Yong-gi Cho - Successful home cell groups

Preface Why Home Cell Groups?

For years I have been traveling all over the world, sharing in seminars and conferences the story of the miracle that God has performed in our church in Seoul, Korea. From a little tent mission in the poor section of the city in 1958, we have grown to be the largest single congregation in the world.

To bring this about, however, God had to change me and my attitudes. The traditional models of church growth and leadership simply do not work on such a large scale. But God has a method that does work. He has a secret for success, and He wants every church to have it. He has given it to us so that we can share it with others.

The world today desperately needs the message of Jesus as Savior and Lord. Our churches and our cities need revival, not just from time to time but 365 days a year. I know that such revival is possible, because it is happening right now at our church, the Full Gospel Central Church. It is happening because I have applied the principles I am about to relate in the pages of this book.

God did not mean for me to keep this secret for success to myself. In fact, in 1976 He prompted me to found Church Growth International, so that I could spread the news and the knowledge of church growth principles to pastors and laymen all over the world. But only a limited number of people can attend the seminars. The information must be made available to many, many more Christians. These principles are not mine, they are God's, and He has given them to us so that all of us may benefit from them.

I believe church growth is going to be one of the major moves of the Holy Spirit in the 1980s. This book is concerned with church growth, although that is not its title or its main subject. Church growth is a byproduct . The real secret is home cell groups.

Many churches have been founded on personalities, yet today these churches are dying. I have visited some magnificent cathedrals where only a handful of believers continue to worship. Famous preachers have spoken from their pulpits, but the shepherds have passed away and the sheep have scattered. This should not be. Churches should not have to depend on a single strong pastor.

There is another way. Home cell groups give every church member an opportunity to participate in the ministry of his church and to bring revival to his own neighborhood . Our members have found this kind of involvement very rewarding, and evangelism has multiplied because of it.

But certain guidelines must be followed if home cell groups are to succeed. Church growth and evangelism are not automatic byproducts . A number of churches have tried and failed, because they disregarded certain basic principles.

By following the guidelines I have presented here, you can bring the miracles of home cell groups and church growth to your own congregation. As you read, ask the Holy Spirit what your role is to be. The results are limited only by a lack of openness to Him.

Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho, Pastor Full Gospel Central Church Seoul, Korea November, 1980

Contents

Personal Ambition: Key to Disaster

In 1961 I decided to build the largest church in Korea. At that time I thought I was doing it for God, but today I realize that really I was doing it out of my own personal ambition. That proved to be disaster. The Lord had to let me fail so that I would turn to Him in my need and allow Him to build His own churchin His own way.

At that time we had a church of 600 members, a church that I had started three years earlier. We had just moved from the original site of the "tent church" at Taejo Dong, a slum area of Seoul, to a better location in the Sodaemoon (or West Gate) area of downtown. It was a growing church, and I was proud of the work I had accomplished in only three years. In fact, I had become too confident. If I could get 600 members in only three years, I reasoned, why could I not build the largest church in the city?

In those days the Yong Nak Presbyterian Church was the largest church in Seoul. It had about 6,000 members, and that proved to be a great challenge to me. In fact, one day, without anyone else knowing about it, I took a measuring stick and went over to the Presbyterian church in order to take its exact measurements. I determined the length and the width of the building, and I counted the number of pews. It seated more than 2,000 persons.

In my ambition, I then said, "I will build a church larger than this, and the Lord will fill it."

Early in my ministry God showed me the importance of setting goals and having faith to believe He would provide the growth for which I dreamed. He taught me to pray specifically for my needs. And when He gave me a growing ministry, He taught me to visualize the numbers of people that would be coming to my church. As I prayed and meditated, the Holy Spirit confirmed to me, often through the Scriptures, that He would give me the number of members I had requested.

The first year I asked God for 150 members, and I got 150 members. The second year I asked Him to double the membership, and I got 300 members. The third year I again asked him to double the membership, and by the end of that year we did have 600 members.

This time I decided to ask the Lord for five times as many members as we had, and to give them to us within three years. That would give our church 3,000 members by 1964 that was the number for which I felt I had the faith to believe.

As I prayed, I received confirmation that, indeed, God would build a church through me larger than the Yong Nak Presbyterian Church. I was excited! I did not wait for any further revelation on how the Lord wanted me to accomplish this; I simply began to work all the harder to bring in new members.

I thought God approved of what I was doing. After all, He was blessing our work with miracles and healings; that was what brought the people to the church. But I was convinced that God had made Yonggi Cho somebody special. He was doing all this work through mel Without me, nothing happened in the church.

After moving the church from its original site, where it had been known as the Taejo Dong Full Gospel Church, we renamed it Full Gospel Central Church. I was the pastor. I was the administrator. I was in charge of the Sunday school program. And, yes, oftentimes I was even the janitor. Full Gospel Central Church simply could not function without the Reverend Paul Yonggi Cho, I thought. I was the pivot around which the whole church revolved.

This was not an intentional thing with me. I had been raised during the Japanese occupation of Korea and had been forced to live in a very poverty-stricken situation. I had almost died from tuberculosis. As a response to my background, I had tremendous ambition to become famous and successful, and to make a lot of money. In fact, before I met Jesus Christ as my Savior, I had intended to become a physician.

So when I entered the ministry, in my heart there was a hidden goal to become a famous and successful preacher. I loved God and wanted to work for Him, but my hidden motive was always the drive to succeed. I was very egotistical, and I wanted to do everything my own way.

God had to destroy all that; otherwise the church would have been my work, not His. God had to break me so that I would be worthy to lead His flock. I did not know that at the time, and so in all of my striving for the Lord I was always running scared. Not only that, I was beginning to tire.

By 1964 we were behind schedule, compared with my request to God for 3,000 members. Our congregation had grown to 2,400, but I was already in big trouble. I still thought I was really accomplishing great things for the Lord, rushing around from early morning until late in the evening, but my nerves were beginning to wear out. I suffered from constant fatigue, yet I continued to force myself to keep the church moving. I preached, I counseled , I visited the sick, I knocked on doorsI was always on the move.