Title: The Comparative Study – The Class Meeting of John Wesley and the Home
Cell Group of Yonggi Cho
Interest Group: Practical Theology
Name: Sin Ho Kim (Ph. D Candidate at Drew University)
Presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Wesleyan Theological Society
1. Introduction
The small group meeting in a house church has its original root in the Christian
community of the early church in the first century. Early Christians had fellowship,
Bible study, and communion service in a house church. The primitive ecclesia in Acts
provided the basic ideas for the class meeting in Methodism and the Home Cell Group
(HCG) of the Yoido Full Gospel Church (YFGC). There were two types of meetings in
the early church: the temple church and the house church.1 And lay leaders had the
responsibility of carrying house ministry while the apostles focused on preaching and
prayer. John Wesley and Yonggi Cho adopted this structure of the small house church,
reorganized it into a small group meeting, and utilized it as a ‘permanent revival center.’
During the 18th century, the period of the industrial revolution in Great Britain,
John Wesley developed the small group movement called ‘the band and the class’ within
1
David Lowes Watson, The Early Methodist Class Meeting: Its Origins and Significance (Nashville:
Discipleship Resources, 1985), 1. Paul Yonggi Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups (Plainfield, NJ: Logos
International, 1981), 16. Larry Stockstill, The Cell Church: Preparing Your Church for the Coming
Harvest (Venture, CA: Regal, 1998), 16. For the research on the house church movement, see: Tony
Higton and Gilbert Kirby, The Challenge of the House Churches (Oxford: Latimer, 1988); C. Kirk
Hadaway, et al., Home Cell Groups and House Churches (Nashville, TN: Broadman, 1987).
1
the Church of England. He emphasized discipleship through these effective systems to
win, edify, help, and discipline the members in Methodist Society. Such class meetings
made a great contribution to the development of the Methodist movement. Later, during
the nineteenth century, small group meetings had great influence on the Holiness revival
in the U.S.A. The Holiness group considered this weekly meeting to be very important
for the promotion of holiness. One of the best examples of this house meeting was
“Tuesday Meetings for the Promotion of Holiness” by Phoebe Palmer which was held
every Tuesday on a regular basis.2 In South Korea, Yonggi Cho established HCG within
YFGC and utilized it as a permanent revival center during the 1960s, the period of
economical development. When he mentions several of the factors in church growth, he
emphasizes the importance of HCG.
I have focused on the characteristics and commonalities between small group
meeting movements for a long time. I will discuss them throughout this paper. I believe
that this system of a small church within an established church is still useful and
effective to attract people into the modern churches. In the end, I will shortly introduce
the influences of these small groups on the modern churches, while focusing on the Cell
Church.
2
Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the twentieth Century
(Grand Rapids, Michigan/ Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), 17
2
2. The Class Meeting of John Wesley
The established Church in England in the 18th century failed to bring its
members into close fellowship and holiness and ignored the miserable situations of the
marginalized in the cities. Wesley witnessed that those who were not closely united with
the other members soon fell away from faith and holiness. 3 He strongly felt the
necessity of joining them into strong connection that aimed for an association of people,
so that they could watch over and help each other in their salvation and sanctification.
An excellent organizer, he founded two basic Methodist systems of societies: class and
band. 4 Salvation, fellowship, and discipleship were emphasized through the class
meeting.
The band was composed of five to ten members according to sex, age, and
marital status. The main goals of the band were both spiritual growth and mutual
fellowship.5 The primary activities of the band were based on spiritual and mutual
accountability through the sharing of life, confession, and prayer which in a group of
3
Arthur Wilford Nagler, Pietism and Methodism or The Significance of German Pietism in the Origin
and Early Development of Methodism (Nashville, Dallas, Richmond: Publishing House M.E. Church,
South, 1918), 110.
4
Howard Snyder, The Radical Wesley & Patterns for Church Renewal (Downers Grove, Ill: Inter Varsity
Press, 1980), 53. Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1995), 117-8.
5
Clifford Towlson, Moravian and Methodist: relationships and influences in the eighteenth century
(London: Epworth Press, 1957), 175-89.
