So Wednesday I was able to go see the one thing I've been anticipating to see since I learned I was going on this trip, Yoido Full Gospel Church. Last week Dr. Moon promised me we would tour the building Wednesday as a part of my practicum. For those who don't know, Yoido at 830,000 members is the largest protestant church in the world. When we got there we couldn't find a parking space anywhere. Most Korean establishments don't have parking lots, because of the lack of space they have parking basements. We had to go all the way to the third floor of the basement to find a parking spot. It was kind of scary to think that you were three floors underground. So after we parked and went inside the building, we found out why it was so croweded. Neither one of us knew that they had a Wednesday worship at 12 noon. Actually they have five different Wednesday worhips and all of them were packed. My ingnorance was very apparent since I was wearing a t-shirt, basketball shorts, and flip flops. I felt so weird walking into their worship where everybody was wearing suit and tie and I had on a Uplift t-shirt. When we walked in the sanctuary we couldn't find a seat anywhere. I mean this was the biggest sanctuary I've ever seen...and it was full to capacity. Not to mention that this was a Wednesday worship in the middle of the day! While I was looking for a seat I noticed that EVERYBODY was speaking in tongue. Now I've been to many different kinds of churches but I've never seen a church where everybody caught the Holy Spirit. I mean we had to interrupt one of the ushers who was "feeling it" to have him help us find a seat.
As we were leaving when it was over, we walked by an ATM looking machine. Dr. Moon told me that people use that to give their tithes. Everything in this church was state of the art. One of the reasons Dr. Moon took me to Yoido is because he wanted me to see first hand what he was talking about in his dissertation. Yoido, like many other churches in Korea, lean heavily on what we call "prosperity preaching." Their motto comes from 3 John 2, and it's written all around the church. Dr. Moon told me that this type of doctrine is accepted here because of how closely it's related to Shamanism, a folk religion of Korea. We talked a long time about how even when a new religion is accepted, the one that was engrained before still has an impact on a person. Even as a Church of Christ preacher, he still deals with issues in the church that roots back to folk religions of Korea.
So after an amazing, enlightening morning I was brought back to reality when I step foot in Korean language class. It was the worst two hours of my life. It's bad enough that languages don't register that well with me. But on top of that, my teacher doesn't speak English that well and he's not a Korean language teacher. But it's ok, I'll get through it. Besides, the worst thing that could happen is I fail the class. Well, on second thought that would be pretty bad.
