Yonggi Cho Depression! & Church COPYISM!

"Many pastors I meet tell me, “I tried it and it did not work!” By my guess, there could be about two hundred thousand pastors worldwide today who suffer from what I call the “Yonggi Cho depression.” David Yonggi Cho is a most unusual Korean pastor. extremely gifted and capable of leading people and building a church movement.

Many have followed his example and tried to copy him. A very few well-gifted men have even succeeded to some degree, but most have failed. The latter group feel today more guilty and depressed than before, a clear symptom of the pathological pattern of 'COPYISM,' a dangerous and deadly disease that has stricken many churches around the globe today.

But Pastor Cho’s message has never been “Copy me, and you will get the same results.” Instead, he wants people to obey God and learn from the church-growth principles that God has shown him.

Let us slip into the devil’s shoes for a few seconds: isn’t “copyism” a perfect trap? For many churches, everything starts so wonderfully. Someone experiences God’s blessing because he or she has been obedient to His Word and Spirit. Someone else tells the story and a third person creates a model out of this experience, which is then copied and cloned by a fourth person. A fifth person finally suggests, “Let’s create an institution around this new model!” He goes on to start franchises all over the world. The sixth person forms this way of doing things into a new “law,” which judges everyone who chooses to do things differently. Here then are “six sure and easy steps to transform a blessing into a curse.” If we put our hands to the plow and then look back—or abroad—how dare we think we are fit for the work in the Kingdom of God? (Luke 9:62).

It is high time that we resurrected and nurtured all that good, creative, and powerful potential that our Creator put into all of us long ago, which is nearly suffocating under too many layers of copied blessings. To do so would mean that we have to continually learn and research the ways that God is winning people to Himself and His church in our part of the world and in our society and culture. Could it be that our addiction to “successful” church models actually reveals a deep a deep leadership crisis and a widespread insecurity about what we should do?" Even more dangerous, could our wish for success reveal a serious deafness to what the Holy Spirit is trying to say to our churches about what we need to repent and get rid of?

But let us remain realistic. Statistics reveal that 80 percent of all pastors will simply copy other models and programs. Fifteen percent of all pastors will change the models to make them fit better. Only 5 percent are true inventors of their own models.

(Wolfgang Simson, "The House Church Book." Barna, 2009, pg 137-138)