3
well-disciplined and sincere members. The band was a more strict and thorough training
meeting than the class. The band was not a compulsory meeting but a voluntary one for
leadership development. Band members were expected to abstain from doing evil, to be
zealous in good works, and to use all the means of grace.6 Unfortunately, with the
growth of the Wesleyan Societies, the bands lost their early importance.7
Wesley planned to provide the opportunity for exercising discipline and the
firm bonds of Christian fellowship to all the members in the Methodist Society, which
brought the birth of the class meeting. All Methodist members were organized as
mandatory members of a class meeting in 1742.8 The class was composed of about
twelve who were of geographic proximity. They met together once a week and shared
their lives for personal and spiritual maturity. It was through the class meeting that they
bore one another’s burdens and exhorted one another, which enhanced the intimate level
of community and membership.9
3. Home Cell Group (HCG) of Yonggi Cho
When Yonggi Cho, a senior pastor of the Yoido Full Gospel Church (YFGC),
6
7
8
9
Snyder, 59.
Nagler, 51. In England the bands disappeared about 1880.
Snyder, 54.
Ibid., 55.
4
was hospitalized from fatigue while baptizing three hundred people by himself in 1964,
it was determined that it was impossible for him to manage all the church’s
administrative affairs. He realized, “Churches should not have to depend on a single
strong pastor,”10 so he organized the system of ‘HCG’ based on Exodus 18:18.11
About five to seven families in the same neighborhood form one HCG where
the strongest spiritual member is the leader. Cho divided the city of Seoul into 34 Great
Districts. Each great district is divided into several sub-districts with sub-district pastors.
Each sub-district is composed of several sections with sectional leaders. A great district
holds a meeting with the sub-district leaders every three-month.12 Each section again
has several HCGs with leaders.13 When one HCG grows to have ten families, it is
divided into two HCGs with five families each.14 Thus, about five families form one
HCG, 5 to 15 HCGs make a section, 10 to 15sections build a sub-district, and 12 to 23
sub districts form a great district. In 1967, there were 125 HCGs with 2,267 families
and 7,750 church members. Now, about 95% of the members in YFGC participate in
10
Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, vi.
“You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy. You
cannot handle it alone.” (NIV) “God gave me a Dream,” Pentecost Evangel (Nov 4, 1979): 10.
12
International Theological Institute, Yoidosunbokum Kyohoiui Sinangkwa Sinkak I [The Faith and
Theology of YFGC I] (Seoul: Seoul Publishing House, 1993), 193-5.
13
Young Hoon Lee, “The Holy Spirit Movement in Korea: Its Historical and Doctrinal Development,”
(Ph.D dissertation: The Temple University, 1996), 197.
14
Peggy Kannaday, “The World’s Largest Church,” Pentecost Evangel (Feb 6, 1994), 12.
11
5
HCG and there are 50,000 HCGs with 700,000 members.15
The members in the same HCG live or work in the same area and have a
meeting together at the house, factory, or office that is held once a week during the
weekdays, especially on Thursday or Friday. At these meetings, its members pray
together for new members, spirit-baptism, healing, and for personal issues of concern.
The elements of these meetings include a worship service, discussion of Cho’s sermon,
and a Bible study in seven steps by themes provided by YFGC. HCG has been used as
the teaching arm and ministering body of YFGC.16 Donald McGavran of the Fuller
Theological Seminary evaluates HCG in YFGC as “the best organized church in the
world.”17
4. Commonalities
Both Wesley and Cho are called the genius of organizational and systematic
management of the church because of their small meetings.18 They establish the small
group churches (ecclesiola) in the interrelationship with the established church
(ecclesia), which is based on their theology of ecclesiology: ecclesiola in ecclesia. That
15
Young Hoon Lee, “Life and Ministry of David Yonggi Cho,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 7/1
( 2004), 16.
16
“A Korean church that is touching the world,” Pentecost Evangel (Aug 28, 1988): 17.
17
Karen Hurston, Growing World’s Largest Church (Springfield, Missouri: Chrism, 1995), 12.
18
Watson, 6. Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of
Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1995), 231.
