Lee Jung-ik: Comfort, Gospel, and the Topical Pulpit

Sinchon Holiness Church occupies a distinctive place in Korean Protestantism as a flagship congregation of the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church (기성), the denomination rooted in the Wesleyan-Holiness revival tradition. Lee Jung-ik served as its fourth senior pastor from 1991 until his retirement in May 2016 — a tenure of twenty-five years. When he was invested as pastor emeritus, the congregation numbered more than 12,000 registered members, with over seventy percent under the age of forty.

That demographic profile is worth noting. Sustaining a high proportion of younger members across a quarter century of megachurch ministry suggests a pulpit that did not calcify around the cultural codes of any single generation. Lee’s approach to preaching — conversational, everyday in its vocabulary, and deliberately unhurried — appears to have created space across age groups rather than speaking exclusively to one.

Lee’s academic formation combined Korean theological education with graduate study abroad. He earned a Bachelor of Divinity from Seoul Theological University, pursued graduate work at Korea University’s Graduate School of Education and Asia United Theological Seminary, and completed a Doctor of Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. He also holds an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Azusa Pacific University. Beyond the pastorate, he served as Moderator of the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church General Assembly, Chair of Seoul Theological University’s board, Chair of the Korea Bible Society, and Chair of the CBS (Christian Broadcasting System) Foundation. After retirement he served as the sixth President of the Graduate School of Practical Theology (2020–2024).

The Theologian’s Verdict: “Comfort”

In January 2006, the Korea Society of Systematic Theology published the fifteenth volume of its journal Korean Journal of Systematic Theology as a special issue titled “Gospel and Preaching.” Seven leading Korean preachers were assigned to individual systematic theologians for analysis: Yonggi Cho, Kim Sun-do, Kim Sam-hwan, Ok Han-heum, Kwak Sun-hee, Kim Jang-hwan — and Lee Jung-ik, assigned to Hwang Deok-hyung, professor of systematic theology at Seoul Theological University.

The single word Hwang chose as the organizing descriptor for Lee’s preaching was “comfort” (편안함). He was not describing a mild or undemanding manner. His specific formulation ran: Lee brings “the ability to understand life within the horizon of life itself, and to guide it from that same place.” And more pointedly: “The strength of Pastor Lee Jung-ik is his ability to tell the story of God within ordinary daily life.”

Hwang’s analysis also highlights Lee’s handling of the cross. In Lee’s preaching, the crucifixion is presented not primarily through the framework of legal atonement but as “a seed of life brought into this world.” Correspondingly, the encounter with Christ is treated not as a “religious exception” but as an “ordinary event” — something that happens in the middle of daily existence rather than at its margins. This framing lowers the threshold of entry for those who might perceive faith as requiring a departure from normal life, while also making the claims of the gospel available precisely where people already are.

Topical Structure and the Language of Everyday Life

Lee’s preaching falls into the category of topical preaching. Rather than working through a biblical book passage by passage, he identifies themes that intersect directly with his congregation’s lived experience and develops them across several texts. Original-language analysis and direct engagement with historical background do not surface at the front of his sermons. The delivery vehicle is instead everyday language and narrative.

This is a coherent theological choice, not an avoidance of scholarship. The goal is to translate the biblical story into the language of the people who are listening, so that the encounter with Scripture feels recognizable rather than foreign. What Hwang describes as the “ordinary event” character of Lee’s gospel — Christ encountered in the midst of daily life — requires a kind of language that can inhabit that dailiness. Technical vocabulary and scholarly apparatus, however valuable in other contexts, would work against that goal.

”Soda Preaching Only Makes You Thirsty”

The clearest single statement of Lee’s preaching theology appears in a July 2017 interview with Disciple magazine, published by the International Discipleship Training Institute. He said:

“We should be preaching saturated with the gospel. So-called ‘soda preaching’ only leaves you thirsty.”

Korean church culture uses the term soda preaching (사이다 설교) — “soda” carries the colloquial sense of something crisp and instantly satisfying, the linguistic equivalent of a carbonated rush — for sermons that give listeners a momentary sense of catharsis or emotional release without addressing any deeper need. Lee’s diagnosis is that this kind of preaching produces only temporary relief. The underlying thirst — for the gospel itself — goes unmet.

The implication for his own approach is direct: the measure of a sermon is not how much emotional response it generates but whether the gospel has been delivered with integrity. Rhetorical polish and persuasive technique are secondary to that priority. This is not a rejection of communication skill, but a clarification of what it is in service of.

Holiness Tradition and the Conversion-Centered Pulpit

The Korea Evangelical Holiness Church articulates its theological identity around the Fourfold Gospel: regeneration, sanctification, divine healing, and the Second Coming of Christ — the doctrinal inheritance of the American Holiness Movement mediated through the early twentieth-century Korean church. Lee’s denomination thus carries a double emphasis: evangelical conversion and subsequent sanctification.

In Lee’s stated vision for preaching, this double emphasis surfaces primarily through his focus on conversion. He has described his goal as “preaching through which believers can arrive at genuine conversion.” He has also stressed that evangelism should be understood not only as a means of saving others but as “a means of the evangelist’s own spiritual growth” — a formulation that preserves the Holiness tradition’s emphasis on ongoing interior transformation without reducing it to doctrinal recitation.

On the present generation of pastors, he has observed that they “preach with considerable passion after much meditation on Scripture, but their spiritual authority is lower than the first generation.” The distinction he draws — between learned diligence and a kind of authority rooted in prayer and encounter — reflects the Holiness movement’s characteristic suspicion that theological sophistication alone is insufficient ground for ministry.

On Screens, Programs, and the Priority of Preaching

In a January 2025 interview with Christian Daily, Lee addressed the technological environment of contemporary worship directly: “Displaying sermons or Scripture passages on screens distances the congregation from the Bible.” This is not a technophobe’s instinct but a considered pastoral preference — he values the act of congregants physically holding a Bible and turning to the text themselves.

He extended the same logic to programming: “The more programs you have, the further you drift from the focus of ministry.” This is a counter-intuitive position for a pastor who oversaw a congregation of twelve thousand, where the institutional capacity for diverse programming would have been substantial. His preference was consistently to concentrate rather than to diversify.

The theological ground for both positions is explicit in his summary statement: “For right pastoral ministry to overcome the church’s crisis, preaching must be restored.” This is not merely a preference for one pastoral activity over another. It is a diagnosis: where preaching has been displaced — by spectacle, by program, by technique — the church is in crisis, and the restoration must begin with the pulpit.

Conclusion

Lee Jung-ik’s preaching is shaped by a coherent set of convictions rather than a distinctive structural technique. The topical form, the everyday language, the absence of original-language exposition — these are in service of Hwang Deok-hyung’s key observation: that Lee has the ability to make the encounter with God feel like an ordinary event in an ordinary life. “Soda preaching” is rejected because it substitutes emotional relief for that genuine encounter. Screens and programs are kept at arm’s length because they risk displacing the thing itself.

The three coordinates — comfort in the sense of life-embeddedness, fidelity to the gospel over technique, and preaching as the non-negotiable core of ministry — appear consistently across his twenty-five-year pastorate at Sinchon Holiness Church and in the positions he has articulated since retirement. They form the interpretive key to what his pulpit was doing.

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The analysis by Professor Hwang Deok-hyung cited in this article draws on reporting from Christian Today based on the Korea Society of Systematic Theology, “Gospel and Preaching,” Korean Journal of Systematic Theology, vol. 15 (January 2006). Direct quotations from Pastor Lee are sourced from Disciple magazine (July 2017) and the Christian Daily New Year interview (January 2025).

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