2+grupos Celulares (074 155)

SUCCESSFUL HOME CELL GROUPS
one year, and it has been done not only with a Korean, but
with a woman. Here she is in downtown Tokyo, and she
has 250 members! That is one of the largest Christian
churches in the city! Shame on you!"
And they all dropped their heads, because they knew I
was right.
So now in Japan many of the churches are beginning
to catch fire just because of that one Korean missionary
from our church. The Japanese men have to save face.
Their reasoning is that, if a woman can do it and do it well,
then the men should be able to do it better. That is Oriental
thinking.
It should be obvious, then, that with the cell system I
can send a missionary anywhere in the world, and he can
start a church. All he has to do is begin looking for needs,
loving people and helping them, and very soon he has the
nucleus of a home cell group. As each cell grows and
begins to divide, he soon has a church!
This has worked extremely well in Korea. In addition
to our own church and its 10,000 home cell groups, fifty-
five other churches have been started throughout the
country by our members. They are now functioning as
self-supporting churches within the Assemblies of God
denomination, and they are all growing through home cell
groups.
Our missionary churches are also springing up all over
the world. There are now more than fifty churches started
by our members outside of Korea, and more than forty of
them are in North and South America. The largest has
more than 500 members in New York City. We also have
ten churches in Europe.
In most of these cases the churches were started to
meet the needs of a local Korean community. Many
Koreans have immigrated to the United States, Europe and
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A New Kind of Missionary
South America. Some of them had been members of our

church in Korea, or they had heard about it, or they had
been to one of the other missionary churches that are part
of the outreach of Full Gospel Central Church. They feel
the need for churches in their own communities, and they
ask us to send someone to lead them.
In each of these cases I have sent a missionary—
always someone I have sent through Bible school and then
trained as a licensed minister in our own church. I make
sure they have at least three years of experience before I
send them out. But when they are ready, and there is a
call, I then provide them with a salary for six months to a
year and let them start a church.
In every case the amount of money I have provided
has been sufficient. After six months to a year every one of
those missionary churches has become self-supporting. I
do not have to keep sending them money endlessly, as
some Western churches and denominations have done for
their missionaries. The local congregations themselves
provide everything necessary, including the missionary's
salary.
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8
8 The Miracle Church
I have explained that the growth of our church is

based upon goal-setting and the establishment of home
cell groups. I have more than realized the goals I have set
so far. At the beginning of 1980 we had 100,000 members
in Full Gospel Central Church. Now I have set 500,000 as
my goal to be reached by 1984, the year in which we
celebrate the 100th anniversary of Christianity in Korea.
When people heard I had set a goal of 500,000 for
1984, many asked me, "Are you going to have a big
campaign? Are you going to have a city-wide soulwinning
program?"
I don't need any of those things, because I have a
completely different philosophy of evangelism. Before I
knew the biblical way of evangelizing, I thought the only
thing to do was have a big revival meeting with all sorts of
special speakers and programs. But with the cell system,
we don't need any special programs at all. We are having
revival every day, and it hardly takes any effort.
To illustrate how revival is going on in our church, let
me go back to June of 1980. At that time our congregation
had reached 120,000. We had 8,000 cell groups. Only six
months earlier we had set a goal of 30,000 new members in
1980. But in less than six months our 100,000-member
congregation had grown to 120,000, two-thirds of our goal.
So we increased the goal for 1980 to 150,000. I told each of
the cell groups that they needed to lead only one family
each to Christ for the rest of the year.
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But with 8,000 cells, that would mean 8,000 more

families by the end of the year. The average family size is
about four persons. Therefore, adding 8,000 families to our
church would actually bring in 32,000 new members
during the remaining six months of 1980.
That's a great revival! And there's no fanfare, no need
to push, no need to advertise. I simply motivate the cell
leaders. Each cell group has only one family to lead to
Christ. That's no problem. The ten to fifteen families in
each cell group select one unbelieving family and begin to
pray for them and witness to them. It's not difficult to
understand that many of these cell groups will lead more
than one family to Christ during that time; they will lead
two or three.
So it is easy to see why we ended the year 1980 with
150,000 members and 10,000 home cell groups. Now I
have increased the goal for 1981—to four families per cell.
That will mean 80,000 new members in the first half of the
year and 80,000 more in the second half. By the end of the
year we will have 310,000 members. So it is easy to see
how we can reach 500,000 members by 1984—with no
problems, no fanfare, no television thrust, no mass
distribution of tracts, just person-to-person contact
through the home cell groups.
Because of the way this system works, there should be
no plateaus to church growth. Too many churches grow to
500 or 1,000 members and then settle down and begin to
mark time. It isn't that there are no more people to be won
to Christ in their area; the minister simply becomes
satisfied and loses the vision for evangelism. Then the
work of the Holy Spirit begins to cool.
But with cell groups that evangelize, the church can
continue to grow and thrive, no matter what
circumstances it faces. Today we have an oil problem
because of the situation in the Middle East. When any
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The Miracle Church
place is faced with a real oil shortage, and there is a lack of

public transportation, church attendance will drop, unless
the people live near the church building.
But that does not have to be a problem for our church.
If the people cannot get transportation to come to church
on Sundays, they will still receive ministry in the cell
meeting, and they continue to be just as much a part of the
church as if they were in the main church building every
Sunday. For a larger meeting, groups of cells can get
together for a district worship service in their own area,
and the district pastor will do the preaching. There they
will worship and take up offerings for the use of the
mother church. If the oil shortage is a long one, I can make
video cassettes of my message and have it shown to the
district worship meetings.
In Korea, if there is ever a war in which the
Communists take control of Seoul, one of the first things
they will do is close the churches and kill the pastors. If I
had built my church around myself, the church would be
destroyed the moment I was removed from authority over
it. But the way our church is set up, it is impossible to
destroy it. When the Communists come and destroy the
church building and kill me, all the church members will
go underground. Yes, the Communists may be able to find
and eliminate some of the cell groups, perhaps even
hundreds of them. But they will never be able to find and
destroy all 10,000 of them. The church will persist and
remain underground.
The church in China has survived with just this kind
of pattern. (I have a great deal of information on China
because of my radio ministry.) In China there are only a
few visible "legal" churches now, but those are really
under the domination of the Communist government. The
pastors cannot preach the full gospel in those churches.
But the church in China does not exist just in those few
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visible buildings. There are thousands and thousands of

cell-group churches throughout the country. They are very
similar to the cell groups in our church. You can't meet the
members of the cell groups casually, because they will not
expose themselves to strangers. The only way to meet
them is through an intermediary. But once you meet them,
they will welcome you. I know of thousands of these
Christian cells in the Canton area alone, and some of those
cells constitute a fellowship of more than 500 persons.
When I first met members of those Chinese churches,
on a visit to Hong Kong, the first thing they asked for was
Bibles, and they wanted cassette tapes and recorders. Then
they asked me, "Do the churches in the rest of the world
have this full blessing of the Holy Spirit as we have in
China?"
Most of the Chinese churches were started purely by
the Holy Spirit. The people had never seen or heard a
missionary, because the Communist Chinese government
successfully removed Christianity as a part of public life
during its more than thirty years in power. Yet most of the
converts are under thirty-five years of age!
Another thing I learned about the cell-group churches
in China is that 99 percent of the leaders are women. They
took the leadership when the men were afraid to expose
themselves as Christians.
The churches in China are thriving—without being
under a mother church, without trained pastors or
missionaries, without denominations. The life is being
transmitted from cell to cell. Their experience
demonstrates that the cell system is the answer for
churches in these last days.
In an age of economic depression, how can a church
carry out body ministry when it has such a large crowd of
people as we have at Full Gospel Central Church? Again
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The Miracle Church
the answer is home cell groups. In the cell groups,

members really care for one another. When someone is out
of a job and has no income, other members of the group
help to meet his needs. The care shown by the members of
our cell groups is more than superficial affection. It is
really love in action. Our people go out of their way, and
even sacrifice, to meet the needs of a brother or a sister. It's
just like the church of the apostolic age, where the
members shared all of their material possessions.
When people see what is happening in our cell groups,
when they see how the believers all have real love for one
another, they are attracted to the groups. In those groups
they find so much security that they never want to leave.
As I have already mentioned, this system of home cell
groups does not depend on one person. In our church it
does not depend on me. It depends on the ministry of the
Holy Spirit, because He is the one who energizes the
leaders. If I were to leave our church, I believe the church
would lose no more than 3,000 members out of the total
150,000. Those members don't depend on me; they depend
on one another and on the Holy Spirit.
Depression, oil shortages, persecution—none of these
things need affect my church. It will continue to grow as
long as the people adhere to the principles I've shown to
them.
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9
9 Authority With Love
When I started my church, it was only a little tent

mission of the Assemblies of God in Korea. Today it is the
largest single congregation of Christians in the world. We
have grown to this size within the framework of the
Assemblies of God denomination.
I say this to stress one point: The size, the strength and
the influence of our congregation is not isolated from the
overall Church of Jesus Christ, nor is it isolated from a
denomination. We are in full fellowship with the Church
universal and with our denomination. But first and
foremost, we are a local church.
From the descriptions of our church, here and
elsewhere, it would be easy for someone to wonder if I am
forming my own denomination, or if my principles are
acceptable to the larger church. I am happy to declare that
there is no division or lack of acceptance in either case. I
am demonstrating that the system of home cell groups
works within the local church and within the established
denominations.
In the past, many home groups have been established
outside of the local church and outside of established
denominations. Often they have come out of the
charismatic renewal that has swept the churches in the
past two decades. Christians who were newly baptized in
the Holy Spirit found themselves misunderstood by their
own churches. They sought fellowship and teaching in
these groups, as well as in the Pentecostal churches.
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Gradually some of those groups (although not the

majority of them) began to conflict with the churches and
to usurp authority from them. Members of the groups
were "submitting" to the authority of the private group
leaders rather than to their own pastors (who usually did
not understand them). Thus the "discipleship" or
"shepherding" controversy was born.
In some cases these independent groups led many
Christians into bondage. No one could make a decision
unless it was confirmed by the elders of the group.
Personal communication with the Holy Spirit was
discouraged as those in authority began to exercise greater
control over the personal lives of the members, including
telling them who they should marry and telling the
younger members if they were permitted to have contact
with their "unbelieving" parents.
Needless to say, some of those groups actually were
transformed into minor cults. Innumerable lives were
disrupted and relationships ruined. (I do not mean to
imply that this is a logical progression to be expected from
independent home groups. Most of them have provided a
good form of fellowship for Christians who elected to
remain in their own churches and who continued to
submit willingly to the discipline of their own churches.
And, of course, some of those independent groups grew
into fine charismatic churches. The ones that went astray
definitely were in the minority.)
I don't have the answer as to how one keeps a cult
from developing in such circumstances. In fact, the Bible
doesn't have an answer either, for it is evident that a
number of them developed during the time of the apostle
Paul. It depends on the leader and on the circumstances.
The wrong combination can bring about catastrophe in the
church. That is why it is so important for the leaders to be
responsible to others in authority, such as to a
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Authority With Love
denomination or to a fellowship of pastors outside their

own local church.
My system of home cell groups and the Full Gospel
Central Church developed within the Assemblies of God
denomination. I am still responsible to the general
superintendent in Korea. We have a good relationship; we
don't always agree on everything, but we are part of a
working, loving partnership that involves mutual respect.
Our goal is unity. From time to time there have been some
persons who have urged me to pull out of the Assemblies
of God and become an independent church. They tell me I
would have greater freedom to do anything I want
without having to answer to anybody. But I never even
gave those suggestions a second thought, because I believe
in the need for unity. I believe we should always promote
the unity of the body of Christ, and we should reject
anything that seeks to divide the Church.
When a local church pulls out of its denomination, it is
a bad model to display before the Church and before the
world. It makes people wonder about Christianity, for
they interpret such divisions as revealing a lack of the love
that we preach.
All of these considerations keep me humble. I know I
need my peers in the denominations. I need both their love
and their loving correction. I need to be open with them,
and my church and my financial records need to be open
to their inspection. In that way nothing is done in secret to
cause suspicions. In this way I feel secure in my own
position.
Therefore, with the agreement of the elders and the
denominational executives, home cell groups should work
in any local church, in any denomination, if they follow the
principles I am laying down in this book. Home cell
groups must be integrated into the whole program of the
local church, and their influence should not expand
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beyond the boundaries of the local church. We must make