6
is, the structure of ecclesiology is composed of both the universal church and little
churches inside it. Wesley put Methodist Society under the Church of England rather
than establishing a new Methodist Church and made the small class meeting the basic
unit of Methodist organization.19 HCG as the smallest unit in YFGC is, in some respect,
a small church. Cho emphasizes that the system of HCG should be established within
both the local church and the established denomination.20 He builds up the 50,000
house churches (ecclesiola) in YFGC (ecclesia).
A networking of small groups should be tap-rooted in the main church. Wesley
and Cho place the connection of the small group meetings under pastoral supervision.21
The line of authority and communication passes down from Wesley and Cho to the
Methodist members and congregations in YFGC as a whole through the small group
meetings.22
Through this process, both Wesley and Cho changed the concept of place for
church worship and meetings. They chose private houses or offices as meeting places
instead of churches for convenience. In the beginning, the church members didn’t open
their houses as meeting places because they felt that the church meeting should be held
19
20
21
22
Watson, 80.
Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 90.
Watson, 3.
Ibid., 98.
7
in a church. Later, they understood that the early Christians gathered in a house and
people who gather in faith are a church. They utilize the double-sided ministry of the
church: temple ministry and house ministry.23
Through these small meetings, Wesley and Cho focused on the praxis of
salvation and holiness. 24 Salvation and spiritual maturity are sought and fulfilled
through the dynamisms of group experience in their small group meetings. Two cores of
Wesleyan theology are composed of the renewal in justification by faith and
sanctification. His understanding of salvation goes beyond the forensic themes of
justification to emphasize a strong doctrine of sanctification. He is concerned with the
fullness of faith (i.e., sanctification) as well as with its beginnings (i.e., justification) and
maintains the parallelism between them. They are not only two aspects of the same
thing but also two different levels. Two core theologies of Cho in his five-fold gospel
are regeneration and the second blessing known as ‘the baptism of the Holy Spirit.’ Cho
teaches that all his cell group leaders be filled with the Spirit in the classical Pentecostal
sense.25 “If they are unbelievers, let them meet Jesus Christ and be converted; if they
are already believers, let them meet Jesus Christ and become more profound in their
James Sunghoon Myung, “Spiritual Dimension of Church Growth as Applied in Yoido Full Gospel
Church,” (Ph.D dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1990), 330.
24
Albert C. Outler, “Foreword,” in The Early Methodist Class Meeting, vii.
25
Yonggi Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 114.
23
8
faith.”26
The small meetings become dual practical tools to accomplish both evangelism
and nurture. Members are mutually responsible for one another and support each other
as they work out their salvation and grow in maturity. Members in the small group form
a working partnership of zeal in evangelism. Cho has developed HCG as the primary
means for evangelization to invite neighbors by providing a comfortable place to come.
Cell group leaders and members are constantly bringing their friends and neighbors to
HCG for wining the unconverted.27 The small group meetings provide not only ‘the
handing over of the gospel to the world’ but also ‘the handing on of the gospel within
the ecclesial community.’28
The small meetings provide the spiritual discipline to enhance sanctification.
Christians could protect, encourage, and strengthen one another’s faith and obtain the
content of faithful discipleship through the weekly group meetings. The class leaders
emphasize regular attendance of the members and are given clear instructions to visit
those who are irregular in their meetings. New converts who were beset with
temptations needed caring and encouragement in faith and had opportunity for
confession of sin. Members mutually pray for each other, search the scripture, provide
26
27
28
Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 147.
Larry Stockstill, 53. Myung, 332.
Watson, 2. Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 52.
9
moral/spiritual reinforcement, give advice and reproof, and minister works of love and
mercy together. Through this process, attendants in the small meetings overcome
temptations in the world and experience growth in faith. In this respect, these small
meetings overcome the distinction between evangelism and nurture.29
Both HCG and class meeting are based on mutual fellowship among the
members. The small group meeting provides fellowship for newcomers who are not
accustomed to the church with helps them to easily settle down. It emphasizes Christian
togetherness and interpersonal relationship in order to provide feelings of being a
member of a family.30 They share their lives with one another, watch over one another
in love, and are accountable to one another concerning their discipleship. Mutual
accountability and responsibility have been identified as the most central and significant
features of these meetings. 31 Both the class meeting and HCG feed the need for
“intimate Christian fellowship in the mysterious process of growth in grace.” 32
Christians in the same small group bear one another’s burdens, care for each other, and
make themselves accountable to each other through a means of mutual support.33 The
collective contributions are distributed to the needy in the small group meeting in the
29
30
31
32
33
Outler, viii.
