Palm Sunday in Seoul

With all my travelling, I had quite forgotten that today is Palm Sunday. Having arrived in Seoul yesterday I really wanted to worship with Korean Christians today, Sunday. So Danya and I jumped into a taxi and although Danya had told the driver to take us to a nearby landmark, she asked if he knew where the Chung Yeon Presbyterian Church is located, and he said he would take us there. Evidently this church is well known. It is, in fact, a Korean mega church with 50,000 members. They have 5 services each Sunday , so although I would have estimated the number of people in the service differently, evidently there were 10,000 people in the service we attended.

We were met at the front door by the greeters, who spotted us right away as foreigners, and made sure that we were escorted upstairs to the balcony section for foreigners, where we were issued headsets and could choose from 6 different languages for simultaneous translation. We were also given a bilingual bulletin, which had the order of service listed in both Korean and English. Even the hymns were translated for us, complete with music.

It was indeed a glorious service. There were two children's choirs and at least 300 people in the adult choir. In addition there was a 20 piece orchestra and 4 maual organ. Singing with a large congregation is a glorious experience. The congregational singing included some selections usually reserved for soloists or concerts: The Holy City, which we sang at two different points in the service, and Palms, but the congreagation managed to cope well with the music, and as I said before, the service was glorious. The sermon was on Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, of course, and each time that the pastor read from Scripture, he had the congregation read it in unison. Now there's an interesting way to have the congregation participate in worship.

After the service, another man, Mr. Kim, shepherded us out of the sanctuary and over to the building where they served a dish of noodles with a dollop of kimchee to everyone. As you walk in the door, you pick up a dish of noodles (White noodles, that Mr. Kim called "wedding noodles") and proceeded to an area with lots of taps, from which you added broth to your bowl of noodles. I'd never seen a wall of taps for broth before! Evidently everyone who attends church is welcome to have a dish of noodles with the congregation after the service! Since they seem to do this every week, the kitchen staff is amazingly efficient at serving large numbers of people. Many years ago missionaries used to refer to people who professed to convert to Christianity in order to receive a handout from the church as "rice Christians". Today we were "noodle Christians."