disciples of the members of our own church, not of the
members of somebody else's church.
The discipleship program that grew out of the
independent home groups actually became a form of
sheep-stealing. No respectable pastor would advocate that.
It's unethical. In fact, in our church when our members are
looking for unbelievers to help and to invite to the home
cell meetings, I tell them specifically to avoid those who
already belong to other churches. We do not proselytize.
(Of course, if someone voluntarily leaves his church to
come to our church and our home cell meetings because
his own church is not meeting his spiritual needs, that is
another story. But we do not seek members from other
churches.) In Korea the Christians often display a red cross
on the doors of their homes to identify them as Christians.
When our members see that symbol, they know the person
behind the door is already a brother from another church,
and they leave him alone.
The local church is the strength of Christianity. Home
cell groups contribute to that strength. Anything that
dilutes the strength of the local church is to be avoided.
That includes some of the parachurch ministries that
sometimes take money and commitment away from the
local church. If a parachurch ministry or mission is
contributing to the strength of the local church, it should
be encouraged and supported. But if it weakens the local
church, it should be discouraged and not supported. The
local church is the preserver of faith and of Christianity.
I would also like to point out that, while there is a very
tight structure in our church, the members have real
freedom to be themselves. As I mentioned earlier, one of
the problems with the independent home groups is that
some of them have exercised too much control over their
members. That is wrong. In our church the cell leaders are
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Authority With Love
there to help oversee the spiritual growth of the members,

and to encourage them in fellowship and evangelism. But
they are never to meddle in the personal affairs of the
members. That is not the responsibility of the church. Each
member must be encouraged and taught to depend upon
the Holy Spirit himself and to develop a life of faith. I
never encourage our members to become dependent on
the cell leaders, because that would be as bad as
communism or the Moonies. Anything that destroys
personal independence and the individual's personality
and responsibility is from the devil. God never created us
to be puppets. He gave us personalities to be developed
into loving sons and daughters living in relationship with
Him. Our home cell groups are designed to promote that
relationship.
In our church we have "authority with love." If a
pastor really loves the people in his congregation, they will
respond to his authority and will obey his teaching. But if
the pastor tries to exert his authority merely on the
strength of his position or on human maneuvering, the
people will rebel, and he will be in trouble.
The members of Full Gospel Central Church obey me
because they know I genuinely love them. If I make a
mistake, I publicly confess it to them and ask them to pray
for me. When a pastor can be open with his congregation
like that, they will respect him and obey him. In
Christianity all authority must be based on love, just as
God's authority over us is based on love.
Today many Christians do not respect their pastors or
the authority of their pastors. That is wrong. The pastor
has been anointed by God to lead the sheep, but he has to
show real Christlike love to the sheep before they will
follow him unreservedly.
I learned a lesson about taking church members for
granted (thus showing a lack of love). Recently one of our
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elders told me that another elder had said, "I do not fully
agree with all of Pastor Cho's policies in the church, but I
accept them because I know he really loves me. He's doing
all of this for our benefit."
I felt good about the man's allegiance, but I was
disturbed that he had not told me what policies he
disagreed with. When I finally approached him on the
matter, he said, "You never consulted me when you
appointed me head of the missions board for Europe. You
knew I would do it, but you didn't ask me."
He was right. I had taken it for granted that he would
accept.
"Please forgive me," I said to him. "I've taken your love
and obedience for granted."
He responded immediately, and his confidence in me
was multiplied that day. I developed a new respect for
him as well, and the openness has contributed to an even
better relationship between us. When people know that
the pastor will admit his mistakes and will be honest with
them, they will respect him.
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10
10 Church Growth International
I have been telling people about these church growth

principles since 1964, when I was invited to attend the
General Council of the Assemblies of God in Springfield,
Missouri. In fact, that was the year I really began to travel,
in spite of my illness and weakness at that time. Between
1964 and 1973, I was out of Korea at least three times a
year, mainly to Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan, to talk
about home cell groups and church growth.
After we moved to Yoido Island in 1973, our church
began to become better known. That was the year Billy
Graham held his big crusade in Seoul, and it also was the
year the World Pentecostal Conference met in our church.
In addition, the following year Campus Crusade for Christ
sponsored a big conference in Seoul.
With so many Christian events occurring in Seoul, our
church was becoming increasingly an international
attraction. Invitations began to pour in, asking me to travel
to America, to Europe, to Australia and to Southeast Asia
to discuss church growth.
Beginning in 1973 I found myself traveling outside of
Korea for up to six months a year. Surprisingly, most of
the invitations were coming from Europe. I was invited to
speak in West Germany, France, Switzerland, Norway,
Denmark, Sweden, England, Italy and Portugal. My books,
which I continued to write, were becoming best sellers in
Germany, Sweden and Finland. I was better known in
Europe than in America.
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On one of those trips in 1976 I had just completed a

series of meetings in Germany. The seminars had been
very well attended. On the Lufthansa flight leaving
Germany, I was praying in my seat, thanking God for the
wonderful time of sharing, and really feeling close
fellowship with the Holy Spirit.
Suddenly a very strong sensation of prophecy came
upon my heart, as the Holy Spirit said to me, "When you
get back home, I want you to build an international church
growth training center to which you can invite pastors from all
over the world. You are doing a good work in carrying this
message throughout the world with your seminars, but I want
to multiply the number of pastors who will learn these
principles. The best way is for them to see firsthand what you
are doing right in Seoul. Build a training center. Let them come
and learn from you and see your church in operation. That is the
best way for them to gain the enthusiasm they need to put this
dimension of evangelism into their own ministries."
I was shocked. "How can this be, Lord?" I asked. "I am
from a Third World country. We are what is called the
'mission field' by Western Christians. Surely such a
training center ought to be built in the United States or
Europe."
But the thought would not go away. I wondered about
it all the way back to Korea. Afterward, when the thought
persisted at home, I decided to spread a fleece.
"Lord, if this desire in my heart is from you, then I ask
you to show me," I said. "If the people of our church will
contribute enough money in one offering to build a
missions center, that will be the sign that I should
proceed."
I discussed the proposal with the elders, and we
decided to schedule a Sunday when we would ask the
members to give one million dollars (either in cash or in
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Church Growth International
pledges) for the construction of the missions center. To tell

the truth, it was more than I could believe for at that time.
I was really worried and afraid that the people would not
give.
Finally I just said in my prayer, "Father, if this is your
will, give me the one million dollars. If I do not receive it
on Sunday, I will forget the whole thing."
The next Sunday the offerings and pledges came in.
When they were all tallied up, the finance chairman
brought me the final figures: exactly one million dollars!
Immediately we set the process in motion to construct
the World Mission Center right next to Full Gospel Central
Church, and we formed a new organization to carry out
this portion of my ministry: Church Growth International.
As the plans began to take shape, I knew this was a
major undertaking. I also knew I would not be able to
handle it alone. I still had our church to lead, and the
demands of Church Growth International also called for a
full-time executive. I could not do both jobs. Who would I
get to lead it?
Then the name of John Hurston suddenly came to
mind: the missionary who had worked with me in my
little tent church in the poor area of Seoul, the missionary
who had played such a major role in founding the West
Gate church with me. I had not seen him in more than five
years. John Hurston had been with me for ten years until
he left in 1969 to go to Vietnam. There he started several
churches during the Vietnam War. He finally had to flee in
1975 when the Communists took over South Vietnam.
I traced John to Pasadena, California, where I found
him recuperating from a minor heart attack. When I
visited him, he looked very tired, and he appeared much
older than when I last had seen him five years earlier.
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"It was a very traumatic experience to leave Vietnam,"

he admitted. "I spent six years there building churches,
and I literally wept when I had to leave them as I did. But I
knew I had no choice."
"John, what are you planning to do now?" I asked.
"I don't know yet," he said. "The Missions Board has
asked me to go to Thailand, to be director of missions for
the Assemblies of God there. But frankly I don't feel any
leading at all in the matter."
That was the opening I needed. I began to explain the
vision God had given me for building Church Growth
International, and I told John how He had provided the
money to build it.
"I need an executive director," I said. "I believe you are
the man for the job, John."
I could see immediately that the idea appealed to him,
and so we prayed about it.
"Yes, I think that is the job the Lord would want me to
take," he said at last. "But if I am to take over such a
responsible job now, God will have to heal me of this heart
condition."
The following month my mother-in-law, Dr. Jashil
Choi, was holding some meetings in the Los Angeles area.
At that meeting she laid hands on John, and he felt a
definite healing. Not long after that he was on his way
back to Korea.
There was one other thing I felt the Lord wanted me to
do in giving Church Growth International a firm
foundation. We needed an international advisory board to
give us their input on how we could make the resources of
our facility available to the most ministers. Shortly after
the World Mission Center was finished in November,
1976, I began to look for those advisors.
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The following February I set up a meeting in a hotel in

North Hollywood, to which I had invited two dozen
ministers from thriving churches in America. I was
amazed when almost all of them showed up.
At that first meeting I described the vision the Lord
had given me for spreading church growth principles
around the world by means of the new organization.
"I specifically feel we are to share our knowledge with
the churches in Third World countries," I said. "In that way
we will be strengthening the church in those countries and
encouraging them to greater growth for worldwide
evangelism."
Everyone was very enthusiastic about the vision. I
suggested that one of them be nominated as chairman of
our group.
"Oh, no, no, you are the one who has the vision for
church growth," I was told. "We came here because of you.
We wouldn't have come otherwise."
So they unanimously elected me chairman and agreed
to work together with me in setting up Church Growth
International meetings, not only in Korea but also in the
United States and elsewhere around the world.
I really feel that Church Growth International is
addressing the needs of the church in the 1980s. This is
going to be the era of church growth. The 1960s were an
era of healings that helped to spread the renewal of the
churches. The 1970s were the era of the charismatic
movement. Now it's time for church growth. Healings and
charismatic renewal will do no good for the church unless
they contribute to the growth of the church. In fact, all the
gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to build up the body of
Christ, and that does not mean only spiritual
encouragement; it includes physical growth as well.
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We must be serious about church growth if we are

concerned about the future of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Church growth is not just another fad. Jesus came to build
a Church, and that Church has been asleep until now. It is
just waking up! Any church that wakes up is going to
grow.
The kind of growth we are experiencing in Korea is
available to all of the churches. I know there are some who
think this is only a Korean phenomenon that does not
apply to the United States or to Western Europe. But these
are solid, proven principles of church growth that have
merely been demonstrated in our church in Korea. There is
no reason why any other church could not grow to the
same size—or larger—using these principles. They are
universal, as applicable in Seattle, or Sydney, or
Stockholm, as they are in Seoul.
We are all children of Adam. We eat different kinds of
food, but we all have the same kind of blood. We are all
sinners in need of salvation by Jesus Christ. We all need to
be empowered by the Holy Spirit. If a church preaches the
gospel, the Word of God, with the power of the Holy
Spirit, it is going to grow. Then, if it adds these principles
of church growth and establishes home cell groups, it is
going to be a strong and rapidly growing church.
These principles will work—anywhere in the world.
To think otherwise is dangerous, for that would mean
believing that God works one way in one place and
another way someplace else. He is powerful in Korea but
not so powerful elsewhere. That cannot be true. A
principle is always a principle. If a church adopts these
principles, if it starts home cell groups, it will find
everything following the same pattern that we have in our
church, and it will grow.
This teaching has really revolutionized the churches of
Australia. I've already mentioned that the Australian
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Assemblies of God had experienced only 2 percent growth

in ten years before they adopted my principles; afterward
they doubled in only three years. I might also add that
there are now two Assemblies of God churches in that
country with more than 2,000 members each, one in
Adelaide and one in Brisbane. Until they adopted my
church growth principles, the Australian churches were
much like those in Japan—forty or fifty members was the
usual size of the congregation.
There was one Lutheran church in Europe that had
only fifteen people in church each Sunday. Then the pastor
attended one of my seminars and put my church growth
principles into practice. Within one year of forming his
first cell groups, his church continually increased in
attendance until now he has 500 people in church every
Sunday. In addition, that church soon learned there was
something missing in their experience, and they
discovered the power of the Holy Spirit. Their cell groups
really sprang to life, and the church is now fully
charismatic.
I am now concentrating my efforts on Japan. The
missionary in Tokyo with her growing church (soon to be
500 members) is only the beginning. We are believing the
Holy Spirit can bring ten million Japanese to Christ in the
1980s, and we are working with Him to bring those people
into the church by using our church growth principles.
Church Growth International has really proven itself
to be a sovereign move of the Holy Spirit. The fruit it has
borne is evidence of that.
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11
11 How to Begin Home Cell Groups
There is only one way that the home cell group system
will be successful in a church, if that system is to be used
as a tool of evangelism. The pastor must be the key person
involved. Without the pastor, the system will not hold
together. It is a system, and a system must have a control
point. The controlling factor in home cell groups is the
pastor.
So if you are a layman reading this book, the first thing
I would recommend is that you give a copy of the book to
your pastor. Then pray that he will read it and catch the
vision. You cannot start anything without him. When he
reads the book, sees the potential for church growth and
becomes motivated to start something himself, he will be
in a good position to inaugurate home cell groups. After
he has had a chance to digest the contents of the book, call
him up and invite him to breakfast or lunch. Then you can
discuss home cell groups as a means of church revival and
evangelism.
From that point on, it is up to the pastor to motivate
the congregation toward revival and toward church
growth using the principles of home cell groups. It is up to
you to support him and work with him in getting the
congregation involved.
If your church can afford it, I would recommend
sending the pastor to one of our Church Growth
International seminars. They are being held all over the
world, and we will be happy to provide you with a
schedule. The best seminar is the one in Seoul, where one
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can see firsthand what has been accomplished at Full