Larry Stockstill, 18.
Watson, xi.
Outler, vii. Stockstill, 11.
Watson, 94. Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 67. Stockstill, 31.
10
form of cash, clothing, food, or medicine.34 With the help of this system, Cho can
minister to the 700,000 members because HCG provides the chance to teach discipline
and immersion in close koinonia.
Both Wesley and Cho realize the important role of lay people in a church. They
utilize the experiences and powers of ordinary people in a church. Duties of a class
leader are giving offerings to a steward, reporting the spiritual status of members to a
pastor, and visiting members once a week. The leaders who are appointed by Wesley
and Cho are central in the small group meetings as spiritual overseers of the group
instead of pastors.35 Wesley depends more and more upon the assistance of lay persons
as helpers in his society as his society grows. The authority of the class leaders has been
reaffirmed according to the General Rules and Bible School. The lay leaders of the
classes have the responsibility of carrying house meetings and contribute to the
development and growth of Methodism.
Cho also realized that he cannot manage the whole church administration by
himself after several fainting. He decided to mobilize and train more people for being
involved in the ministry of the church.36 He believes that the church must be structured
Manfred Marquardt, John Wesley’s Social Ethics: Praxis and Principles trans. by John E. Steely and W.
Stephen Gunter (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), 28. Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 53.
35
Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995),
118.
36
Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 14. Myung, 329.
34
11
into the form of the cell system so that the cell leaders can function as ministers.37
When Cho started his HCG in 1964, there were many difficulties and barriers to
organizing it because lay leaders didn’t have any confidence in the cell system. He
found the lay leaders who led HCG to be inadequate and felt the necessity of education
for leadership. He selected and trained the leaders and gave them confidences as leaders.
He set strict principles for leaders who were required to undergo three years of Biblical
and theological training in the Laymen’s Bible School, the Leadership Seminar, and the
Home Cell Leaders’ College.38 After being trained through those programs, they are
assigned as the leaders of HCG, which brings the lay movement in a church. HCG
provides lay persons the opportunity to be involved in the life of a church as active
workers.39 It is decided that the best possible solution for leading the church is in the
lay empowerment model by institutionalizing the cell system through partnerships and
team management.40
Another commonality between them is their utilization of woman leadership.
Women didn’t need any authority other than their own enthusiasm and determination
and they greatly contributed to Methodist societies. Although their social position and
37
Yonggi Cho, Nae Kyohoesungjang Iyagi [My Story of Church Growth] (Seoul: Seoul Word Publishing,
2005), 120.
38
Paul Yonggi Cho, More Than Numbers (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1984), 33-38. Younggi Hong &
Sunghoon Myung, Charis and Charisma (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2003),94-6.
39
Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 50-51.
40
Stockstill, 35.
12
influence were limited, women attained positions of leadership through the band and
class meeting. The female position in Methodism had been developed as follow: public
praying, testimony, exhortation, class leadership, and preaching. The small groups of the
Methodist Society continued to provide opportunity for women to lead and nurture their
spiritual growth in positions equal to men. Women not only contributed significantly to
the growth of early Methodism but also served as financial and political patrons.
Cho seriously considers the position of women in the church and has a very
positive attitude toward their roles and powers. He realizes that the future of the church
depends on their ministries and activities.41 It had not been allowed for a woman to
become the leader in a co-gender meeting in the Confucian culture and society where
the position of women in a family and society was submitted to men. Jashil Choi, Cho’s
mother-in-law, played an important role to organize early HCG and encourage women
to be leader.42 She chose some women leaders, trained them, and made them leaders
who led HCG. Women invite their neighbors to HCG, gather people, begin to lay hands
on the men, and teach their members with enthusiasm. These women devote themselves
to the growth of HCG through home visitation and street preaching.43 Through HCG,
41
Younggi Hong & Sunghoon Myung, Charis and Charisma, 97. Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 23.
Myung, 346-7.
42
Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 29.
