Bo Gun Hwang's Guri Church grows with New Life Festival

Guri Church members, wearing pink tee shirts, greet people new members.

The Guri church, approximately 16 miles east of Seoul, which recently inducted 120 new church members and 90 resting members at a special worship service on June 23, 2013. The event had been planned for two months prior and was called a “New Life Festival.”

Rev. Bo Gun Hwang, senior pastor of the Guri church, and his core staff started to make plans for a special outreach event in early June. Rev. Hwang brightened up the members’ spirits with a seven-day workshop after his visit to “The Middle East Peace Initiative” in Israel in the middle of May.

After the workshop, the core members held a meeting to plan a new witnessing program and to discuss the leadership team’s vision of the New Life Festival. All the church members made a spiritual condition to do breakfast fasting. Afterwards they focused on the specific division of labor needed and held a meeting every two to three days. The preparation was smooth. The members sent close to 500 invitations to “resting” (inactive) members and to people who had shown some interest in the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU). One week after the invitations were sent, the church started to get new member applications: 46 people had applied three days before the “New Life Festival” event.

The Church is fully packed with current members and new members and resting members.

The Guri church congregation encouraged other people to come, and finally they had 120 people join the church by the time of the event on June 23rd.

For the “New Life Festival” event, new members received individuals with greeting cards with a message on which were printed: “welcome new members” and their name. The stage was decorated with flowers and balloons. The church service room, capable of holding 700 people, was packed with current members, inactive members and new members. In fact, some couldn’t get chairs due to the number of people in the room.

The Guri Choir performs “You raise me up.”

Rev. Yang Myeong Park announced the start of the “New Life Festival” event. The church sang the Cheon Il Gukanthem and prayed. The church choir prepared songs with a flute and classic guitar performance. Afterwards, Rev. Bo Gun Hwang gave a speech titled, “Do you know the Unification Church?” The speech was easy to understand. He explained and dispelled the rumors about the Unification Church and described True Parents’ achievements. The speech received a big applause. The event closed with an offering song and announcements.

New members attend an after-service class, “New Member School.”

After the event, there was a “New Members’ School” meeting. Typically, the church would have three to four people attend the “New Members’ School,” but this time more than 50 people joined the new members’ class. Rev. Han Bok Cho, the main speaker, began his lecture by asking the question “Are you happy?” The new members were so excited, and they couldn’t leave even after the event. According to testimonies of participants, this event made current members of Guri Church determined to work harder to achieve Vision 2020.