Gospel Central Church.
I know of many churches that have attempted to set
up home cell groups without the central involvement of
the pastor. They have all struggled without any real
success. There is one big church in the United States whose
pastor attended our seminar in Seoul and saw the value of
cell groups. But instead of getting behind the effort and
promoting cell groups himself, he turned all of the
responsibilities over to an associate minister. The associate
did all of the organizing, and the cell groups were started.
But after two years they are stagnant; attendance is poor
and the members are not being motivated toward
evangelism. Why? The congregation sees cell groups as
only one of many varied programs in this big church. They
don't see them as the key to revival or to evangelism; after
all, there are so many other programs aimed at those goals.
The pastor isn't actively involved, so the members feel that
cell groups can't be all that important.
If cell groups are to succeed, the pastor must become
so convinced of their necessity in the church that he will
see them as the key to the life or death of his church. Once
he becomes convinced, the program will move.
A lot of groundwork needs to be laid before the
system can be implemented. I believe the pastor needs to
commit his energy and leadership to lay the groundwork.
And even after the program is rolling, he needs to remain
the obvious leader, training the cell leaders and motivating
them to reach the goals that have been established for each
group.
The nitty-gritty can be delegated to an associate, but
the leadership must remain with the pastor. He must
continue to have an active relationship with the cell
leaders.
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How to Begin Home Cell Groups
I always say that a minister should put his total energy

into this system to make it successful. That calls for a
concentration of power and enthusiasm. Otherwise the
people will feel that the system of home cell groups is only
a gimmick, and the church today has become very callous
about gimmicks. Any gimmick is bound to fail, but cell
groups are not a gimmick.
If the people are not convinced the pastor is behind the
formation of cell groups, one of three things will occur:
1. The system will bog down and begin to stagnate.
Cells will meet for "fellowship" only, and there will
be no real spiritual growth and no evangelism.
Eventually they will fizzle out.
2. Meetings will become ritualistic, or the groups will
come under the influence of personalities. In this
way the cells eventually will become something
superfluous, useless and harmful.
3. The system will become a cancer on the local body
if the cell leaders are not required to report
regularly to their peers or superiors, or to the
pastor.
Even in Korea many churches that have organized cell
groups as a result of seeing the success of our church have
found the system of no use to them because the pastor is
not the central figure in it. Some of them think that just
because I am traveling six months out of the year I cannot
possibly be giving personal direction to the cell groups.
But I really do. When I am traveling, I always record my
messages for the cell leaders on video cassettes. The
fellowship leaders need to feel they are a top priority of
the church so they are motivated to work and take
responsibility. If I don't give them that personal attention,
they are not so motivated.
The pastor who decides to become involved in home
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cell groups needs to study this system thoroughly, or he

will fail. And if he fails once, he will not be inclined to try
it again. It is very important for him to attend a church
where the cell system is operating successfully. Once he
understands it clearly, then it is time for him to begin.
The first steps in establishing home cell groups are
very important. Here are my recommendations for the
pastor:
First, you should start small. Take a dozen key lay
leaders and train them as cell leaders. Then have them
form their own home cell meetings, and watch over them
carefully for six to eight months. Once this group of cells
has begun to bear fruit, it will be time to get the whole
church involved.
Selecting the right lay leaders is essential. Success or
failure can depend on them. The first thing the pastor
should do is look for men and women who are Spirit-
filled. If the leaders are not dependent on the Holy Spirit,
they can actually begin to move counter to the work of the
Holy Spirit. Here are some of the qualities I look for in cell
leaders:
1. Enthusiasm. New Christians often make very good
cell leaders, because they have just come into a
personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Their
enthusiasm is infectious. Older Christians often
need to be reprogrammed before they will accept
the cell system.
2. Testimony. Christians who have a clear, powerful
testimony of what God has done for them are living
proofs that the gospel does work today. Such
Christians demonstrate the reality of the life of
Christ, and others are drawn to them.
3. Dedication. You can usually tell whether a person is
dedicated to the Lord and to your church by (a) his
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attendance record at church and at other meetings,

including cell groups, (b) his tithing record, which
is an essential part of his life of faith, and (c) his
demonstrated commitment to unity in the life of
the church. Those who are overcritical or out of
step with the majority will not easily follow the
pastor's directions for leading home cell groups.
4. Spirit-filled. Dependence upon the Holy Spirit is
essential if a person is to lead the members of his
cell group. In our church that means the leader
must be baptized in the Holy Spirit, with the
evidence of speaking in tongues. Then we are
assured of a person who can lead others to Christ
and who can pray powerfully for the people's
needs. This is particularly essential in praying for
physical and spiritual healing.
5. Time and money. Although there is an axiom that, if
you want a job done, give it to a busy person, that
axiom does not apply to spiritual leadership. The
busier a person is, the less time he is going to have
to listen to and receive direction from the Holy
Spirit. The best cell leaders are those who do not
have to go to work outside the home; they usually
have much more time for prayer and Bible study.
The same holds true for those with enough money
that they don't have to be concerned constantly
about earning enough to live on; they too will have
more time for prayer and Bible study. This does not
mean we should not select poor people to lead
home cell groups, however. If people meet all of
the other qualifications, I am convinced they will
make good cell leaders. And besides, they probably
will not remain poor for long. I teach our people
that when you go to work for the Lord you are not
going to stay poor, because God is going to supply
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all your needs.

Once the leaders are selected, they need to be trained
in leading meetings. First they must learn from the pastor
so that they can pass on the pastor's teaching to those in
the cell groups. It is essential that the teaching at cell
meetings fit in with the overall program of teaching in the
church. It is a good idea for cell group lessons to follow the
pastor's Sunday sermon, perhaps to enlarge upon some of
the most important points of that sermon.
I provide all of my cell leaders with a standard lesson
each week. In an earlier chapter I mentioned the chaos that
resulted from a lack of direction in the early days of cell
groups in our church. That settled down when I began to
write out the lesson plan for all of the cell meetings each
week. I no longer have time to prepare individual lesson
plans each week, but our church has adopted a standard
Bible study course for cell groups similar to the standard
Sunday school courses available in many churches.
Although I no longer prepare the individual lessons, I
still take an active role in preparing the leaders. At first the
leaders all met with me each Wednesday evening in place
of the midweek prayer meeting to learn the next week's
lesson. Later, when I could not be with them in person, I
taught them via cassette tape. Now that our church has
enlarged facilities, I teach them each week via video
cassette. And each week the lesson outline appears in our
church's weekly newspaper, so all of the members can
prepare for the lesson in advance.
In addition to the lessons from the Word of God, there
are other functions of a cell meeting that make it truly a
gathering of God's people. There is always worship,
through the singing of hymns and choruses, and through
the prayers of the leader and others in the group. We
always give the groups a time of open prayer, when all are
permitted to bring their prayers of thanksgiving,
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confession, intercession and petition before the Lord.

A third ingredient of our cell meetings is ministry to
one another. Members are encouraged to share their
prayer needs so all can pray for them. We have had some
miraculous healings take place right in the cell groups, as
one person has prayed for another, making it clear to
everyone that the Holy Spirit works in those meetings just
as He does in the church services.
And finally, the meetings are required to be
evangelistic. The lesson and the testimonies should lead
newcomers to the person of Jesus Christ. Members are
encouraged to look around their neighborhoods for
unbelievers they can invite to the meetings. Many of those
unbelievers do meet Jesus Christ and commit their lives to
Him right in the cell meetings. This is really what is
causing our church to grow so rapidly. To me, evangelism
is essential if home cell groups are to provide real life for
the church.
After the original group of cells has been meeting for
six to eight months, it is time to expand to the whole
congregation. By then the first cells should be bearing real
fruit for the church, and most of the people will already
have learned a great deal about them through the church
grapevine. Now is the time to have an all-church meeting
and introduce everybody to them.
At the general church meeting, the cell leaders and
members of their groups should give testimony to the
whole congregation, showing what God is doing through
the cell meetings. Believe me, it will be an exciting time.
The enthusiasm of the leaders and cell members will be
infectious. People will be convinced that the cell system
has something for them.
You should also have statistics to back up the
testimonies, showing how many people have been healed
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or helped in other ways at the meetings, how many

unbelievers have been led to Christ, and so on.
Each pastor should know his own church and how to
get the most members involved. In our church I was able
to assign everybody to a cell group. Although there was
some initial grumbling, everybody went. That is the
pattern in our church. However, other pastors tell me that
voluntary participation is the only thing that will work in
their churches. They distribute sign-up sheets at the all-
church meeting, and the number of people who sign up
determines the number and location of the cell groups.
Whichever way the church goes, all efforts should be
made to get the maximum participation.
For instance, there is one church in the United States
that got involved in cell groups without using our model
at all. The pastor was convinced our system would not
work there. So he decided just to hold home meetings once
a month, strictly for fellowship.
Although he started out differently, he did follow one
of my principles: He directed the groups himself, and he
appointed six or seven pastors under him to be a model
cell group and use their experience to lead other groups.
He did not believe it was necessary to divide the church
up geographically, because everything was strictly
voluntary.
Do you know what happened? Everybody who went
to the home meetings enjoyed them so much that
attendance grew quickly. Soon they had to meet more
frequently. Not only that, but prayer and Bible study soon
became a regular part of the format. It just happened
naturally.
Now every new member of that church is required to
sign up for a cell group, and they are encouraging the
remaining older members to sign up too. The groups have
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become a major tool of evangelism, and the pastor now

says it is almost as though a whole new church is growing
within the original congregation—a church within a
church—and the new inner church is livelier than the
original one.
In California, another pastor already had a growing
church, and he was having difficulty fitting all of the
people into his church building on Sundays for four or five
services. So he divided his congregation into four groups.
Each Sunday one of those groups would meet in various
homes for fellowship and teaching, while the three other
groups would meet at the main building for the regular
Sunday worship services. Each of the groups would
alternate at holding home meetings on Sundays, so that
only three-fourths of the congregation attended formal
worship each week. When there was a fifth Sunday in the
month, everybody would come together at the church for a
big celebration.
Again the pastor was in firm control of the home
meetings. He trained the leadership and met with them
weekly. He directed them in the Bible studies, which went
along with what the pastor was teaching each week, and
he gave the leaders an outline and a tape.
In addition to meeting once a month for Bible study,
the groups in that church meet together one extra weekday
during the month just for fellowship. Each group of cells
has a picnic or some other form of social activity.
In these ways two pastors have found a way to bring
home cell groups successfully to their churches without
throwing their congregations into an uproar. Many
American churchgoers complain of having to spend too
much time in church, but by breaking their congregations
into home cell groups those pastors have increased church
attendance without making it seem like "church."
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In Korea, however, our church does not have home

meetings that are strictly for fellowship. It is all right for
our members to meet for fellowship on their own, but I
believe the meetings need to be highly disciplined if they
are to produce the kind of evangelism and growth we
have seen at Full Gospel Central Church. Groups that meet
without having evangelism as a goal do not produce
growth in the church. There is a great danger that they will
only feed on themselves.
I think I should add one thing about the church I left
behind in the West Gate area of Seoul. When we moved to
Yoido Island, 8,000 of our members stayed behind at the
old church, while 10,000 moved to the new one. The
members who stayed behind got a new pastor, and they
continue today to be a strong Assemblies of God church.
But the new pastor did not adopt my principles of home
cell groups. Although there are cell meetings in that
church, they are not used as a tool of evangelism. The
congregation, meanwhile, has dwindled to 2,000 members.
(Many of the original 8,000 transferred to our church,
although we had not sought them.)
I do not believe the traditional pastoral structure is
capable of ministering to the needs of 8,000 members.
Delegation of authority and the formation of home cell
groups is the only way of meeting all of those needs.
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12
12 Importance of Fellowship With the Holy

