Biggest Church in the WORLD

Name:  Yoido Full Gospel Church

Location:  Seoul, South Korea

Denomination:  Assemblies of God (Pentecostal) 

Members:  over 830,000

# of seats in building:  26,000

On Sunday, I took a trip to Yoido Full Gospel Church; which houses the largest congregation in the entire world. The experience was, as expected, overwhelming. The massive building somehow seems even grander on the inside and resembles a concert hall with multiple balconies and levels. Once inside, I was seated in the foreigner's box on the upper balcony. Headphones were provided to foreigners with 7 language choices to select from: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian-Malay, and Russian. 

The full choir and complete orchestra overflowed with somewhere around 100 people, and gave an impressive performance that was border-line "over the top." Surprisingly many of the hymns were familiar standard songs from home including, Amazing Grace, and English lyrics were posted on the two jumbotron screens behind the altar. 

Throughout the service, conspicuous video cameras panned in and out of the crowd. Seated right alongside one of the cameramen, I found myself on screen multiple times, an occurrence that seems less exciting in church than at a ball game. 

Overall the experience was overwhelming, and was probably made more "interesting" given the liturgical holiday we chose to attend a Pentecostal church—the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). Speaking in tongues was the topic of Sunday's sermon and the pastor definitely led the colossal congregation in "practicing what he preached." 

The massive choir and orchestra on the left

People beginning to file in and grab a seat

The many balconies and rows upon rows of seating. 

(Notice the flags from around the world)

The start of the service- just like you see on TV. Every seat was filled at this point, but I couldn't snap anymore pictures because a man came by the foreigner's box holding a sign up that read, "No Cameras Please." I felt it was a bit unfair that we couldn't take pictures, but they could videotape us throughout the service and run it on the jumbotrons...