A Korean perspective on megachurches as missional churches

Abstract

The megachurch and the missional church are on-going global phenomena. Under the premise that the church has to be missional, this dissertation analyses and describes if a megachurch can be missional in both theoretical and practical ways from a Korean perspective. The megachurch is not simply a very large church in membership or size of its building. It, by the influence of interaction of socio-cultural, historical and theological backgrounds, has its own missiological and ecclesiological perspectives. The megachurch understands that the growth of an individual church is the expansion of the kingdom of God, so that the church must be functional and structural to fulfil the church growth efficiently. Thus, it is a powerful tendency that can be found not only in large size churches, but from all churches trying to achieve by all means the quantitative growth of the church and world evangelisation, through the power and material obtained from growth. The Korean megachurches represented by the Poongsunghan Church obviously display the characteristics of this tendency. The missional church is not simply a mission-driven church sending many missionaries to other countries. It believes that all churches are sent to the world by God who wants to reconcile the whole universe to Him, so that the church has to restore its missional essence to participate in the mission of God wherever it is as the early church did. Thus, the missional church is a reforming movement to witness to God’s rule by recovering its apostolic nature. The characteristics of the movement is clearly activating in the Bundang Woori Church, one of the Korean missional churches. In this line of research, any churches that are not resisting the megachurch tendency cannot be missional. The Korean church, which is in crisis being marginalised from society, has to join the missional movement.