Spirit
I have already given the basic requirements for home

cell group leaders in the preceding chapter. But I would
like to elaborate on one of the points, namely the need for
each leader to be filled with the Holy Spirit and guided by
the Holy Spirit. In fact, the need goes beyond being filled
and being guided—each leader must have real fellowship
with the Holy Spirit.
Such fellowship with the Holy Spirit needs to be
prompted by the pastor, who should already be having
fellowship with the Holy Spirit. If the pastor is not
experiencing fellowship with the Holy Spirit, he will not
be able to help his cell leaders to grow in their own
relationship with the Holy Spirit.
I would also like to illustrate this point from my own
life. I give the greatest importance to fellowship with the
Holy Spirit. I know that in my own preaching ministry, if I
don't have the anointing of the Spirit, my message will not
bring results, no matter how much time I spend in the
preparation of my sermon. And if the message does not
bring results, it is wasted.
Many people do not know the meaning of fellowship
with the Holy Spirit. They say they are born again and
have received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. They have
experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in ministry.
"So what more do we need?" they ask.
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That's a great mistake. I lived with that attitude myself

for quite some time. I felt I had all the diplomas needed to
be a preacher in my denomination. I was born again, I had
received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and I had spoken
in tongues. "So that's all I need," I said to myself.
But God changed my attitude and showed me that the
Holy Spirit is more than the Spirit of being born again,
more than the Spirit of power. He's a person—but a person
who lives inside me. To live with a person means to have
fellowship with that person. It means recognition of each
other. It means intimate fellowship and communication.
Before I discovered this truth, my ministry fluctuated
greatly. Sometimes I would preach a very good message
and have tremendous results. At other times my ministry
seemed to flounder. Every Sunday when I really "hit a
home run" with my sermons, I would come home
rejoicing. At other times I seemed to strike out. I didn't see
anybody being saved, and I would feel very depressed. I
cried to the Lord and asked why He wasn't helping me.
Then one cold winter day in 1960, after preaching at
the early morning prayer meeting, I was praying alone in
the church when God began speaking to my spirit.
"My son," He said, "if you could have a deeper fellowship
with the Holy Spirit, your ministry would be multiplied and
empowered greatly."
So I said, "Father, don't I already have all of the Holy
Spirit? I'm born again. I've been baptized in the Holy
Spirit. What more do I need?"
Then God said, "Yes, you have the Holy Spirit in a
legalistic way, but you don't have intimate fellowship with the
Holy Spirit. You may bring a wife into your home legally, but
you may also leave her alone in the home as a thing, not as a
person, if you don't have fellowship with her continually."
That revelation brought new mileage to my ministry. I
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Importance of Fellowship With the Holy Spirit
began to have real fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

I realized that in the past my fellowship had been
similar to what is recorded in 1 John 1:3, which says, "Our
fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus
Christ" (NIV). Like most Christians, I had what I felt was
fellowship with the Father and with His Son. I prayed to
the Father, and I prayed to the Son, Jesus Christ. I
worshiped the Father and I worshiped the Son. And like
most Christians, I mentioned the Father and I mentioned
the Son, but very seldom did I mention the Holy Spirit.
But when we read the Bible, it not only commands us
to have fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus
Christ, it also commands us to have fellowship, or
communion, with the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14).
The meaning should be clear. The Father finished His
work in Old Testament times. Then He sent His Son, Jesus
Christ, who was crucified and resurrected. Now, seated on
the right hand of God the Father, Jesus has finished His
work. Today we have the age of the Holy Spirit. The
Father is working through the Holy Spirit, and Jesus is
working through the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is the
administrator of the love of God and the grace of Jesus
Christ.
Communion in the Greek language is koinonia, which
has several meanings: (1) fellowship, (2) partnership and
(3) distribution. The love of God and the grace of Jesus
Christ are constant, but they are in heaven. How then are
they brought to our hearts right now in this hour here on
earth? It is through the communion of the Holy Spirit.
So if we have a lot of theological knowledge about the
love of God and the grace of Jesus Christ but don't have
the communion of the Holy Spirit, there will be no reality
of them in our hearts. There will be no distribution of the
Father's real love and the Son's real grace into our hearts.
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We may have all of the theology and yet have an icebox in

our church.
So a preacher may bring a tremendous message, with
wonderful theology and very profound truth from the
Bible, but if he doesn't have definite cooperation from the
Holy Spirit, it will be only theory. He is not preaching
from his experience of the love of God and the grace of
Jesus Christ. That is the main problem with the church
throughout the world today. We have beautiful buildings,
wonderful choirs, well-educated ministers and brilliant
messages, while the people in the pews are starving to
death. They have all sorts of knowledge poured into their
minds, but their spirits are arid and starved.
Koinonia also means partnership. In a business
partnership one person brings the finances and another
brings the technology. Together they make the business
successful. We are in the King's business. The Holy Spirit
brings all the finances: the love of God and the grace of
Jesus Christ. We bring our physical presence. So the Holy
Spirit asks us to have a partnership with Him in building
the Kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit is the Senior Partner,
and we are the junior partners. The trouble nowadays is
that the junior partners are trying to overrule the Senior
Partner by doing the work on their own. Therefore, the
Senior Partner pulls out, leaving the junior partners with
good buildings (really, a good shopping center) but no
commodities.
To be successful in the King's business, there needs to
be a very, very close partnership with the Holy Spirit, and
to do this there must be fellowship.
When we have fellowship with the Father, we address
Him and say, "Father, I love you, I recognize you. Praise
God!" And to the Son we say, "Jesus, I love you, I praise
you." But when we come to the Holy Spirit, what do we
do? Often we do nothing.
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The Bible commands us to have communion with the

Holy Spirit, which includes all of those other three:
fellowship, partnership and distribution. Without
communion with the Holy Spirit, you can't have effective
fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
Nowadays I always force myself to recognize the Holy
Spirit, to welcome the Holy Spirit and to worship the Holy
Spirit, because He is a person. Every time before I go out
to preach, I always say, "Dear Holy Spirit, I welcome you, I
recognize you and I love you. I depend upon you. Dear
Holy Spirit, let's go! Let's bring the glory of God to the
people!"
When I start to preach, I say in my heart, "Dear Holy
Spirit, now I'm starting. Let's go! Supply all the knowledge
and wisdom and discernment, and I'm going to give it out
to the people."
After finishing the sermon, I will sit down and say,
"Dear Holy Spirit, we did a wonderful job together, didn't
we? Praise God!"
Since I have come to depend on the Holy Spirit in this
way, I have felt a mighty anointing of God on my life and
in my ministry and sermons. Always there are tremendous
results and numerous conversions as well as healings. I try
to float on the wave of the Holy Spirit.
To illustrate this in another way, I'll relate a story.
Once I almost lost my wife. When I got married, I was very
much interested in becoming a famous evangelist. I
wanted to be sort of a Korean Billy Graham. I didn't really
want to be "just a pastor" in those days.
So after my wife and I were married, I brought her to
our apartment, and after about a week I began to go out on
evangelistic preaching missions. I would preach in my
church on Sunday, and then on Monday I would go out
preaching. I came home only on weekends and brought
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my laundry to my wife. This went on for six months while

I burned with ambition to become an evangelist.
For a while my wife was very kind. When I came back
from my evangelistic campaigns, she would rush out to
the door and welcome me. She loved me, and she would
cook a good meal for me. But as month after month passed
and there was no change in this routine, she began to
become depressed. She wouldn't welcome me. She cried
often. Even the meals were not very good. Something was
wrong.
At that time my wife was very shy, because we were
only newly married. She never said anything to me about
what was wrong. I tried to cheer her up by joking and so
on, but nothing seemed to help.
Finally one day my mother-in-law came to me and
said, "Yonggi, do you like living with my daughter?"
"Yes, of course," I said.
"Well," she said, "you are going to lose her if you keep
treating her this way."
"Why, what do you mean?" I asked, shocked. "I treat
her very nicely. I got her this nice apartment, and I make
sure she has plenty of food and very good clothes. What
more can I do? I'm treating her very nicely."
Then my mother-in-law looked into my eyes and said,
"Son, you don't understand. You didn't bring a 'thing' into
your home. You brought a person to your home. A person
can't live in an apartment with just rice and clothes and
money. She needs love, recognition, fellowship."
I thought about that for a long time. My immediate
reaction was, "That's from the devil! Here I am working for
the Lord. Why should she put so many demands on me for
affection, care and concern?"
But my wife continued to become more and more
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depressed, and eventually some warning signs stirred in

my heart. So I went before the Lord, and I prayed, "Lord, it
seems that I am going to have to choose between one of
two things—my ministry or my wife. Your glory and my
ministry are far more important than my wife. If I need to
lose one of them, then I will have to lose my wife, because
my ministry means more to me than she does.
"God, either correct her or let us be separated. I'd
rather live the rest of my life alone and carry on my
ministry."
Then the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart, and He said,
"No, no, no. You are greatly mistaken in your priorities. So far
you have put God first, church second, yourself third, and you
are putting your wife last. You have made a grave mistake.
"Of course, God must be first, but the rest of your priorities
need to be rearranged. You should come second, and your wife
should come third. When you have children, they should come
fourth, and then the church should be last."
I thought about that, and I was in great consternation.
"This must be an American devil!" I said. "We can't accept
this kind of thinking in the Orient."
"Oh, no, this is not from America," the Holy Spirit said.
"This is my way.
"God must be first, but you must come second, because you
need to live a holy life to carry out this ministry. You are very
important.
"Next, your wife must come right after you. If you ever lose
your wife and become divorced, no one will ever listen to you
again. Your ministry will be gone. You may build a tremendous
church, but if your home becomes broken, you will lose your
ministry. Having fellowship with your wife is more important
than building a church, because the whole church is dependent
on your home life. You will bring more disgrace to the ministry
by being divorced than all the other benefits you might otherwise
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bring.
"Also, all the Christians will be looking at your children. If
your children become rebellious and get into trouble, like the
prodigal son, who is going to listen to you? Your primary
ministry should be to your children. Your children should be the
number-one members of your church. Then all together, you,
your wife and your children will build the church.
"Take your wife as a very important asset to your ministry,
and nurture your relationship with her."
I thought that sounded quite risky at the time, but I
decided to give it a try. I canceled a lot of my evangelistic
campaigns, and I made a definite promise to spend every
Monday with my wife. I said I would do anything on
Mondays that my wife wanted me to do. If she wanted to
go to the park, I would go with her to the park. If she
wanted to go to the department store, I would almost
break my backbone in following her, but I would do it.
Then we would sit down and have a nice dinner together.
And every morning I would say to my wife, "Honey, I
love you. You are very pretty. You're wonderful. I'm a
lucky guy to have you."
Then a miracle occurred. My wife began to pull out of
her depression. Her expression changed, and that buoyant
spirit returned to her heart. She began to smile, and then to
laugh and be cheerful and mischievous. After a while she
began to cook good meals again. We had wonderful
fellowship!
We began to pray together and to plan the ministry
together. I had found the answer. To have a real home life
you need to have real fellowship with each person. You
can't bring your wife home and expect her to live there
alone with only the house, the money, the clothes and the
food. A wife is more than that; she's a person.
That is just what it's like to have fellowship with the
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Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is there with you, but if you
just leave Him alone in the corner of your church, just
using Him as a decoration in pronouncing the benediction
or a word of theology, the Holy Spirit will become grieved.
Then the Spirit of the Lord will leave your work, and
you'll have a dried-up ministry. You may have all the
knowledge of theology and the greatest eloquence in your
preaching, but you won't have any fruit. The reason is that,
in the ministry, whatever is not born of the Spirit is flesh.
From that point on in my life I began to nurture an
even greater relationship with the Holy Spirit. I realized
that the Holy Spirit had been given to me to work with me,
not just to stand in a corner. God is on the throne, and
Jesus is at His right hand, but the Spirit is here on earth—
in me and in you—to work together with us to bring
success to the King's business.
Today I treat the Holy Spirit as the most important
Person in my life. I praise Him and I tell Him that I love
Him. Then I always say to Him, "Dear Holy Spirit, let's
together pray to the Father. Let's together pray to Jesus
Christ. Let's together read the Scriptures." Always my
fellowship begins with the Holy Spirit. Then with the Holy
Spirit I worship God and His Son, Jesus Christ.
So now I feel the presence of the Holy Spirit so
intimately that, when the Spirit speaks, I understand.
When the Spirit speaks about healing, I understand. When
He speaks about building, I understand. He's such a
definite person to me.
Also, I always try to spend at least one hour with the
Holy Spirit the first thing every morning. No matter what
happens, I want to give Him that one hour. "Dear Holy
Spirit," I will say, "let's have a session together. Let's read
the Bible together." And so together with the Holy Spirit I
sit down and praise God, I worship Jesus and I read the
Scriptures. I love the Holy Spirit, and I praise Him, and
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together we plan the work.

