Friday Overnight Service in Manmin Church

Revival in Korea: report from Friday Overnight Service

If you were born in the Former USSR and lived through the revival of the beginning of 90s, surely you know very well what the overnight service is. Some churches practice it even today. But unfortunately less and less people come to such prayer meetings. Why? A banal answer is the desire to sleep, and also we all know that the Lord hears prayers at any time of the day. In other words we almost lost the fire that we had in the beginning of the revival.

Not long ago my life threw me in the South Korea. What do we know about this country? Of course we all know Samsung, Hyundai and KIA. Christians also know about this country because of the largest protestant church in the world. Moreover we know that this country gave our post-Soviet countries the system of cell groups or home churches. But there was a real surprise waiting for me there. First of all it appeared that there are many more mega-churches in Korea (we haven’t heard of many of them because there were no news about them, probably because of the language barrier). Secondly, according to my personal opinion, the revival in Korea is going at full drive, although Koreans themselves do not think so. Anyway I have never seen such things before.

Friday Overnight Service in Manmin Church

I went to a Friday Overnight Service of one of those churches. The name of the church is Manmin, which means “All nations”. What impressed me most were hordes of people who were coming into the church since 9 PM. At about 10.30 PM (the prayer meeting started from praise and worship at that time) I noticed that the main hall of the church was already packed with people (as I found out later that main hall has seats for ten thousand people) and I instantly remembered poor overnight services at some of our churches. I thought: what was going on at that church was exactly what we all were praying for during our prayers for the revival. I can’t express it with my words – one has to see what I saw to understand it.

Friday Overnight Service in Manmin Church

The prayer lasted until 4.00 AM. There was a half-hour break. It was very well organized and had the same importance as the Sunday services at church. There is a very serious attitude from the leaders of Manmin church as well as from the church members. The service began with the praise and worship, the dance team also took part in it. And they were not just amatory dancers, it was a professional choreographic dance team. As it was explained to me later, there are several dance teams in the church, some of them are in fulltime ministry and spend every day in church practicing and working out every move.

And then the symphony orchestra began playing. Yes, I am not exaggerating – a complete symphony orchestra. Forty people. It belongs to the church and doesn’t play anywhere except the church. There also was a choir of a hundred people. The proportions of the service were really impressive. Of course guests from abroad received head-phones with the simultaneous interpretation (there were only three Russian guests and they organized a special interpretation of the service just for three of us). There was an English-speaking guest who was also wearing his head-phones. He was literally shocked with the musical interpretation of all the hymns that the choir was singing – the interpreter was singing along with the choir, only in English!

The senior pastor of Manmin church Jae Rock Lee

The senior pastor of Manmin church Jae Rock Lee preached the sermon. He told about miracles that were happening during the summer retreat in the church and about some cases of healings that were officially documented (there is a special group of doctors for this purpose in the church). Also the pastor noticed that Christians do not have a moral right to feel themselves lonely because they can come in prayer to the living God, so if there is a feeling of loneliness, there are probably some problems in prayer life. After the sermon everyone began praying, and after half an hour of break there was a special time of praise and worship and again - many prayers.

Friday Overnight Service in Manmin Church

When I came back to the hotel early in the morning I couldn’t fall asleep for a very long time. I was just thinking why don’t we have this in our countries anymore? (Although to be honest we have never had that in such proportions). Looking out of the window I saw three crosses luminous with red neon on the roofs of some protestant churches. I really wanted to go even deeper in the experience of the Korean revival, I wanted to understand what they are doing (and we are not) in order to see such results. I still really want to believe that the new generation will rise in our countries and will ask God day and night to give us this spiritual rain. I believe that they will ask Him and He will answer their prayers.

Special correspondent from Seoul

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TAGS: Jae Rock Lee Manmin Revival Seoul South Korea

[08/19/2010]

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