Read the transcript below
Keywords
faith, Christianity, Yoido Full Gospel Church, personal transformation, spiritual journey, radical repentance, divine encounter, church experience, South Korea, Alan Wartes
Summary
In this episode of Dispatches from the Spiritual Front, Alan Wartes recounts his transformative experience at the Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea in 1983. Initially reluctant to attend, he describes how the vibrant worship and sense of community led to a profound personal encounter with God, reigniting his faith and reshaping his spiritual journey. Wartes emphasizes the dual nature of faith: the call to repentance and the invitation to belong in God’s kingdom.
Takeaways
The Yoido Full Gospel Church symbolizes the surge of Christianity in post-war Korea.
Alan’s journey reflects a struggle between faith and worldly influences.
A personal encounter with God can transform one’s life.
The experience at church was more than just a service; it was a divine encounter.
Faith can be reignited in unexpected places and moments.
The importance of community in spiritual experiences is highlighted.
Alan’s story illustrates the journey from lukewarm faith to passionate belief.
The duality of faith: the call to come out and the invitation to come in.
Worship can create a powerful atmosphere for personal transformation.
The significance of personal stories in understanding faith journeys.
Sound bites
“I burst into tears.”
“I was home.”
“All my irritation melted away.”
Chapters
00:00 A Reluctant Journey to Faith
05:00 The Experience at Yoido Full Gospel Church
08:45 A Transformative Encounter with the Divine
09:46 The Invitation to Belong
Transcript
Welcome. I’m Alan Wartes and this is Dispatches from the Spiritual Front.
In this episode I’ll tell you the story of the day I reluctantly visited the largest, and most famous, church in the world at the time. The year was 1983, but I remember the experience like it was yesterday.
Many American Christians back then had heard of this church, even though it was 8,000 miles across the Pacific in South Korea.
The real story wasn’t just about this one church, but about the surge of Christianity in the post-war years in Korea.
When I arrived there as a member of the U.S. Army, I was astonished at the number of bright red crosses I could see at night across the dense urban landscape in Seoul.
But the Yoido Full Gospel Church became the symbol of that movement for believers in the West.
Long before the term mega-church was coined, Yoido boasted a membership of 400,000 people.
The sanctuary seated 12,000, with room for another 8,000 spread around the church campus to watch on closed circuit TV. Every Sunday, the church held seven services, and still had to turn people away.
You can see why all that might seem legendary to Christians in America.
But, I’m getting ahead of the story, because it’s important to understand who I was as that 23-year-old version of myself.
I grew up in Texas. My family attended a Southern Baptist church for most of my childhood.
But I didn’t just tag along. I was a true believer — at least to the extent of my adolescent understanding of what it meant to believe.
I remember being taken at age 7 to a revival meeting held by a traveling evangelist named Bob Harrington. I think both of those terms “revival meeting” and “traveling evangelist” probably show my age.
This was long before TV evangelism took off — we actually had an LP record of his sermons at home that I remember listening to on the turntable. From Louisiana, he was known as the “chaplain of Bourbon Street.”
Harrington had a big, booming voice and a no-nonsense country delivery that appealed to my step-father. So, when he came to town, we were there.
I couldn’t tell you what Harrington said that night, but during the altar call, something stirred in my heart and I knew that what he was offering was for me.
My mother told me years later I was a different kid before and after that night.
All through school, I tried my best to live by that new faith. I was the nerdy 8th-grade kid who wore a “Praise the Lord!” pin to school every day — and suffered for it..
Then, inevitably, I went off to college, where other ideas about how to live were for sale, and I started to try them on.
That was nothing compared to joining the army at age 20. I went into basic training as a wobbling Christian and came out more or less indistinguishable in my values and habits from everyone else.
It took about 8 weeks.
By the time I was assigned to Korea in 1983, I doubt any of my fellow soldiers would have pegged me as anything but one of their tribe.
I never renounced anything, I just shelved it. I was the definition of lukewarm, and trending toward the cold side.
I can’t recall how the subject came up, but one day the First Sergeant of my unit let on that he and his wife were Christian and had just visited an amazing church. Maybe I’d heard of it, he said. Somehow he seemed to sense that there was more to me than met the eye.
I had heard of it, and my mother kept reminding me what a shame it would be to live in the same city and not check it out.
Well alright then, the man said. They’d be happy to take me.
I wasn’t enthusiastic. By that time in my life, I had pretty low expectations of any church, no matter how famous. But I eventually ran out of excuses and agreed to go.
The day came and we battled the legendary Seoul traffic across town to Yoido Island in the Han River.
My first thought was that, from the outside, the sanctuary looked more like a sports arena than a church. The sight of hundreds of people pressing against a row of barricades outside the entrance added to that impression. A line of security guards barely held them at bay.
“The sanctuary is already full,” my friend told me. “But they’ll let us in because we are foreigners.”
With that he lowered his shoulder and started driving a wedge through the tight mob.
I was already irritated by the frantic drive through the city and long walk from the distant parking lot. That turned into outright anger when three Koreans grabbed handfuls of my coat and started shoving me toward the barricades.
As we approached, one of the guards opened a gap in the barrier just wide enough for us to squeeze through — along with the hitchhikers I’d picked up and several others who boltedfor the entrance.
“What is wrong with these people?” I grumbled.
Once we were inside, my guides led the way upstairs. We were heading for a section of seats reserved for foreigners where we could listen to translators through headphones.
As we neared the doors onto the upper mezzanine, I expected a scene similar to what I was used to at home 10 minutes before a church service was about to begin: a loud babble of voices and hurried motion as people found their seats.
Not here. The doors swung open and I was engulfed by the sound of every voice in the place singing together. No, they were praising together. I recognized the tune of a familiar hymn — “How Great Thou Art” — but the words were Korean.
The service hadn’t officially begun, but no one was out of their seats. Everyone was settled in, focused and present.
I stopped in my tracks. Carried on the music, the Holy Spirit seemed to enter every atom in my body, like high-voltage light from heaven.
I burst into tears. I had no time to form a thought or a prayer, I just buckled in a quantum leap of recognition in my soul. Eight thousand miles from my family, in the company of more than 12,000 total strangers, I had arrived home.
It had nothing to do with the size of the building or the number of people clamoring to get in it. Behind all that I had encountered the kingdom of heaven within myself.
I can’t tell you how I found my seat that day. I honestly don’t remember much past my first contact with God’s presence in the worship. I imagine my friends led me like a blind man, like Saul just knocked off his horse.
I do know that when the service ended, the young man who headed down the stairs and back out through the doors onto the city streets was not the same one who had entered. All my irritation and lukewarm reluctance to have anything to do with God had melted away.
My long journey of faith and learning resumed, and it has taken many twists and turns since then.
Here’s the point of this long story. Before that morning, Babylon — Satan’s world — had seized a lot of ground in my life. My thoughts, my words and my habits were becoming enemy strongholds.
The friends who invited me to church that day might have smacked me and said, “Snap out of it! Come out! Repent, before it’s too late!”
And they’d have been absolutely right. That is what we are commanded to do. There have been plenty of times in my life when that was exactly the message I needed.
But it’s only one side of the coin. On that morning, the Lord himself showed me the other side.
“Come in!” he said. “This is what is possible in my kingdom. This is where you belong!”
In Revelation 3:20, Jesus said the same thing:
“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
So, in future posts, as we explore the path of radical repentance together, I plan to remember that the command to “Come out!” is also the infinitely priceless invitation to “Come in!”
I’m so glad to have you along for the journey.
