The Words of Won Pil Kim

Father's Strategy for Home Church

Won Pil Kim
August 1982

How to Begin Home Church Work

Select a block of 360 adjoining homes

Don't choose some and reject others; you must save them all.

Make your first round of visits in three days

In your first three days, visit all 360 homes in your area, going to 120 homes per day. Briefly speak to each family about yourself, explaining that you are from the Unification Church and that you have come to serve the community.

Evaluate each home

Give each home an initial rating of A, B or C according to their response, after making your first round of visits.

"A' homes are those who are positive to your work.

"B" homes are those who are more or less neutral, neither for or against.

"C" homes are those who are negative.

Choose the 72 best homes on which to concentrate your initial efforts. Preferably, all should be in your "A' category, but if you do not have 72 'A' homes, then choose the rest from the best of the "B" group.

Next subdivide these 72 homes into 'A', "B" and "C" subgroups. Choose the 12 best "A' homes upon which to focus your work, and select the best three of these 12.

Your Basic Attitude

Take the lowest position and work up.

Invest all your heart.

Give the best of everything to Home Church.

Persevere, regardless of people's rejection.

Work hard and desperately in order to become the master of spirit world.

Set the highest standard of loyalty to heaven.

Outdo the maximum achieved by anyone before you (eat less, sleep less, etc.).

Consider Home Church more precious than your spouse or children.

Determine to restore your home town and clan, after gaining the victory in Home Church.

How to Carry Out Internal and External Restoration

Make a good plan of action.

Your priorities in visiting:

Visit the 12 best homes every day.

Visit the rest of the 72 best homes once every three days.

Visit the remaining homes three times every 40 days.

When your time is limited

Your visits may be short, but they should be inspirational. If it is impossible to visit your area every day, at least call your contacts by telephone or write to them.

Keep your records up-to-date

If some of the 12 best homes do not work out, choose replacements for them from among the 72 homes. Keep a record of these changes. Update continually your list of the three, 12 and 72 best homes, as other homes prove better than the ones on your list.

Set goals

Based on the motto of the year and Father's instructions. Set daily, weekly and monthly goals; then check back to see how well you have fulfilled them.

Make a list of Father's instructions

Post them on the walls and study them until you have a clear understanding of them. Memorize them and believe you can fulfill them. Then check whether or not you have carried them out.

Home Church work is not just witnessing: it's serving as well.

Start from the bottom

Remember that the process of restoration advances through five levels: servant of servant, servant, adopted child, true child and finally parent. You have to follow this pattern. Find the lowest situation in your area and go under it: do something to serve the lowest family. In order to restore everybody, start at the lowest position and work up. Go as the servant of servant, like Jesus washing his disciples' feet. Regard yourself as a trashcan -- centered on love; everyone will dump his garbage in you. If a baby wets his diapers, change them; clean and restore everything. If someone else does this first, then he is already elevated one step above you.

Look for ways in which you can serve your area The purpose of serving your area is to transform it into heaven, with everything all carefully cleaned and painted. You want to make the internal condition for God to dwell in the houses of your area. Through service, you can create the external Kingdom of Heaven in your 360-home area. (The second phase of your work is creating the internal Kingdom of Heaven.) The following are some suggestions for service projects:

clean parks, sidewalks and yards

pick up the garbage

look for places such as fences to paint

tend the gardens

shovel snow

plant flower seeds in the springtime

repair broken things, even if it takes a long time to do so because you are inexperienced

clean the inside of peoples houses (the bathroom, kitchen and storeroom indicate the standard of any home; pay special attention to them)

clean the nooks and crannies, removing such things as spider webs

Clean the house

When you go to Home Church, don't try to get into someone's living room right away. Go through the back door and then into the bathroom. Your first thought will be, "How can this be a bathroom in the Kingdom of Heaven? I cannot afford to leave this dirty. Let me clean it." After the bathroom is clean and fresh, you can do the hallway. If the person protests, say, "I am trying to welcome Heavenly Father into this house, and no one will stop me."

