The Small Group Revolution
The Small Group Revolution
From Rev.
Kwak’s speech at the Central Training Center in Sutaek-ri at the special event
marking the “Conferment of Cheon Seong
Gyeong[1]
and Hoondokhae[2]
Launch Ceremony,” on March 26, 2005.[3]
From now on
activities will be done by all blessed couples with the central headquarters
supporting you, helping to make it possible for you to participate in
activities and supplying you with educational materials.
Returning to
hometown has been emphasized during three periods beginning in 1991, activities
to break through in the local community have been emphasized three times since
1989, and the home church[4]
providence has been emphasized since 1979. Father has repeatedly directed us to
do these things and even included them in annual mottoes five times.
He has often
instructed us to do home church activities geared toward breaking through in
the local community. The concept of home church is the same as tongban gyeokpa (breaking through in the
local community). But we have lost our focus with regard to home church, Father
has instructed us to work on breaking through in our neighborhood. It is
possible to break through in our local areas when we have formed home church
organizations.
Excerpt from
a speech of Father’s: If a tribal messiah[5]
leads a clan, this is horizontal expansion. If home churches are established,
the tribe can be won over. If you are successful in home church, you become a
messiah. You become a person responsible for saving people. This is an amazing
blessing. Unificationists are becoming tribal messiahs. Just because you become
a tribal messiah doesn’t mean you do not need home church. We have to bring
these together.
Comprehensive
results are most effectively achieved by a movement powered by small groups.
There are
countless books related to home churches. The cells multiply. The core of Cheon Il Guk[6]
is an ideal family unified and living in cosmic peace. One family centered on
God generates the power to grow and then to multiply to branch families. This
can be carried out in various ways in the midst of our daily lives. Gatherings
such as class reunions, anglers’ clubs, early morning meetings, and meetings
for people sharing the same tastes are all in this candidates for where this
work can take place. The final and strongest purpose for becoming involved in
or creating a small group is for it to become, at its core, a home church. It
is good to have a group leader and an assistant leader… If the number exceeds
16, the group should multiply to create two… We’ll be able to take
responsibility together, raise people we have connected to our groups, and lead
them to blessing.
All blessed
members should participate in establishing small hoondok groups… We need to find the best method of developing the hoondok small groups to the level where
they are able to sustain themselves and grow on their own. They should be small
groups that spawn an active movement.
All
activities, all our foundation, and all of our time should be concentrated on
small group activities. This is what Father wants.
All blessed
members need to activate themselves through study of the word at hoondokhae and increase the number of
people in their small group… the current church leaders should be working on
model small group activities and organizing group leaders, so that all blessed
members can lead hoondok churches and
activate them from April 1.
If membership
increases through the multiplication of cells, they should connect new members
to the hoondok home churches. If they
do so, there will be a foundation in the wards, towns and counties. That is
what True Parents wish to achieve. We have to activate small hoondok groups and achieve results
through hoondok home churches. We
should keep an eye out for and record successful experiences, share grace
through testimonies or conferences, and firmly establish our organization.
You should
know that starting these interrelated small groups is a first step that can be
likened to laying the cornerstone of a saved nation and world. The foundation
for ward, town and county hoondok churches
is based on the village, community and neighborhood. Hence its accomplishment
will result in an impressive national foundation.
We all start
with small hoondokhae groups. The
small groups should be led by us. We have to become leaders of the Family
Federation and public officials in Cheon
Il Guk. Please understand that if you do not resemble one of the nerve
cells, you cannot become a public official.
I found
recently that speech looking through my Today´s World Magazine collection, now
13 years later (2018), I would like to comment about this important direction
and I believe that “Small Group Revolution” that started in the Christian
churches must spread also in the Unification Church.
For this to
happen, I would like to clarify the concept of the “Cell Church” that grow and
multiply successfully from house to house, family to family building a large congregation and becoming a megachurch within the context of Christian
Evangelical Churches compared to the
concept of Home Church, tongban gyeokpa, hoondokhae
groups within the context of the Unification Church.
Since True
Father introduced the concept of Home Church in 1979, the direction was
repeated by Rev Kwak, in 2005, Rev In Jin Moon´s Loving Life Ministry, and Rev
Hyung Jin Moon´s Cheon Bok Gung´s Ministry in 2010. Here in Brazil, our
Continental leader Rev Shin Dong Mo introduced the Home Groups providence with
the help of Rev Seo Sung Jong, who introduced the one on one lecture method
that should be applied together with the small group approach.