In the early Church the disciples had a definite
fellowship with the Holy Spirit—when they had the
committee meeting in Jerusalem, for instance. They had
been asked to decide on the matter of circumcision of the
Gentiles, and in the letter they wrote definitely, "The Holy
Spirit and we made this decision, not to lay any extra
burden on you . . ." (Acts 15:28, author's paraphrase). They
didn't say that the committee had made the decision alone,
but with the Holy Spirit they decided.
Can we say that in our church meetings? Can we say it
in our general councils? When we write down the minutes,
do we ever say that "the Holy Spirit and we decided . . ."?
No, we don't do that. We see Him only as an overseer in
our churches, in our meetings and in our ministry. That's a
big mistake.
In our church board meetings at Full Gospel Central
Church, the elders and I always pray together, asking the
Holy Spirit to come and chair the meeting. The Holy Spirit
is the Senior Partner in our ministry. He's the Chairman of
the Board. He's the Main Pastor of the church. We are only
the junior pastors.
I also speak in tongues very much. Speaking in
tongues is the Holy Spirit's language, and when I speak in
tongues, I cannot help but experience His presence in my
consciousness. In my own personal prayer life I pray in
tongues more than 60 percent of the time. I pray in
tongues while I sleep. I wake up praying in tongues. I pray
in tongues while I am studying the Bible, and I pray in
tongues during my personal devotions. If somehow I ever
lost the gift of the tongues, I think my ministry would be
whittled down to about 50 percent of what it is now.
Whenever I speak in tongues, I cannot help but keep the
Holy Spirit in my consciousness.
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When I learned to speak English, I began to speak

English as much as possible. I began to think in English,
and I would write my sermons in English. I would even
talk to myself in English, because I really wanted to be
proficient in English. For a long time I was tortured,
because I was forcing myself to speak in English, but
today, although I am not fully fluent in English, I have
gained an ease of expression that allows me to speak
English without struggling.
Now I am doing the same thing with Japanese—
speaking in Japanese, writing in Japanese and even
thinking in Japanese—because I have a goal of leading ten
million Japanese people to Jesus Christ. For a whole year I
have been reading the Japanese Bible, and I have spent so
much time in the Japanese language that even in my
dreams I am speaking Japanese! In this way I am
becoming acquainted with the Japanese language. During
my waking hours everything in my consciousness is being
taken up with Japanese. It has been the same when I have
concentrated on English—everything in America and in
England and everything in the English-speaking world
became my consciousness.
It is the same with speaking in tongues. When you
speak in tongues throughout the day, you can't help but be
conscious of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Therefore,
praying in tongues helps me to have constant fellowship
with the Holy Spirit.
Of course, this kind of fellowship with the Holy Spirit
signifies a life of prayer. God expects us to be a praying
people, because it is through our prayers that God chooses
to work in the world today. Powerful, Spirit-inspired
prayers work miracles.
All of us need to be saturated with prayer, from the
moment we get up in the morning until we go to bed at
night. Prayer is our spiritual breathing. If we didn't pray,
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our spiritual lives would die. But the only real prayer is
the kind that can be seen as fellowship with the Holy
Spirit, because any other kind of prayer becomes formal
and legalistic. God wants us to have intimate fellowship
with Him through the Holy Spirit.
Our church is a praying church. It is a church that has
real fellowship with the Holy Spirit. We even have regular
weekly all-night prayer meetings at the church, and the
attendance is usually 10,000 people or more. Prayer is an
integral part of the home cell groups meetings. Prayer is
the key to revival, both in the church and in the home cell
groups.
Not only do we stress prayer at Full Gospel Central
Church but we also stress fasting. Many of our cell leaders
spend much time in fasting and praying for the salvation
of souls in their neighborhoods. Usually they will fast for
one to three days. Many have a regular day of fasting
every week.
In our congregation I have seen people fasting for
seven days if they have a serious problem that God has not
solved in answer to simple prayer. If the problem is a
matter of life or death, some of our members have fasted
for fifteen to twenty days. And a few of our members have
even fasted for forty days, just as Jesus did in the
wilderness.
But I always tell our people that they must have a goal
when they fast. They must not fast just to be fasting, for
that accomplishes nothing. When people have been
praying for a definite answer and the Lord does not seem
to be answering, I tell them to fast and pray until they
have the assurance from God that He is answering. In fact,
90 percent of the prayers that have resulted in definite
answers in our church have been those prayers that have
been combined with fasting.
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Each year the members of our church make 300,000

visits to Prayer Mountain. That is our retreat center near
the demilitarized zone along our country's border with
North Korea. They go there to fast and to pray for special
needs. About 60 percent of them go to pray for the baptism
in the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues. The next largest
group goes to pray for the solution to family problems,
and the third group goes to pray for healing. They have
seen many miracles as the result of fasting and praying—
there have been healings from cancer and arthritis, for
instance, really difficult cases. Others go to pray for
business problems or for the salvation of our country, or
for revival.
And there are answers! Ninety percent of those who
go to Prayer Mountain to fast and pray receive definite
answers to their prayers. God is always ready to answer
our prayers, but often we pray with the wrong attitude. By
fasting and praying, we are telling God we're willing to
change our attitudes. Then we become open to praying in
accordance with His will, and therefore we will receive the
answers He promises.
Fasting and prayer are part of our fellowship with the
Holy Spirit. All of us, beginning with the pastor, need to
have this kind of prayer life and this kind of fellowship.
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13
13 Motivating Lay Leadership
I have already pointed out that the success of home

cell groups depends on the guidance of the pastor, a
trained lay leadership and continual fellowship with the
Holy Spirit. There is another requirement that I believe is
necessary if the cell system is to work smoothly. That
requirement is motivation. Good lay leaders need to be
motivated.
When a child is born into the world, it hungers for two
primary satisfactions: food and a loving touch. If the
parents do not supply both of these needs, the child is
going to starve, one way or the other. The parents may
provide all the food a baby needs for physical
nourishment, but if they do not touch the baby, caress him
and hug him, then psychologically the child is not going to
grow properly. The baby may even die.
Grown-ups too hunger to be touched, to be hugged, to
be kissed. They hunger for a loving touch. Without that
loving touch, we grown-ups would be starved
psychologically. To have a loving home, the husband and
wife need to touch each other very often. Friends too need
to experience a loving touch: a warm handshake,
exuberant back slapping, sometimes a playful punch at
each other. It makes them feel alive!
But I want to go beyond this touching of the outward
person to show that we human beings also need to be
touched inwardly if we are to be motivated to loving
action. The pastor and the lay members need to work as a
team in providing leadership for home cell groups. The
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pastors can't carry out all of the heavy work of evangelism

to make the church grow, but the lay leaders need to be
motivated so that they will undertake their share of the
work. That means the pastor needs to know how to touch
the inner persons of the lay people so that they will
become motivated. Then the pastor can accomplish great
things through them.
Here I want to show how to touch the inner person so
that the lay people will team up with the pastor in doing
the work of evangelism.
To motivate the inner person, we must touch the
personality of that person. This is done in three ways:
1. Recognition. All people need to be recognized. At
Full Gospel Central Church we regularly give certificates
as a means of recognizing special achievements among the
various kinds of leaders, including the leaders of home cell
groups. For instance, I recently signed a certificate
recognizing a Sunday school teacher for eight years of
faithful service. That piece of paper hardly cost anything,
but with my signature on it, the award shows the Sunday
school teacher she has been recognized and appreciated. It
really gives her a boost.
And even cell leaders, if they are not recognized
frequently, are not going to be motivated to put forth the
kind of effort needed to keep evangelism moving in the
church. In our church we have a cell leaders convention
twice a year. The leaders all come together at the church
for a three-day conference, and I speak to them. Now they
may not remember all of my lectures to them during those
three days, but they will never forget the fact that we care
enough about them to give them this much attention. They
know they are special people! That is tremendously
effective. It motivates them. When it is all over, they have
a citation recognizing them for their accomplishments
during the preceding six months. They keep that certificate
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Motivating Lay Leadership
and remember the conference, and they feel important.

This kind of recognition is just as important in the
home. A husband should regularly recognize his wife's
accomplishments, and likewise the wife should recognize
the accomplishments of her husband. A gift of special
celebration is always appreciated, and it makes the person
being honored feel much more important to his spouse.
Once a month I play golf with the members of our
church who are businessmen. Those businessmen
contribute a great deal of time, energy, money and
leadership to the church. Together we go out to the golf
course, and we joke and laugh and slap one another on the
back. At the end of the game we have a little meal
together. The afternoon of golf can last for four or five
hours. During that time I probably will slice or hook the
ball into the rough, but we will laugh about it and
experience wonderful fellowship. Because we have this
special relationship, those businessmen are greatly
motivated. They would never think of leaving our church.
They are recognized.
I am constantly motivating and recognizing my cell
leaders. I motivate them through a weekly cassette
message and through closed-circuit television in the
church, and I give them frequent recognition in the
Sunday services. And, of course, I motivate them through
the special seminars. Therefore, all of the cell leaders know
they are very special people in our church. They are
specially called. They are specially recognized. They are
specially liked by their pastor. That motivates them
tremendously.
2. Praise. We should always try to find out the good
qualities or the accomplishments of others and then praise
them highly for their characteristics and achievements.
That really puts fire into their hearts. If a husband does not
know how to praise his wife's cooking, he soon will be
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starving! And if a wife does not praise her husband for

doing a good job working around the house, he is not
going to be motivated very much to do more work.
All of us are born with a hunger for praise. If pastors
want to be real leaders in their churches, they must learn
how to praise the accomplishments of their lay people. If
he doesn't know how to praise them, he does not really
have the qualifications for leading them. Without praise,
the people will not be motivated.
When it comes to educating our children, we can't
motivate them to learn simply by whipping them. At one
time in Korea the teacher and the father were greatly
feared by the children, and whipping was a kind of
negative motivation for the student to achieve a good
record in school. But when Western culture began to have
an influence on Korea, the children began to have less
respect for the teacher and even for their own fathers. The
teacher became only a servant.
Even the home life has been affected by
westernization. The wives used to obey their husbands;
nowadays there is pressure for equal rights, just like in
America.
In the society we have today, the best way to motivate
anyone is not to find fault with him but to look for his
good points and to praise him for those. It's better to look
for good points and good traits and to overlook the faults.
By praising people for their good points you will be
helping them to correct their faults.
Praising is the best way of motivation, even in
Christian work. I try my best to praise people in our
church—the pastors under me, the elders, the deacons and
deaconesses, and the cell leaders. Any time anyone does
an especially good job, I make sure he is recognized and
praised for it. I will give him a slap on the back and say,
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"My, how were you able to do this? It's wonderful! It's

fantastic!"
When all this is done with real sincerity, shown in the
tone of voice and in the facial expression, accompanied by
a slap on the back, that person will remember it for a year!
That's the way it works in our church.
3. Love. To motivate people, we need to give them
genuine love, which is evident by the expression on our
face, the tone of our voice and the way we act. People
really respond to genuine love. I respond to love. When I
step on the platform of Full Gospel Central Church, I can
really feel love radiating from the people in the
congregation. Our people love me so much that I become
very motivated, and I try my very best to help them. I will
never neglect them and I will never forget them.
I also love the people very much, and they know it. I
don't even have to say it, but I feel it, and the people are
touched by the unseen rays of love from me. It's a genuine
love, with genuine concern for their benefit.
To sum up, I always follow these three guidelines in
motivating people in our church: (1) Recognition. If I show
them they are important people, they will never feel
inferior. If they ever begin to feel inferior, they will
develop an inferiority complex, and then they will be
washed up and so will my church. (2) Praise. Praising puts
oil and fire into their hearts. (3) Love. I give them genuine
love.
The people of Full Gospel Central Church are
motivated people, and they are trying their best to work
for the Lord.
When I go home in the evening, if my wife is not there,
I always wait for her. I will not eat dinner without her.
Even if I feel starved, I wait until she comes. Then when
she gets home she will say, "Why are you waiting? Why
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didn't you eat?"

