang Lim Church, one of world Methodism’s largest, with 50,000 constituents, 4 Sunday worship services, 6,000 people attending Tuesday Bible studies, multiple choirs and orchestras, plus 60 teenage Sunday school classes—whose members were keeping the timid visitors’ backs to the wall.

How can all this be? Why, in this secular, materialistic era when Methodism is declining, are the halls, the pews, the prayer meetings, and the offering baskets overflowing in Kwang Lim Methodist Church?

As soon as the stairway traffic reduces to negotiable numbers at the 11:00 a.m. service, we were ushered to front rows in the balcony and handed earphones through which we receive simultaneous English translation. (The bulletin says they also offer Japanese on another channel.)

As we look around we see people rapidly filling the bright and warm 5,000-seat sanctuary. Masses of elegantly arranged flowers frame the huge wooden pulpit and crown the altar behind it. Orchestra members surreptitiously tune their instruments during the organ prelude and every seat in the choir section is filled.

Worship proceeds through components familiar to most Christians; hymns, Scripture, responsive reading, prayers. But if you sit quietly with your ears and eyes open, with all your antennae operating, you can sense a focus, a participation by the congregation not always present in average Sunday morning crowds. As you turn over in your mind the immensity of this church and its incredible success in ministering to thousands of Seoulites and other Koreans around the world, one question demands an answer. Why? What is so special here? What’s their secret?

Pastor Sundo Kim had Malachi 3:7-12 read earlier, and as he begins his message on “The Important Lessons of Stewardship,” heads drop throughout the auditorium. You wonder, Has he lost them? Do they resent harangues about money just like we do?

Look again. People are not dozing nor inspecting their fingernails. They are looking up the Scriptures Pastor Kim refers to and taking notes on what he says about tithing. They’re even saying “Amen!”

Pastor Kim believes in his topic. “If you don’t tithe,” he says, “you are not a whole Christian.” The points of his sermon are simple and clear: 1. The Bible teaches us to tithe; 2. Tithing is practical; 3. Tithing brings blessing.

Basic stuff, wouldn’t you say?

“Ministers who don’t preach on tithing impoverish their people,” Kim asserts, and this is the sole time all year that he preaches on tithing. He makes no idyllic prosperity promises to his people, just cites God’s blessing of those who obey Him.

Does this approach work? You only have to look around you. Kwang Lim Church lacks for no good thing. State-of-the-art sound and video equipment, four-building church complex, mountain prayer retreat center, domestic and foreign mission projects, 22 associate pastors. Seventy percent of this church’s members tithe—without signing a pledge.

“Just do it,” Kim tells them. Basic, yes, but with a twist. A trust twist, if you will. Trust God to provide needed income by stimulating His people to do what He tells them to.

How does one, even a seasoned Christian leader like Sundo Kim, learn this kind of trust? What are his spiritual secrets?

Like so many Korean Christians, Kim’s spiritual formation centers on prayer. His daily prayer time stretches from 4:30 to 6:30 each morning. Saturdays he spends at Kwang Lim’s prayer retreat center, the “prayer mountain,” a concept and practice common among Korean Christians. There he prays and prepares for the four Sunday services, returning home at midnight.

Every part of Kim’s ministry is soaked in prayer. When Kwang Lim’s $7.5 million prayer center was only an idea burning inside his head, Kim prayed, expecting God to provide it all. Then, in trust, he bought land on a mountain slope an hour out of Seoul. Now among the rocks and pine trees sprawls a complex with a brick, stone, and glass auditorium that can seat 5,000, and facilities to feed and sleep 800 people.

Huge numbers, however, do not dominate the purposes of Kwang Lim ‘s prayer mountain. Scattered about the grounds are kneeling benches for private prayer. Tiny prayer cells, 104 of them, are private places with warning lights outside and doors that once closed can only be opened from the inside. Obviously, the center was designed for serious intercession.

But intercession is not the only Christian discipline in action at Kwang Lim’s prayer mountain. Pastor Kim takes one month each year for training church staff, plus deacons, elders, area leaders, evangelists; 3,360 of them, in fact.

“Without training we cannot have good leaders,” Kim asserts. Coaching his leadership staff is a priority in Kim’s ministry. In the most recent session, he talked to them about setting goals for their ministry.

“Back when our church had only 200 members,” he told them, “I set a goal of 1,000. People laughed at me and said ‘Impossible!’ But as soon as we reached 1,000, I aimed for 2,000.”

Kim’s audience listens carefully; he knows whereof he speaks since the church embraces a constituency of 50,000. “We know where we’re going,” he says. And he cites Jesus’ teaching in Luke 14:28-35 about planning. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost…?” (NIV).

“Make a plan,” Kim tells his leadership team. “Set priorities.” Then he tells them how, and outlines the steps by means of his overhead projector.

