Schirrmacher calls half a million listeners of Yoido Full Gospel Church to work for more Asian missionaries to Europe

Monday March 26th, 2018 / Special topics Mission, Special topics theology, Evangelicals, ProMundis Blog / shortURL

An internationally well known European theologian and church leader has called upon the churches in Asia, to send more missionaries to Europe.

The congregation listening to Schirrmacher’s call © BQ/Warnecke

He issued the call from the pulpit of the largest congregation in the world, at prime time in the main service, with 20.000 sitting in the pews and half a million people in Korea and over Asia watching life.

Reverend Younghoon Lee, senior pastor of the church, introduced Schirrmacher as a close friend and a man loving the Bible and the gospel. “He is not only the theological signboard of the Evangelicals and the World Evangelical Alliance and has the trust of its Secretary General, but is a leading missiologists and strategist of world mission. So please listen to him carefully”, Lee said verbatim.

Schirrmacher visited the church several times to help them to implement more elements of the Reformation adding to the teaching of the founder David Yonggi Cho. Last year he visited Hansei University, founded by the Yoido Full Gospel Church, and its President, Lady Kim Sung Hae, to congratulate the university for having installed a Lutheran professor of Systematic Theology in its theological faculty.

Schirrmacher in the pulpit of Yoido Full Gospel Church © BQ/Warnecke

“The worldwide Evangelical movement needs to hold all the different revivals and reformations, that make up its fabric, together. The Pentecostals need the Reformation, many Reformation churches need an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and we all need to learn from each other, while accepting, that it is the Holy Spirit speaking through Scripture, that is the final authority for us all”, Schirrmacher said.

Yoido Full Gospel Church is the largest single Christian congregation in the world, with Twelve services in Korean and twenty in other languages, English, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Spanish and Mongolian. Besides this it is known for its many prayer meetings, whole nights, early in the morning, or on specific occasions as Easter morning. The church has 1,205 elders and 410 pastors, 700 missionaries in 60 countries.

Yet the church is not an impersonal megachurch with large numbers, but in reality the 489,000 members make 9,632 house cell groups, which are the real heartbeat of the church.