And I say, "Oh, honey, I have no taste for food if you
are not here."
My wife feels as though she is the queen in my home,
because I recognize her, I praise her and I show her
genuine love. No wife is ever going to leave a husband
who treats her like that. "He needs me," she will say. "He
can't live without me."
In Korea about 50 percent of the husbands cheat on
their wives. The reason, I have heard again and again, is
that they are not recognized. "Oh, my wife does not
appreciate me," the husband will say. "I go someplace
where I'm recognized and appreciated. I want to feel like
somebody."
Too many wives are losing their husbands because
they take them for granted. By the same token, many
husbands are also losing their wives for the same reason.
Everybody needs to feel important—every day, every
hour, every minute. It's a psychological need. Therefore,
we need to recognize each other in our homes—and in our
churches and home cell groups.
If we can show recognition to one another, praising
one another and showing genuine love to one another, all
of us will become motivated to accomplish big things.
Many people can organize, and they can organize
beautifully. But an organization, no matter how
beautifully it is put together, is not going to work properly
if the people in it are not properly motivated to do the
work.
I mentioned earlier that one church in the United
States went to great lengths to organize a system of home
cell groups. I even went there to help them set it up. But it
was not too long until the system began to flounder. The
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reason was that the pastor had turned everything over to

one of his associates, and he had no further direct input.
Then when the system began to flounder, he came to me
and asked what had gone wrong. As he shared the
problems with me, I saw immediately what was wrong.
"Even though you felt that cell groups were very
important to the life of your church," I said, "you did not
demonstrate that concern to your congregation. You
turned everything over to one of your associates, and you
had nothing further to do with it. To your congregation,
cell groups didn't seem very important to you. The leaders
were not motivated to carry on."
In our church I will never turn over the leadership of
the cell system to one of my associates. I am the leader.
Every Wednesday afternoon I am motivating the leaders
through the television system in the church. Twice a year I
personally lead the cell leaders' seminars. I never allow
anyone else to lead those meetings. I am always there, and
the people see that I consider them important.
A number of other churches have also failed in trying
to establish home cell groups because the pastor was not
directly involved. I always tell pastors who attend my
church growth seminars that, if they do not take charge
personally, their cell leaders and their members are not
going to be motivated, and the system will fail.
If the pastor really takes charge of the home cell
groups if he takes an active part in organizing them, and if
he trains the leadership and constantly motivates them, the
people are going to be on fire. They will see that it's
important. They will work hard and do a good job.
Then the home cell groups will succeed and the church
will really begin to grow.
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14
14 Preaching to a Growing Church
I have mentioned several prerequisites for establishing

a strong, growing church based on home cell groups. They
are fellowship with the Holy Spirit, delegation of authority
to a group of lay leaders, and the training and motivation
of those leaders. Now I would like to discuss one further
consideration: preaching.
That subject may seem like an obvious one to some
readers, but it is not as simple as it appears. The style of
one's preaching will often determine whether home cell
groups will result in a growing church.
In chapter 12, I have already mentioned my
dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Close fellowship with
the Holy Spirit is essential. It is through His intimate
presence in our lives that we receive the inspiration and
anointing to bring the message needed by our
congregation at every service.
Through my fellowship with the Holy Spirit I feel a
real anointing when I go out to preach. Oh, what a
difference that anointing makes! It is especially necessary
in the expository sermons I give at Wednesday night
meetings and at the Friday all-night prayer meetings in
Full Gospel Central Church.
When I began to teach the Bible verse-by-verse on
Wednesday evenings, beginning with Genesis and
intending to go through the whole Bible to the end of
Revelation, some people told me attendance would be
very small.
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"On Sundays when you preach a topical message,

people will come," they said, "but if you teach verse by
verse, everyone will lose interest."
"Yes, you're right," I said. "If I just teach the Bible verse
by verse according to my own knowledge, nobody will
want to listen. But if I go to the platform together with the
Holy Spirit, they will come because they will listen to
Him."
So I depended upon the Holy Spirit and launched
forth. Sometimes I would teach for two and three hours at
a time, yet the people seemed to sit there spellbound. Not
only did the people grow more in grace, but they were
actually enjoying it!
Now I realize that in some of the chapters I become
very tedious. Particularly when you study such books as
Leviticus, and you have to teach verse by verse on all
those minute requirements of the Jewish law, you feel like
dying! But still you must teach it to the people, because all
of the Bible is important to their spiritual growth.
As I have come to depend more and more on the Holy
Spirit, both in my topical sermons on Sundays and in my
expository teachings on week nights, I rely less and less on
philosophy and the knowledge of history that I learned in
Bible school and in my early days of ministry. After
twenty-three years of preaching I have found that only the
Word of God quickens people. At one time I preached
almost like a philosopher, and I became very profound,
but at the same time I was making very few converts.
Now I have become very simple—ignorant, perhaps—
in worldly ways, but I have become very profound in
Scripture. As I relied solely on the Bible, I began to have
more and more converts, including the more intellectual
people of the city. Teaching the Bible under the anointing
of the Holy Spirit is very powerful.
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Preaching to a Growing Church
In my preaching I also have a definite goal. I don't

simply preach at random. My goal is always to help
people meet Jesus Christ personally—every Sunday, every
Wednesday night, every Friday night and every other time
I am called to preach. Each sermon is focused so that
people will meet Jesus Christ through it. If they are
unbelievers, let them meet Jesus Christ and be converted;
if they are already believers, let them meet Jesus Christ
and become more profound in their faith. If I miss the
bull's-eye there, the sermon is a failure.
My second goal in preaching is to help people succeed
in life—in spirit, soul, body and business. As the people of
my congregation become successful in their home lives, as
they become successful in their business lives or careers,
and as they become successful in their relationships with
other people, then I also become successful. As much as I
want to become a successful minister, to that same extent I
try to make the people of my congregation successful. My
own success is a secondary goal. The people must succeed
first.
Finally, the goal of my preaching is to help people
serve God and other people in a greater way. Once people
meet Jesus Christ and become successful in their own
lives, they should use the power and the success of their
newfound relationship with Christ to serve God and other
people with spiritual energy, mental energy and physical
energy—and with an abundance of finances. (I don't
apologize for financial success, because it is a means of
serving God and helping others. Our own church budget
is large enough that we can really move into
evangelization, not only in Korea but also in Japan, the
United States, Europe and elsewhere. In fact, this kind of
success among our people is a miracle, because we are
citizens of a Third World country. To tell the truth, if they
were not successful, we could not afford to carry on the
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big program we have. At Full Gospel Central Church we

do not talk about depression, oil shortages or other such
difficulties. While other businesses are slowing down, our
people are becoming prosperous, even in the midst of
severe inflation and economic depression, which is what
we have had in Korea in 1980. Yet the offering continues to
increase every Sunday in our church.)
In all of my sermons, whether in Korea, Japan, the
United States or Europe, I always have three goals: to
introduce people to Jesus Christ, to make them successful
and to motivate them to serve God and their fellow man.
Then I have a sure foundation as a minister.
Now where, you might ask, do I begin in my
preaching? I always begin with the goodness of God. That
is the most important theology.
Until I was nineteen years old, I was a Buddhist—
really a devout Buddhist. I thought Buddhism was the best
religion in the world. Theoretically (in terms of theology)
Buddhism is very profound. But whenever I went to the
temple, I always felt frightened of those idols. I always
prayed, asking the Buddha not to punish me. My whole
relationship with the Buddhist religion was based on a
ritualism and responsibility rooted in fear. In the Buddhist
faith, my faith was born in fear, not in love. The god of
Buddha was not a god of love but one of judgment.
When I became a Christian, Jesus Christ not only
saved my soul but He also healed me of tuberculosis and
raised me up from my deathbed. Then when I was
baptized in the Holy Spirit, the love of God began to pour
like a river into my soul. The greatest things I experienced
as a Christian were the love of God and the goodness of
God.
God has really been good to me. When I came to Him I
was very poor. I was a dropout from my first year in high
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school. My father could not afford to send me to school

any longer, and I had been weak with tuberculosis. I
seemingly had no future. But through my newfound
relationship with Jesus Christ, and by reading the Bible, I
equipped myself with a positive faith. Through that, God
pulled me out of that whole miserable situation. He gave
me all the health, wealth, knowledge, victory and
everything I needed. Everything I have has come from
God.
Because of my relationship with God, because I know
Him as a good God, a loving Father, that is the God I
preach. Yet I have met so many people who tell me that
they have had a wrathful, vengeful God preached to them,
and they had great difficulty relating to a loving, good
God.
Not too long ago I was preaching in Germany when a
woman came to me and asked me to pray for her and her
husband. She had a tremendous fear of God which had
been brought on when her parents had been killed in a
bombing raid in World War II. Now her husband was
despondent with severe neurotic depression, and she was
afraid she would lose him just the way she had lost her
father and mother.
I began to tell her about the goodness of God, how He
had created the world and had found it good. "He is the
God who tried to bring good to the sin and sickness of the
world by giving us His Son, Jesus Christ," I told her. "That
God is a good God, and that God is your Father and my
Father.
"Change your thinking," I said, "and begin to see God
as a good God. Praise Him and tell Him, 'I love you,
Father. You're a good God, and you want me to have
goodness in my life.' "
"I'm scared," she said. "No one has ever taught me that
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way before."
"Well, I'm teaching you right now," I said. "Don't be
scared. Just change your image of God."
Then she began to repeat after me, "God is a good
God. He's my good Father. He wants to give good things
to His children. He's good. He's good."
Soon she felt the release and began to laugh, and not
long after that her husband was completely freed of his
neurotic oppression.
I believe that when we preach a good God we get
people released from bondage. Bondage comes from the
enemy. The devil uses wrong theology to try to bring
people under the bondage of fear and desolation. Many
preachers have taught their people only to fear the God of
judgment, and they have told them not to expect anything
from Him.
I am a father. I have three boys, and I do everything to
bring goodness to my children. Yet the Bible says, "If you,
then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to
your children, how much more will your Father in heaven
give good gifts to those who ask him!" (Matt. 7:11, NI V ) .
It's very, very hard to persuade some Christians to
think of God in this way, because they think they always
have to suffer and struggle to be good Christians. They
feel we should constantly go through trials and live a
poverty-stricken life to be good Christians. Well, if our
suffering brings any redeeming grace to other people, then
I believe that suffering is justified.
The Bible says that we should suffer together with
Jesus Christ, but did Jesus Christ ever suffer from sin? Did
He ever suffer from sickness? Did He ever suffer the
oppression of Satan? No, He never suffered from any of
those things. Did He ever suffer from poverty? Yes, He
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did, but in a redeeming way, as it says in 2 Cor. 8:9,

"Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor,
so that you through his poverty might become rich" (NIV).
If the Bible commands us to suffer together with Jesus
Christ, that suffering should not be because of sin,
sickness, the devil, a curse or poverty. Then from what did
Jesus suffer? Persecution. He only suffered for the sake of
the gospel, because of persecution. Therefore, neither
should we accept suffering except by persecution. And if
that suffering does not bring any redeeming result, then
that suffering is for nothing.
I don't think I can ever become poor. I would gladly
suffer poverty if it brought any redeeming grace to the
people, but I have found that trying to become poor is the
most difficult thing in my life. When I was building the
new church on Yoido Island, I gave up everything—even
my home. But the more I gave up, the more God returned
to me! That's according to the Bible. So now I've given up.
I have no hope of becoming poor.
Now if God sent the Communists to take over our
country, and I suffered because of that, that would be
suffering caused by persecution, and it would be justified.
Or if a person volunteers to become a missionary, and he
gives up his home and the comforts of Western society to
bring Jesus Christ to people in the jungles of New Guinea,
then his suffering will be for the cause of redemption. He
is suffering the lack of all the conveniences of civilization,
but it is for a purpose.
Therefore, the foundation of my sermons is the
goodness of God. Next to that I preach on the blood of
Jesus Christ. I always base my sermon and my faith on the
blood of Christ, for without the blood of Jesus Christ there
can be no redemption. Without redemption there is no
reason to persist in one's faith.
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Jesus shed His blood in four places, the first of them

being the Garden of Gethsemane. There His perspiration
fell like big drops of blood, and it had a special meaning to
those being redeemed. He shed His blood as He was
saying, "Not my will but thine be done." The first Adam
disobeyed God to persist in his own will. But the last
Adam, Jesus Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane was
offering himself and offering up the will of mankind in
obedience to God. As the high priest of the people He was
offering up their own disobedient will and He redeemed
it.
We can say very definitely that God's Holy Spirit can
help us to obey God's will, because the blood of Jesus
Christ speaks even today. The blood redeems our
disobedience, which we inherited from our father, the first
Adam.
The second time Jesus shed His blood was when the
crown of thorns was placed upon His head. The thorns cut
into His head, and blood gushed out. What does that
blood represent? It symbolizes the curse. When Adam and
Eve fell from grace, the Bible says that the earth was
cursed and would produce thorns and thistles. The thorn
is the symbol of the curse. But by shedding His blood,
Jesus redeemed His people from the curse.
Today so many people, including Christians, are living
in the thorny patch of hatred, fear and inferiority. But the
blood of Jesus Christ speaks against that curse, for by it we
are redeemed from the curse.
The third time Jesus shed His blood was at the
whipping post. The Roman soldiers took off His clothes
and laid stripe upon stripe upon His back until it was
completely torn, and blood gushed out and streamed
down. Here He shed His blood to bring us healing, for the
Bible says, "With his stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5). We
cannot ignore that in our preaching, for that blood still
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speaks today.
Finally, Jesus shed His blood on the cross at Calvary,
when the Roman soldier thrust a spear into His side. Out
gushed blood and water, and the shedding of that blood
redeemed us totally from sin and death.
Therefore, without the shedding of blood there would
be no redemption. Without the blood we have no
foundation to preach against Satan. But once we build our
messages on the foundation of the blood of Jesus Christ,
then we have tremendous grounds for proclaiming victory
over Satan. I base my sermons on the blood of Jesus Christ
and build the faith of the people in my congregation so
that they will not fear anything. I put faith into their
hearts!
When our people leave the church and return to their
homes and businesses, they do not live only by their own
circumstances, but they live by faith. The Bible says, "The
righteous shall live by faith," and "Be it according to your
faith." If we do not build faith into the people, they have
nothing to claim for victory. They have faith only by way
of the minister's message. If the minister gives them only a
shaky faith, the devil will come along and destroy that
rickety faith. But if the faith is founded on the blood of
Jesus Christ, the devil can't stand it.
Then, after basing my sermons on the goodness of God
and on redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ, I
build on the foundation of a successful life. It is a sure
biblical principle—from Genesis to Revelation. The
principle of success is demonstrated so many times. If you
want to have financial success in your business, then you
should apply the principle of sowing and reaping, for the
Bible says, "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good
measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running
over, shall men give into your bosom" (Luke 6:38). And
how do you keep your home life happy and healthy? By
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keeping Sunday holy, not doing any work, worshiping

God together with the family. And how can you have
business success? Apply the principles of faith in the
eleventh chapter of Hebrews.
So I teach all of these principles of success to the
people in our church, and they apply them to their lives,
just as we in the church leadership apply the principles of
church growth through home cell groups. And the people
are successful! Therefore I have no need for trying to
become eloquent—in fact, I have no intention of ever
becoming eloquent—because I have turned my pulpit into
a counseling place.
The method of preaching, then, is to counsel the
people to help them meet their needs. People are always
coming to church in great need, but if the preacher is only
talking about theology, history and politics, the people are
not going to be helped in their personal lives, where they
need the message. They will be dozing off instead.
One day I was returning to Korea from the United
States, and I stopped over in Japan for one day. I was
afraid that if I got back to Korea on Saturday I would have
to labor in the pulpit the next day, so I had a very good
excuse to take a one-day vacation.
I decided to go to a Japanese Christian church that
Sunday, and the one I attended turned out to have a
minister who used very big words. He did not have just a
five-dollar vocabulary; he had a ten-dollar vocabulary.
There are many ministers like that, and not just in Japan.
They feel that the larger their vocabularies are the greater
their ministries become. What those ministers do not
realize is that their congregations understand less than 50
percent of their preaching. Then, if the congregation does
not understand what the minister has said, they may say,
"My, isn't our minister profound? Isn't he erudite?" But
when you ask them, "What did he preach about?" they are
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unable to tell you.