It is not by
chance that the first successful cell church to realize an explosive growth is
the Yoido Full Gospel, founded by David Cho in Korea.[7]
In 1998, Joel Comiskey wrote the book: Home cell group explosion.[8]
David Cho ushered in the modern-day cell church movement, which has now spread
around the globe.[9]
We
understand God and the Holy Spirit have been working and preparing the nation
of Korea in the Lasts Days, as a new chosen nation for the Second Coming of
Christ, in a similar way that Israel was prepared 2000 years ago before the
coming of Jesus.[10]
We received
the direction by our leaders to start the Home Groups in 2010. Two years later,
we a had a seminar about Hoondok family church by Rev Sung Jong Seo, in Sao
Paulo, where he introduced the one on one witnessing approach.
Then I did my
google search, with “small groups and one on one” and I found the Igreja da Paz
(Peace Church) who is a megachurch in Santarem, north of Brazil, on the side of
the Amazon river, with 65000 members that started with a small group in the
eighties.
Pastor Abe
Huber visited the Yoido megachurch and bought the books and spent about 10
years of study, research with trials and errors to adapt the model in Santarem
where his American father and family came for missionary work. Every year
thousand of pastors of all denominations are going there to attend the MDA
conference. M is the “Model”, D is the “Discipleship” and A “Apostolic”.[11]
The first
point is: if the leader just gives the direction and asks the members to start
the “Home Groups” or “Home Church” the revolution or the result will not come
by itself automatically. The healthy “cell group” to grow and multiply needs a
correct DNA, and the first element of the genetic code is the “good leader”,
this means a successful member who went through the proper training course, has
been approved, qualified and has a coach to provide a continued update training
and supervision. If the cell leader is doing well, within one year he may
become e supervisor and train other cell leaders under him.
Another
element of the genetic code is sharing God´s words, not by reading a text, like
the Hoondok style, the focus is to build relationship between the participants,
creating a loving vertical atmosphere for everyone to share his opinion freely
and to be integrated in the fellowship as a family and community.
The MDA
vision has seven elements of genetic code to be established in the cell group
before to approve a multiplication. The cell group is one of the four columns
of commitment, the members meet once a week in a home church, the second is the
Sunday Service, is a moment of celebration, specially prepared with a content to
complement the cell groups that gather together in a vertical atmosphere to
worship and revival.
The letter
“D” discipleship[12] is the third commitment to meet “one on one” once a week with
your disciples. One of the requirements to start to guide a disciple is that you need to be a disciple to someone or you have already a spiritual father guiding you on the path to spiritual maturity, good character and behavior, to become holy and saint like
Christ. And in turn you make and raise your own disciples as your spiritual children and they will continue to do the same process.
The “one on one” or “one to one” is an amazing principle based on father-son relationship, the “discipler” motivated with Heavenly Father´s heart invest to raise his spiritual son to become better than himself. From the viewpoint of restoration, the discipler is in the position of Abel, helping Cain to take God´s standpoint, to receive God´s love, to naturally and freely choose to obey and submit to God´s will and to multiply goodness.
The “one on one” or “one to one” is an amazing principle based on father-son relationship, the “discipler” motivated with Heavenly Father´s heart invest to raise his spiritual son to become better than himself. From the viewpoint of restoration, the discipler is in the position of Abel, helping Cain to take God´s standpoint, to receive God´s love, to naturally and freely choose to obey and submit to God´s will and to multiply goodness.
The fourth
column or commitment to rise on the leadership ladder is to attend a weekly
training leadership course as follow: membership class, new creature, Christian
family, devotional life, cell leader training and Go and Make Disciples.
Another
important point if the church leader of the local congregation wants to make a
transition for the members to practice the Home Groups activities, before to
ask all members to start the groups, he has to start from his home making a
prototype group with the correct DNA, grow with new members, multiply and
supervise and train new leaders one by one and help them to become successful.
Using the
concept of the “Cell Church” (Home Church) that grows and multiplies, a blessed
family needs to learn to supervise and train at least 120 cell leaders to
become a tribal messiah through three main disciples, that take care of their
own disciples that makes 12, then 40, then 120 cell groups. The average members
are 10 to 16 by groups, in this approach we can guide and educate 430 families
to become Cheon Il Guk citizens.
The Small
Group revolution will occur in the Unification Church when we will learn to
work together in partnership and inherit the successful Model from the
victorious Christian leaders.
posted by Christian | 3:18 PM
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