How Do Churches Grow -- Part 4

The Church that grows 20% a year.

The largest church in the world is in Seoul, South Korea. Pastor Cho is the pastor of this church, and they have a number of cool stories that float around. They own a mountain for prayer. There is someone on the mountain praying 24 hours a day every day. They have built their church on prayer and small groups. Their church was 700,000 when I was in college.

Their pastor told his secretary that he was going to pray, hold his calls. She interrupted a few minutes later. Bothered he repeated that he was not to be interrupted. She replied that the president was on the phone. Bothered he again repeated that he was praying and was not to be interrupted.

So how do they grow 20% a year? Their small groups are 10 people per group, and they are asked to reach 2 people a year with the gospel who are converted and baptized. The next year, again, the groups are asked to reach 2 per 10. Specifically they are asked to pick 2 people and then serve them in love until they come to Christ. They grow just about 20% a year.

In our context that would look like this:

2006: 25
2007: 30
2010: 52
2015: 127
2026: 936

In the Korean setting this is practical growth. For us it probably seems a little more theoretical. You could factor in transience. The fact that our area is given to a lot of turnover is a major difference between the American context and the Korean. But to me that’s not the point. We have expectations of growing faster than 20% in these first few years, think of how a baby triples in size in one year. For survival we need to grow at a similar rate. The real key is to keep growing. That’s the amazing thing about the church in Korea. They continue to grow. It separates them from just about every other church in the world.

--Ben