43
“God gave me a Dream,” Pentecost Evangel (Nov 4, 1979): 10.
13
the women in YFGC find their leadership position in a church, which is sensational in
the strict Confucian society. Cho is the first pastor who utilized women ministers in the
church as leaders of HCG in Korea. In 1995, it was proved that 85% of all home cell
leaders were women. The cell system has brought liberation to the status of women in
the Korean Church.44 In this respect, the small meeting is counter-cultural.
Both Wesley and Cho focus on the alienated, especially the poor in a city during
the industrial revolution period. The founders of the Methodist Society were composed
of the lower classes including carpenters, retired soldiers, piece-workers, weavers,
leather workers, coopers, bread bakers.45 There were at least eight thousand Methodist
leaders from the poor by the end of the eighteenth century.46 Even women among the
lower classes, including servant girls, spinners, and housewives, were allowed to
assume positions of leadership, which was a courageous innovation and a bold social
reformation. Most early leaders of HCG who belonged to the lower classes experienced
extreme poverty. A huge number of poor women have been encouraged by Cho’s
preaching, trained to be HCG leaders, and have become the most active workers in the
church.47
44
45
46
47
Younggi Hong, Spirituality and Leadership of Yonggi Cho, 62.
Marquardt, 27.
Oscar Sherwin, John Wesley, Fried of People (New York: Twayne Publisher, 1961), 35.
International Theological Institute, 186.
14
5. Revitalization of the Small Group Meeting in the 21st Century
I find that the system of small groups is still very effective in the postmodern
age. Cho points HCG out as one of the growth factors in YFGC and HCG has been
well-known as the international trade mark of YFGC. 48 HCG system has been
expanded to Japan, Australia, the United States, Latin America, and Europe. It is
reported that churches that adopt the system of HCG are growing in these countries.49
Most churches in South Korea who were critical and negative to the system of HCG
have changed their attitudes and adopted the system of HCG to accommodate their
congregants. HCG has been adopted and evolved to the Cell Church in the U.S.A. The
best examples of the effectiveness of the small group in the U.S.A. are the Faith
Community Baptist Church by Ralph Neighbour and the Cell Church by Larry
Stockstill. They have learned how to operate HCG from Cho and adopted it in the
American culture. The Bethany World Prayer Center has become a cell-based church
through weekly cell meeting. Each Sunday one of those groups would meet in various
homes for fellowship and spiritual nurture while three other groups would meet at the
48
49
Ibid., 185-187.
Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 47, 104-5.
15
main building for the regular Sunday worship service.50 Cho provides another excellent
example of utilizing HCG: underground churches in China. A decentralized and laydriven ministry has helped the Chinese church to survive throughout the years of
persecution.51
6. Conclusion
My paper starts with the question, “If these two small group meetings have
proven to be so successful, why not today?” One of the idealistic models in church
administration for the 21st century can be a small group meeting. The class meeting was
the cornerstone of the whole edifice in the growth of Methodism during the 18th century.
Cho confesses that HCG is an essential and organic factor in church growth in the 20th
century.52 I believe that the class meetings of John Wesley and HCG of Yonggi Cho
prove that small groups can be suited for its own time. I find possible correlations
between the 18th century situation and our own. The system of a small group is still
effective and useful to evangelize and nurture Christians in the postmodern age. This
small group system provides the driving force of the unity and fellowship among the
church members and as a result, contributes to church growth.
50
51
52
Stockstill, 18. Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 117.
Cho, Successful Home Cell Groups, 84-85. Stockstill, 32-3.
Lee, “Life and Ministry of David Yonggi Cho,” 7.
16
People including Christians feel alienated, lonely, and aimless in today’s
individualistic and depersonalized society. They need a place to discuss their daily lives,
struggles, and problems and help each other through deep mutual accountability.
Through the class meeting, people can know each other and share life for personal and
spiritual growth. I believe that these particular organizations that emphasize this pattern
of fellowship and discipleship are a model for all centuries: “While their exact structure
is contextual, they are necessary for the Christian life in all times and places.”53
53
Henry H. Knight III, The Presence of God in the Christian Life: John Wesley and the Means of Grace
(Metuchen, NJ & London: The Scarecrow Press, 1992), 95.
17