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Published: March 14th 2011
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Yoido Full Gospel Church
The choire and orchestra on the left, a pastor leading the singing Yong-gi Cho’s congregation is by far the largest in the world – supposedly 850.000 members, and when planning this trip, I had thought about a visit here.
We started out with late breakfast at one of the millions coffee shops around our hotel. It is a Paris pastry shop and we all agree that it is better than the baker at Kvickly at home.
The subway of Seoul is a bliss – easy and quick. Youido island in the middle of the river – a small Manhattan. The church has a block of buildings and when we were 4 blocks from the church, entering from the park, suddenly all roads were full of busses and cars. 4 policemen in every crossing and loads of people crossing. It was changing time from the 11 o’clock service to the 13 service. 20.000 people changing within half an hour. A car park with only busses behind (40 busses for this service?) Entering the church, 12:50, there was singing and we were guided up to the third floor of the dome, white clad helpers guiding us to the area assigned to people needing translations – translations into 7 languages. The dome was huge and everybody
neatly seated with 7-8 people per row, the quire was in white robes with an added philharmonic orchestra and an opera singer; a pastor leading the singing flanked by swaying women. Pastor Yon-gi Cho was quietly seated behind until his sermon of about 45 minutes. He is now 70 and only has the 13:00 service, but he looked very well, and started with jokes about planning for the future now that we live an extra 25 years. The sermon was well made with a story line with bible texts explained and flavored with several stories from his life explaining the points. The service was in a way traditional, but also different in many ways, like the orchestra and some of the quire songs were reminding of some of the North Korea singings often seen (no offence). Another ‘strange’ thing was a minute where suddenly the translator stopped translating, but Yon-gi Cho was obviously still talking and everybody else also started talking/singing. Until I realized it was individual prayers / speaking in tongues. It was ended by a small bell chiming. So much for the charismatic part.
After the service, again changing time for the 15:00 service, and judging by the
new people arriving, it must be more for the youth. It was a good experience, and again we marveled at the logistics of the changing.
A couple of links:
Yoido Full Gospel Church and
Yon-gi Cho – take a look at
Attendances statistics We spent some time in the nearby Yoido park, had a coffee and a snack, before heading to the Namdaemun market (much like all markets in Asia). We took the cable car up to Namsan mountain at sunset with views over the city. We went up the N Seoul Tower, but is was too hazy to really see far. Heading home, we found one of the Korean barbeque shops where each table has a small barbeque – it was great, and everybody was happy.
Read the full story from
South Korea here
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