A Study on the Healthy Church Growth through the Revitalization of Small Group in Traditional Church
Date
5-2020
Department
Rawlings School of Divinity
Degree
Doctor of Ministry (DMin)
Chair
Justin Yoojung Lee
Keywords
Healthy, Church, Growth, Revitalization, Small Group, Traditional Church
Disciplines
Christianity | Practical Theology | Religion
Recommended Citation
Park, Min Yong, "A Study on the Healthy Church Growth through the Revitalization of Small Group in Traditional Church" (2020). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 2479.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/2479
Abstract
The church is the body of Jesus Christ, which Christ has built and became the head of it. Therefore, the church is not a building or a social organization, but a family community of the laity who saved through Christ and united under him. Recently, however, the Korean church has lost its original nature planned by God. They achieved significant external growth that made churches around the world focus. But lost the true nature and obsessed with the outward buildings and numbers. As a result, the holy influence of the church on the world diminished.
This paper defines the term ‘traditional church’ as a church complacent about the present outward growth, losing its biblical essence. Also, the paper analyzes the problems and limitations of a stagnant traditional church and study about the 'vitalization of small group ministries' as a biblical alternative to overcome it. To this end, this paper will present the biblical, theological, and church-historical basis for the small groups, and analyze the merits and demerits of representative types of small group ministries that have been introduced to contemporary churches, thus presenting a specific guideline to achieve ‘small group vitalization’.
Through this paper, we hope that traditional Korean churches, including the one that the researcher serves for, restore the communion of the church and grow into a healthy figure.