After Kim’s lectures and after each Kwang Lim leader writes out his or her goals, sharing them with a small cluster of co-workers, they all receive communion together. As they celebrate the Savior, Pastor Kim prays for them individually, committing each one to the Lord and dedicating them to their assigned ministry.

Why does any church, even one this large, require 3,360 workers? One reason is in response to one of Kim’s tenets: “Kwang Lim may have 50,000 constituents, but it is not a big church. It is a collection of small churches. “Even small churches need leaders and if you have a collection of them—100, say—the number mounts of those responsible for nurture of each flock. And when Kim talked to his leadership team about turning goals into action he cites “prayer, visitation, development of friendships, discovery of non-Christian neighbors.” Why? To tell them about Jesus. To evangelize.

Deacons and elders, lots of them, are a way of life in Korean churches. At Kwang Lim they take their responsibilities seriously. So do the Sunday school teachers and workers, and Bible study leaders for small groups which may never grow larger than 10 participants. This restriction means there are now 400 such groups.

Kwang Lim’s constituency, members, catechists, inquirers—are divided into 17 areas. Each area is shepherded by an evangelist and three Bible women who visit and counsel and love the 1,000 families of their flock. Numerous Wesley-style class meetings meet on Friday nights in each area and this is the blueprint for lay evangelism. Christians of the Kwang Lim fellowship find it easy to invite their non-believing neighbors to a small, warm group meeting in their home, and their neighbors find it easy to accept such an invitation—a common practice among most Korean believers.

This is why, as the 11 o’clock service draws to a close, we see several people move from their seats toward the front of the auditorium. Dr. Kim has called for all new believers to meet him in front of the pulpit. The congregation applauds as ten or a dozen individuals cluster around the pastor to receive his greeting and a small gift from the church. They, by this public appearance, tell God and their world that they are beginning training for baptism and embarking on the Christian way.

As we watch that small band of men and women who have begun their first steps onto the Christian way, as we see pleasure and embarrassment merge on their faces at this public attention, what secrets for success have we learned from Pastor Kim and Kwang Lim Church?

First, we see that Jesus, God’s Son, is Lord here, and that a personal relationship to Him underlies all else. Second, we know that Pastor Kim trains his huge leadership team with care and devotion. Third, we know that Bible study, prayer, and tithing are normal disciplines for the people of Kwang Lim Church, as is evangelism among their neighbors, friends, and family.

People come from across the globe to query Sundo Kim about the success of Kwang Lim (which, incidentally, means “Burning Bush”) Church. They discover as they look and listen that the practices and principles upheld by Kim and his astonishing congregation are the simple tenets of biblical Christianity instead of some new formula they hoped to find and copy at home.

Instead of unwrapping a new secret for success created by a clever leader, we who want to know how he does it are led to the foot of the cross and told to look into the face of the Savior; then follow Him.

Why It Works!

by Carroll Ferguson Hunt

Christians from all over the world make pilgrimages to Seoul to learn from Dr. Sundo Kim and his Kwang Lim Church. No one, it seems, comes away unaffected by what is seen and observed there.

Frank Warden, author and corporate president of Trinity Bible Studies, pastors two churches near El Paso, Arkansas and has visited Kwang Lim several times where his Trinity Studies are used. He speaks of the Korean congregation’s “enthusiasm in worship,” which he found especially affecting one Sunday morning when 4,000 new members joined the church fellowship.

“The people are enthusiastic about Christ and the church,” he says. “They are Christ centered and Bible centered. It is a most amazing worship experience. A hush drops, and especially during prayer there is a sense of holiness.”

George Hunter III, Dean of Asbury Theological Seminary’s E. Stanley Jones School of Mission and Evangelism and church growth leader, discovered during his visit to Korea that “the Kwang Lim Church is an outstanding example of a church growing through meeting people’s needs; its preaching, group life, and teaching are all need-oriented. Also, they grow because they plan for growth, which is an important part of their long-range strategy.”

Anyone who visits Kwang Lim and other Korean churches, large and small, can not ignore the emphasis on prayer which permeates Christian living there. A delegation of Chinese pastors and lay leaders from Hong Kong went home determined to develop monthly all-night prayer meetings to fuel the growth and spiritual development they hunger for. American and Japanese Christian leaders carry away similar commitments when they see what can happen when God’s people pray.

Terry Faris, member of the UM Kentucky Conference for 23 years, visited Pastor Kim in Seoul and heard him discuss the secret of growth at Kwang Lim Church. Kim opened the door to a small room, his prayer closet, and said to Faris, “Here is the secret…I meet God before I meet people.”

Faris returned to apply Kim’s secret to his own ministry. “I had a junk closet off my office that was full of old bulletins and reports, but after visiting Korea I asked the custodian to clear it out and build a prayer closet.

“Our congregation also added a couple of early morning prayer meetings—on Tuesdays and Sundays at 6 a.m., whereas before we only had a Friday morning men’s prayer time. They’re well attended, too!”