Well, the minister in the Japanese church I attended
that Sunday was one of the leading ministers in Japan. Yet
I sat there squirming and uncomfortable, feeling that if the
hour were not over soon I would die. He was not meeting
the need of my heart—or of his people! Instead, he was
discussing international politics, using those ten-dollar
words I could not understand.
That is the trouble with many churches in Japan—and
the reason people are not going to the Japanese churches.
Why should they go to a Christian church that does not
speak to their needs or to the cries of their hearts? No
wonder a Japanese church considers itself fortunate to
have 100 members!
I try desperately to relate all of my sermons to the
needs of the people. In one series of sermons, for instance,
I preached on "How to Win Over Depression." People are
constantly talking about depression, as well as business
difficulties and financial troubles. So when I preach to
bring them success in those areas, people are coming to the
church and sitting in the aisles to hear the sermon. Others
are standing in the back of the church and filling the
gymnasium and several chapels, where they can watch on
closed-circuit television. (Our church seats 10,000 people,
but usually 15,000 squeeze in for each of the six services
we have every Sunday.) They know the sermon will be
concerned with the solution to their problems.
I also try to be relevant to contemporary life. Many
young people are leaving other churches, feeling that the
sermons and the programs are not relevant to them. They
say, "We'll come back when we're sixty years old and the
sermons are relevant to us. Then we can prepare for
heaven, because that's all the ministers seem to be
preaching about—getting ready for heaven. But we are
living on earth now, and the message is unrelated to our
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lives."
People generally judge sermons according to their
own personal interests. They are interested in loss or gain
to themselves. They are asking, "What do I gain from this
sermon?" If the sermon addresses their needs, if they really
get something from it for their personal lives, they will
come and listen even if there is no air conditioning in the
church building or no heating system.
You see people going to the stock market no matter
what the weather, no matter what the inconvenience, and
they stand there staring at the lights that quote the buying
and selling prices of the stocks in which they are
interested. They are very interested—sometimes
desperately interested—in whether they have lost or
gained something.
That is the same way people judge our sermons. They
are not interested in eloquence, but only in whether they
might gain or lose anything.
Finally, I try in all of my sermons to uplift the people
in some way. I try to instill faith, hope and love in them. I
try to teach them how to be successful Christians. I never
pound them down. Often when a new Bible school
graduate comes into our church to preach, the first thing
he does is condemn the people and pummel them with
judgmental theology. Then he says to himself, "What a
great message I preached!"
But that is not our purpose as ministers. We are not
here to condemn the people but to uplift them and lead
them into righteousness. The Mosaic law was given to
condemn the people, but the grace of Jesus Christ was
given to redeem the people. The worst sermon is one of
condemnation. The easiest sermon is one of condemnation.
Using the sword of the Ten Commandments, one can
condemn a person very easily. But our job is to uplift
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people by putting faith, hope and love into their hearts.

They want to know how to be successful Christians,
successful fathers, successful mothers, husbands, wives,
businessmen—through Jesus Christ.
That is my philosophy, and I believe it also is the
philosophy of the Bible. Of course, I speak against sin—
although not in a condemning way but in a constructive
way. I say that if you live in sin you are going to hell, but I
always show them the answer: how to come out of their
sin through the blood of Jesus Christ. I never leave our
congregation with a feeling of condemnation.
In America, Dr. Robert Schuller has a great audience
all across the country. The reason is that he is always
preaching on "possibility thinking," putting faith, hope and
love into the hearts of his listeners. When I am in the
United States and am in a hotel room somewhere on a
Sunday, and want to watch a Christian program on
television, I turn to Dr. Schuller's "Hour of Power." I know
I can depend on him to put faith, hope and love into my
heart. His sermons uplift me.
I have listened to some other preachers, including
some very well-known evangelists, and when I hear them I
turn off the program. They keep condemning the people,
and I feel so depressed that I don't even feel like praying.
Such preaching makes of little account the blood of Jesus
Christ, which has redeemed us from sin.
That is why I preach on faith, hope and love. I know I
am preaching to the needs of the people, and the sermons
are uplifting them.
This is my preaching style and this is my life. So far it
has proven very successful, not only in Korea but in other
parts of the world as well. I can preach for one, two or
even three hours, and the people will sit spellbound. Why?
Because the sermon meets their needs. It is relevant to
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them, to their contemporary lives. I uplift them, putting

faith, hope and love into their hearts. People listen,
because they feel they have something tremendous to gain
by listening to my sermons. They stay and pay attention.
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15
15 The Possibility of Church Growth

Unlimited
This book would not be complete if I did not share one

thing more on how to use these principles to make a
church really grow. Although I have mentioned this in
another of my books, The Fourth Dimension, it is especially
appropriate that I share it here as well.
A minister may have adopted all of the principles I
have enumerated here—delegating authority and forming
home cell groups, being in constant fellowship with the
Holy Spirit, motivating his lay leadership and preaching
meaningful sermons—and still fall far short of the
unlimited church growth we have experienced at Full
Gospel Central Church.
In this final chapter I would like to show how to put it
all together so you will have church growth unlimited.
This is the very reason so many pastors are coming to
Korea to study our church, and it is the reason I am invited
to seminars all over the world. The pastors are asking,
"How can I make my church grow like that?"
The number-one requirement for having real church
growth—unlimited church growth—is to set goals. Of
course, that may seem obvious, but the real determining
factor is the way we apply this principle. Unfortunately it
is possible to set goals in the wrong way and then put in a
great deal of self-effort in exhorting the lay leaders to bring
in new members. Some growth may be realized in this
way, but it will eventually reach a plateau. The church
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growth I am talking about (and our church is

experiencing) will have no plateaus.
When I began my ministry in 1958, I knew nothing
about goal setting. So I used all kinds of gimmicks to bring
in new members. They did not work. For the first six
months I did not lead even one soul to Jesus Christ.
During that time I became very frustrated, so much so that
eight times I decided to pack up and leave my ministry. It
was only through the encouragement of the Reverend
Jashil Choi, the woman who was later to become my
mother-in-law, that I was sustained.
Then God showed me, by the intervention of the Holy
Spirit, that I should establish clear-cut goals, not only to
build a growing church but also to form a victorious
personal prayer life. At that time I was very, very poor. I
had almost no income, and I was living from hand to
mouth. Often I would fast simply because I didn't have
anything to eat.
One day I was reading the Bible when suddenly I was
really encouraged to ask for and expect to receive what I
needed from God by faith. Until then I had learned in
Bible school only that we could ask to be saved through
the blood of Jesus Christ.
At that time the greatest necessities in my life were a
table, a chair and a bicycle. So I knelt down and asked God
to give me those three things, and I really prayed with
great faith. Then I waited for God to supply them. Day
after day, month after month, I waited, expecting. But
nothing happened.
Eventually, completely frustrated, discouraged and
despondent, I cried out to the Lord. Then God began to
speak to me. It was the first time God ever spoke to me
that I was certain I heard Him. I still do not know whether
it was in an audible voice or by an impression in my spirit.
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The Possibility of Church Growth Unlimited
I know I saw a bright light, and I did receive the message.

God said, "My son, don't cry. I have heard your prayer,
and I have given you a table, a chair and a bicycle."
So I said, "Father, you're kidding me. I don't have a
table, a chair or a bicycle, although I have been expecting
them day after day."
"Yes," God said, "I have given them to you potentially.
But you have been asking them of me in such vague terms that I
cannot fulfill your request. Don't you know there are a dozen
kinds of tables, a dozen kinds of chairs and a dozen kinds of
bicycles? Which ones do you want? Be very clear. I have so
much trouble with my children, because they keep asking me and
asking me and asking me, yet they themselves do not know what
kind of thing they want. Make your request very specific, and
then I'll answer."
So I said, "Father, prove that to me by the Scriptures."
Then the Spirit told me to open the Bible to Hebrews
11, and I did, beginning to read from the first verse: "Now
faith is the substance of things hoped for. . . ."
Immediately my eyes fell on the word things. Then the
Spirit said to me, "Without having a clear-cut goal of the
'things,' or a clear-cut vision of the objects, how can you
hope? How do you have faith?"
Then Scripture after Scripture began to flow into my
mind, all telling me I should always have a clear-cut goal.
For instance, when Jesus was on the road to Jericho, He
was approached by a blind man, Bartimaeus. Now Jesus
and everybody else knew what Bartimaeus wanted—to be
healed of his blindness. But Jesus clearly asked the
question, " 'What do you want me to do for you?' And the
blind man said to Him, 'Rabboni, I want to regain my
sight!'
"And Jesus said to him, 'Go your way; your faith has
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made you well' " (Mark 10:51-52, NASB).

Time and again I saw in Scripture that Jesus asked
specific questions, expecting goal-oriented answers. And
throughout Scripture God did miracles in response to
clear-cut requests with specific goals in mind.
So I began to make a specific request in my prayer,
describing the size and type of table I wanted, made of
Philippine mahogany, with an iron-frame chair on casters
that would enable me to roll around. Then I asked for an
American-made bicycle with a gearshift on the side. I went
into specific detail in my request.
And I believed! In a few months I received all of those
things exactly as I had requested. That caused a
tremendous truth to dawn upon me. I realized I had
prayed daily for revival, but still I had an empty church.
Yet I had asked for a table, a chair and a bicycle, and I got
exactly what I had asked for. Could God be more
concerned about a table, chair and bicycle than about the
salvation of souls?
I realized I had had a wrong attitude about building
the church, just as I had had a wrong attitude about
prayer. I had asked God for blessings, expecting Him to
shower them down upon me, but the blessings had not
come because I had not been specific in my requests until I
asked for that table, chair and bicycle. Then I learned that
God would answer my prayers only through my own
dreams, visions and faith.
I knew God was within me by the Holy Spirit, which
meant He was not going to bring the answers to me from
beyond me, but those answers were going to bubble up
from within me.
Today I know that the capacity for God's answer
depends on the size of the pipe in which we give Him the
opportunity to work. If the size of my pipe is small, the
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blessings are only going to trickle down; but if through

faith I have increased the size of that pipe, the blessings
will pour down.
At that time I had the capacity for believing for only
150 members. I thought at that time that I would be
eternally satisfied with that many people in my church. So
I set a very clear goal of 150 members, and I wrote it down
on a paper and put it up on my wall. I also wrote the
number on other slips of paper and put them everywhere,
including in my wallet. Everywhere I turned I saw the
number 150. Eventually I was completely saturated with it.
I began to eat with 150. I slept with the number 150 in
my dreams. I was living with 150 members in my heart,
although I still did not have more than a few actual
members in my congregation. After a while I began to
preach as though I were speaking to 150 people, and I
walked like a pastor who had 150 members.
Before the first year was over, I had those 150
members! For six months I had struggled without leading
one soul to Christ, but in the second six months, when I
had a clear-cut goal and began really to believe, then God
answered my prayers and brought the 150 members.
But after I had them I was not satisfied with only 150
members. Who would be satisfied with that number? So
the second year I set a goal of 300, and I got 300. The next
year I set a goal of 300 more, and by the end of 1961 I had
600 members. Then we moved the church to West Gate
with a goal of 3,000 members by 1964. That was when I got
into trouble, because I was not organized to handle 3,000,
and I collapsed under the strain when the number reached
2,400.
It should be obvious by now that both principles need
to be applied to the church if it is going to grow in an
unlimited way: (1) We need to have a vision, or goal, and
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(2) we need to delegate authority to lay leaders by

