Risk-Taking
Godowon translated risk-taking as literally meaning “the willingness to take danger upon oneself.” It refers to a spirit of challenge—acting willingly even while fully aware that risks lie ahead. He went on to say, “If you fear risk, you cannot even begin. In life and in business, success or failure is determined by how risk is managed.”
During the days of the Daechodong tent church, when demons were cast out in the name of Jesus, diseases were healed, and people spoke in tongues, even Pastor Cho’s own denomination summoned Evangelist Cho and prohibited him from practicing exorcism and healing ministry. He was warned that if he continued such “shaman-like behavior,” both he and his church would be expelled from the denomination. For a young, inexperienced evangelist in his early twenties, this was an enormous risk. Yet he possessed a bold spirit of challenge, refusing to compromise what he was convinced was right and continuing to put it into practice.
In 1964, at the age of 28, while serving as a pastor to a congregation of over 3,000 members, he collapsed during a sermon and was rushed to the Red Cross Hospital behind the church. The doctor’s diagnosis was shocking:
“Pastor, although your body is that of a man in his late twenties, your nervous system is that of a man in his late seventies. The only way for you to survive is to immediately stop ministry and enter complete rest. With a body like this, not only ministry, but the fact that you are still alive is itself a miracle.”
While earnestly seeking God’s grace and meditating on Scripture in his hospital room, he discovered how the believers of the early church “devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple courts every day, broke bread in their homes… praising God… and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:46–47). He also observed how Priscilla and Aquila, though laypeople, worked in their profession while partnering with Paul for the sake of the gospel (Acts 18:1–3, 18–19). Even more striking was the fact that these laypeople, Aquila and Priscilla, who were “well-versed in the Scriptures,” explained the Word more accurately to Apollos and helped raise him up as a great servant of God (Acts 18:27–28).
Based on the context of the early church in Acts, he conceived a creative ministry model that did not exist at the time—the birth of cell group worship. Desperate necessity is always the mother of invention.
After being discharged from the hospital, he gathered the church elders and male deacons to explain the concept of the cell ministry he had envisioned and asked them to serve as cell leaders. The result, however, was overwhelming opposition. They had never seen such a model before. The only ones who stepped forward in obedience were senior women leaders and female deacons. As a result, cell worship and cell leadership inevitably became female-centered.
Naturally, opposition from men reached an extreme level. To address this, Pastor Cho had cell leaders wear head coverings as a sign that women acknowledged male authority (Pastor Choi Ja-shil, in particular, always wore a head covering as a symbol of being under the authority of Pastor Cho). Furthermore, to instill the understanding among both cell leaders and members that cell leaders were representatives of the senior pastor’s ministry, Pastor Cho personally led the weekly cell leader training, no matter how busy he was.
Opposition to cell worship was not limited to his own church. One of the reasons Korean churches in the 1960s and 1970s labeled Yoido Full Gospel Church as heretical was because of these “cell worship services” held in homes rather than in church buildings. Nevertheless, Pastor Cho did not abandon his conviction. As a result, today nearly every church in Korea practices cell or small-group worship. Moreover, home-based small group ministry has spread throughout churches worldwide.
Pastor Cesar Castellanos, who benchmarked Pastor Cho’s cell ministry and later developed the G-12 model, grew his church in Colombia into a megachurch of over 500,000 members.
Pastor Cho’s risk-taking did not end with the implementation of cell worship. At some point, he began to see visions during prayer of people being healed from specific diseases. Then he heard the Lord’s voice echoing within him: “I am healing this person and that person right now. Declare it to the congregation.” Startled, he responded, “Lord, if I declare it and they are not healed, I will be publicly humiliated. Worse still, your church will suffer.” Yet when he accepted the risk and obeyed the Lord’s voice, healing miracles began to occur in his ministry. As a result, he became a world-renowned healing evangelist.
From the 1960s, Seodaemun Full Gospel Church sang gospel songs separately from traditional hymns. Because of this, the church was repeatedly accused of being heretical. Pastor Cho, however, did not back down. As a result, the praise and worship movement swept through Korean churches in the 1990s. Today, there is virtually no church in Korea that does not sing gospel songs.
His bold decisions continued: in 1967, deciding to build the Yoido sanctuary—an undertaking that required a construction cost of one billion won when he only had one million won in cash; in 1976, when Korea was still poor, establishing Church Growth International with a budget of three million dollars; and in 1988, founding Kukmin Daily newspaper under a military government. These were all daring decisions that defied conventional calculations.
The reason leaders hesitate to make decisions is the risk they must bear once a decision is made. But does a truly safe zone exist in life? Helen Keller once said, “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright