Sarang Church

The reason for closure of SaRang Church’s Gangnam campus era and opening the Seocho campus is simple. Gangnam campus worship spaces were no longer safe and functionally adequate for the SaRang congregation. Waiting lines to get into worship spaces were too long as the main sanctuary only accommodated about 2,000 people. When the weather was bad on Sunday the church became terribly cluttered.

On weekends and during weekdays, traffic around the church was severely jamming. Despite of every cautions and campaigns of using public traffics, frequent traffic related civil complaints had made obstacles to the normal and regular church ministries, emotionally exhausting the entire church.

The major reason to consider moving or new building of the church was not the distribution of ministries that gives inconveniences and inefficiency and the managerial difficulties owing to rent the buildings around the church for worship or meeting places, but the safety issues of the Sunday School children. Spaces for education was insufficient and too many flocked at peak times and caused severe safety problems.

They say, “landscape is the outcome of nature and view is that of culture.” Though newly built building of SaRang Church at Seocho Station has various meanings of building history, the most thankful is her location. She neighbors on the Supreme Court the center of Korean judiciary and the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office that leads all of investigations from the beginning to the end. The church of God locates in between the bastion of the legal sprit of Korea and the typical institution of legal execution. The new building of SaRang Church shows the Words “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Ps. 85:10) in her building. It symbolizes the meeting of the truth that saves people through God’s love and the temple of the God that is the church of the Christ where exists the justice that brings not the separation and struggles but the peace.

Meanwhile, the newly built Seocho campus of SaRang Church locates on Banpo street only 3 or 4 blocks away from the Seoul Arts Center, the center of performance arts in Korea. Owing to such location she naturally becomes arts friendly space. Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) Symphony Orchestra the top classic playing organization played at the main sanctuary and many irregular exhibitions and small and medium size plays have been performed at the church.

The main sanctuary of SaRang Church is publicly certified as the largest underground chapel in the Guinness Book (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/407388-largest-underground-chapel). The congregation gathered in the worship service is well accommodated and traffics and parking loads are remarkably reduced. The issue of bring up the youths in more educational environment is also resolved. However, the church historical value of Seocho campus of SaRang Church is the spiritual symbol of the building structure. It emphasizes enough input of light, a quite color (illumination) and fresh air conditioning. It is designed to have as much natural lights as possible though it locates underground. The brilliant lights through stained glasses in the main sanctuary embrace the praying congregations warmly. Fresh air provided by a special air conditioning system makes them pleasantly concentrate in worship and prayer.

The Seocho building of SaRang Church is the metropolitan oasis emotionally considering the divine grace of embracement and communication. Angled straight lines and iron beams of massiveness and closeness are abandoned and inefficiency of curves and glasses are adopted .to approach to the community and seekers of truth. Spaces are interpreted spiritually and modernistically and open the gates of church the spiritual garden for the contemporary people to visit and communicate without any prejudice or inconvenience.