establishing home cell groups.
When we moved to Yoido Island and built the present
Full Gospel Central Church, I set a goal of 30,000
members, because I did not think I could successfully
pastor any more than that. But when I got 30,000, I knew I
could handle even more. So I asked for 50,000, then 70,000,
and by the end of 1979 our church had reached the goal of
100,000 members. That was a real landmark, but still I
knew we could handle more.
In fact, my goal is now for 500,000 members by 1984. I
can believe for that number, because I can grasp that
vision very clearly. We have added 50,000 members in
1980, and it should be no trouble to add 70,000 more in
1981. Then in 1982 we'll add 100,000 more, and in 1983
we'll add 200,000.
All of this happens with no fanfare, no special
outreach campaigns. I simply set a goal, and then I ask
God for it specifically. I believe with real faith, and the cell
leaders do the rest.
In addition to the principle of setting goals, there are
four other principles that go along with it. These are all
very closely related.
The second of these principles is dreaming. You have
to have a goal, yes. But if you don't dream, you will never
reach that goal. A dream (or vision) is the basic material
the Holy Spirit uses to build anything for you. The Bible
says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Prov.
29:18). When you don't have a vision, you don't produce
anything.
Dreams and visions are the basic material with which
the Holy Spirit works. I always say that visions and
dreams are the language of the Holy Spirit. If you don't
speak the language, you won't produce anything. The
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Holy Spirit wants to communicate with us, but if we don't

have dreams and visions, He can't communicate with us.
In the Bible, whenever God wanted to do anything for
anybody, first He put visions and dreams into their hearts.
When Abraham was seventy-five years old, God gave him
a vision of being the father of many nations. When he was
100 years old, Abraham was ready to have that vision
fulfilled. God called him out and let him count the stars in
the sky, because He wanted Abraham to visualize the
number of his children, which would be "as numerous as
the stars of the sky."
Before Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt, God had
already put visions and dreams into his heart. Through
those visions and dreams God eventually overruled all the
circumstances that had occurred in Joseph's life, making
him even prime minister of Egypt.
When I was in the first stage of my pioneering work,
God told me to dream. As I knelt down to pray, the Spirit
told me to dream: "Dream the largest church in Korea." I was
in a dilapidated tent church, but God said, "Dream!" From
then on I learned to live in a visionary world. When I
began to dream that the church was packed with people,
people began to pour into the church. Without the Holy
Spirit, that would be impossible, but the Holy Spirit was
using my dreams to bring the people in.
Dreaming seems foolish to the rational mind, and I
would agree, if dreaming is done without goals. But when
you establish a goal and begin to dream for that goal, that
dream becomes creative. The Holy Spirit uses it to bring
the future to the present!
Today the pastors in Korea who have the largest
churches apply my principles. I have taught them to use
the principles of forming home cell groups, setting goals
and dreaming. Except for the Presbyterian church, which
is the second largest church with 36,000 members, the
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largest churches are mostly all pastored by those who have

learned my principles. One has 12,000 members and
another has 10,000. And whenever we get together, I
always tell them, "Keep on dreaming. You are going to
grow only as big as your dream."
I am constantly living in a world of God-given dreams.
Today I am living with 500,000 members inside me. Those
potential members are like 500,000 eggs that I am
incubating in my spirit. By 1984 all of those eggs will have
hatched!
God can fill us only to our own capacity, and for me,
my capacity has really grown, because of those visions and
dreams.
Third, we must believe. We must really believe we are
going to get what we ask for, what we are dreaming for.
And we must speak the believing word. We must never,
never speak in negative terms ("I can't do it. I have no
finances. I don't have the strength"). If we are depending
on the Holy Spirit, we are not depending on our own
resources. We are depending on God's resources.
Therefore, once we have a goal, once we dream that
goal into reality and are pregnant with the answer to our
prayer, then we must speak it. I am constantly speaking
about those 500,000 members, persuading myself
completely in my mind and in my faith.
The fourth thing a pastor must do in order to produce
church growth is to persuade the congregation of the
reality of that goal and get some enthusiasm started. By
constantly speaking about my goal and my visions, I am
generating enthusiasm in the people and persuading them
that it is going to happen. I cannot build a big church by
myself. I need the cooperation of all the members of our
congregation—they join their hearts with mine to believe
for the growth. I talk about the goal with my associates,
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and I speak about it to the deacons and deaconesses. I

speak about it to the women's association and to the men's
fellowship. I speak about it to everyone at all possible
times. By speaking thus, I am releasing power, as it says in
the Bible: "If anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw
yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but
believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for
him" (Mark 11:23, N I V ) . If that speaking is joined to the
voices of the congregation, that power becomes multiplied.
Lastly, we must get ready. Many people desire
growth, but they never get ready for it. When growth
suddenly begins, what are they going to do? How can they
be prepared for growth if they have not already begun
raising funds for a larger church building? When we
believe for growth, and when that growth becomes real to
us in our dreams, then we need to act as though we
already have that growth.
I have already begun construction of a fifteen-story
church building next to the present Full Gospel Central
Church. The building will cost $10 million. The center of
the building will be open all the way up to the fifteenth
floor, and all of the floors will be equipped with closed-
circuit television so that everyone will be able to see what
is going on. Right now I don't have enough members to fill
it, but in my imagination there are that many members. So
I have taken the risk and I am building.
If I were not ready for growth, then what would I do
with all the new members that will be coming to the
church as the revival gains momentum? If I'm not
prepared, I will be losing many of them, because they will
not be able to find a place in church on Sunday.
After that building is completed, I am going to build a
whole new church complex surrounding and enclosing the
present church building. Then we will knock out the walls
of the inner building to join it to the outer one. I will spend
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another $10 million for that.

I am also enlarging Prayer Mountain to seat 5,000
people, because as the church grows we will see more
people going to Prayer Mountain. There I will spend
another $3 million.
Where do I get all the money? God is my resource.
When I built the present structure on Yoido Island, I
started with a goal and with my visions and dreams, but I
had only $2,500. The projected cost of the building at that
time was $2 million. God saw me through. Now it is not
too difficult for me to believe for $23 million for these new
projects.
When people catch the vision and become
enthusiastic, finances are the last thing to worry about.
Always when I begin a new project, my calculator is the
last thing I reach for. The first thing I ask is, "Is this the will
of the Lord?" If yes, then, "Do we have a clear-cut goal?
Can we conquer that goal and possess it in our visions and
dreams? Do we really believe? Do we really have the
enthusiasm of the people?"
If the answer to all of those questions is yes, then I
have to get ready. That is the time to reach for my
calculator and determine the cost. Then I assume the
money is going to come, and I go ahead by faith and walk
on the water. I don't see the wind or the waves; I just go
on.
We must show to the world that we really believe. If
we wait until the growth comes, we will be working two to
three years behind schedule to accommodate it, and we
will lose many members along the way. This kind of
ministry takes risky faith.
It would be ridiculous for a pregnant woman to say,
"Well, if I am going to give birth to a child, I will wait until
it happens, and then I will buy some baby clothes and a
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crib." There would be something lacking in such a woman.

It is just the same when we are giving birth to church
growth. It comes about because that growing church is
inside us. We are pregnant with it, by the power of the
Holy Spirit. That is the only way it will be born. The
church is not just going to be built, it is going to be born.
What I am doing at our church in Seoul is building a larger
crib. I want to be ready.
For a minister who is interested in church growth—
real church growth—this kind of thinking is a twenty-four-
hour-a-day business. It's not something that is relegated to
Sunday or to a few meetings. It is pregnant within the
pastor. Growing a church (or birthing a church) in this
fashion can be done anywhere, and the minister does not
even have to be at the church all the time for it to happen.
He can be 1,000 miles away or more, and it will still go on.
I am often thousands of miles away from home, and I am
traveling overseas up to six months of the year. But the
growth of our church does not depend on my physical
presence. It depends on the capacity of my dreaming and
my faith—wherever I am.
With such a capacity and such faith a minister can
build this kind of church anywhere. It can be in New York,
in Los Angeles, or New Orleans or Dallas. People who
have studied with me have started churches all over the
world following these principles, including fifty in the
United States, ten in Europe and three in Japan. Every one
of them has become self-supporting within six months,
and many of them are already sending out missionaries.
The traditional view of missionary work sees this as
impossible. But my disciples have proved it can be done—
even in Bangkok, which is a very poor area.
Today the heathens are no longer in some far-off
jungle. We live in a very small world because of the jet
airplane. In thirty hours we can get anywhere on the globe.
153
And the "heathen" countries are no longer "out there."

There are heathens everywhere. There are heathens in the
United States, heathens in Europe, and heathens in Korea
and Japan. We are all living in a heathen world that needs
to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This is totally opposite to the traditional view of
missions, which sees only the heathen world as some place
far off, needing Western missionaries to go out preaching
the gospel, supported by their home churches. When we
turn that perspective of missionary work around and look
at it from the viewpoint of the heathens, we see those
missionaries as a source of wealth, because they will be
bringing in money. That's what many heathens see—
money and opportunity. But very seldom do they see and
understand the gospel.
That is why I don't give my missionaries money to
give to the heathens. I support them for six months, and
after that they're on their own. I tell them, "I'm sending
you out to give them the gospel, and only the gospel. Don't
give them any impression that you are bringing them
riches. You can only help them genuinely by giving them
the gospel. Don't worry about the money. Those things
will take care of themselves."
When people say they can't become missionaries
because they don't have money, they have a false idea
about the ability of God to provide. I started my ministry
totally broke in a dilapidated tent church, but I never
depended upon any foreign missionary for support. I
purposely avoided receiving any foreign financial aid. I
have since given tens of thousands of dollars for
missionary work overseas, including in the United States
and Europe.
God must be our total resource. If we depend on any
other source, we will have no one to turn to when
shortages come. I determined to make God my total
154
resource, and He has never failed me. In twenty-three

years I have built three churches, and God has supplied all
of my needs.
Now our church has sent out seventy-five missionaries
all over the world, and they have learned that same lesson.
God will supply all of our needs when we depend on Him
as our total resource.
Therefore, we should all be encouraged that church
growth is possible if we follow the principles I have
related in this book. Church growth comes by the Holy
Spirit, by the Word of God and by pastors of faith. Using
the system of home cell groups, we can build a church
anywhere.
155

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SUCCESSFUL HOME CELL GROUPS

South America. Some of them had been members of our

8 The Miracle Church

I have explained that the growth of our church is

But with 8,000 cells, that would mean 8,000 more

place is faced with a real oil shortage, and there is a lack of

visible buildings. There are thousands and thousands of

the answer is home cell groups. In the cell groups,

9 Authority With Love

When I started my church, it was only a little tent

Gradually some of those groups (although not the

denomination or to a fellowship of pastors outside their

beyond the boundaries of the local church. We must make

there to help oversee the spiritual growth of the members,

10 Church Growth International

I have been telling people about these church growth

On one of those trips in 1976 I had just completed a

pledges) for the construction of the missions center. To tell

"It was a very traumatic experience to leave Vietnam,"

The following February I set up a meeting in a hotel in

We must be serious about church growth if we are

Assemblies of God had experienced only 2 percent growth

11 How to Begin Home Cell Groups

can see firsthand what has been accomplished at Full

I always say that a minister should put his total energy

cell groups needs to study this system thoroughly, or he

attendance record at church and at other meetings,

all your needs.

confession, intercession and petition before the Lord.

or helped in other ways at the meetings, how many

become a major tool of evangelism, and the pastor now

In Korea, however, our church does not have home

12 Importance of Fellowship With the Holy

I have already given the basic requirements for home

That's a great mistake. I lived with that attitude myself

began to have real fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

We may have all of the theology and yet have an icebox in

The Bible commands us to have communion with the

my laundry to my wife. This went on for six months while

depressed, and eventually some warning signs stirred in

together we plan the work.

When I learned to speak English, I began to speak

Each year the members of our church make 300,000

13 Motivating Lay Leadership

I have already pointed out that the success of home

pastors can't carry out all of the heavy work of evangelism

and remember the conference, and they feel important.

starving! And if a wife does not praise her husband for

"My, how were you able to do this? It's wonderful! It's

didn't you eat?"

reason was that the pastor had turned everything over to

14 Preaching to a Growing Church

I have mentioned several prerequisites for establishing

"On Sundays when you preach a topical message,

In my preaching I also have a definite goal. I don't

big program we have. At Full Gospel Central Church we

school. My father could not afford to send me to school

did, but in a redeeming way, as it says in 2 Cor. 8:9,