You can ask, "Don't you want to celebrate it least one of God's birthdays in your home?" The other person will be totally overcome and say, "Is it true? Can we have God in this house?" You say, 'All you have to do is try me out for one week." (This is a very effective way to make a sale in America -- offer someone a free trial; if they don't like it, they can return it.)

After cleaning a house for three days, you can pray for that family's ancestors to descend and work with you. Clean the house thoroughly, sprinkle it with holy salt and pray. Because of the cooperation of the family's good ancestors, the house will become spiritually brighter.

After three days of cleaning, you can also ask the family to set aside a special room for prayer; invite them to join you in praying in that room. This regular prayer room will then be the foundation for a Home Church.

Try to bring people to two and seven-day workshops.

One group will help you win the next

Maintain good relationships with the three best homes. They should treat you like one of their family, making you feel welcome to stay overnight at their home any time. Make the three families good friends and raise up someone with leadership potential to take charge. Try to get the families in your three best homes to a workshop as soon as possible. Before bringing them to a workshop, give them a proper introduction to the Unification Church, its goals and its programs.

As soon as the people in your three best homes listen to the Divine Principle, work on the rest of your 12 best homes, trying to bring them to a workshop. Have the families in your three best homes help you to get the families from the rest of the 12 core homes to a workshop.

After you have won 12 homes, winning the others from your list of 72 best homes will not be difficult.

Lay a foundation of prayer

Ideally, you should pray three hours for every hour of witnessing, and there should be constant prayer in your centers. Focus your prayer on the motto of the year. Pray overnight in your area; spend a whole night in prayer, waiting for your guest; pray with your guests in their homes.

If you cannot shed tears for your spiritual children, go to your area and suffer more. Spend the night talking with your guest and greet the sun together with him.

Raise up people to help you

Concentrate on young people, those who have no strong ties to other activities and can easily join. In order to win three members, you need to bring at least 12 people to a workshop. Learn to give the lectures to your contacts, and in the future they will be able to help you by lecturing to others. Someone who has attended a 40-day workshop (or at least a 21-day workshop) should be able to lead a seven-day workshop. In this way, your guests will one day be able to assist you, and you should eventually be able to find and raise up someone who can replace you.

Use audio-visual aids

Obtain 30 Divine Principle books and 30 cassette lecture tapes and lend them all out. Check back with your contact after one week to pick up the book or tape and discuss the contents with them. In addition, use videotapes; when we have 1000 videocassette players in constant use in New York, we can save the city. Use videotapes to prepare your contacts for advanced workshop, once they have been to the initial workshops; they can also study Divine Principle using videotapes. Eventually, we can organize closed-circuit television for our 360-home areas.

Hold workshops in your area

In time, you will not have to bring your contacts to a training center, but you yourself can hold a workshop in the people's homes, eating and sleeping together with them. The costs will be minimal. If the group is large, perhaps a garage can be transformed into a lecture hall. Videotaped lectures are also being prepared, which you can show to your contacts.

Your contacts will stimulate each other

When they meet each other, one contact will ask the other which workshops he has attended.

If someone who has been to the 21-day workshop meets someone who has attended only the seven-day workshop, he will urge the other to go on to the advanced sessions.

You can also challenge people

Ask questions like, "You don't want to be the last person in town to attend a 40-day workshop, do you?" If someone who has attended only the weekend workshop is working harder than someone who has been to the seven-day workshop, you can hold up the first one as a model. When someone has attended 40-day training, he can be your substitute.

The ability to organize is one key to your success

Have fellowship meetings in the homes of your contacts; give them good vertical and horizontal inspiration. Organize your contacts into groups and give them projects to do; see which group can do the best work.

Promote harmony within families. centered on heart

There should be no conflict among the members of the families you are teaching and raising. Ideally, we should teach, guide and even marry the people in our Home Church area. Always bear in mind that God's presence there depends on you.

The center leaders should visit their members' Home Churches

Visit every day, serving as an IW for the members. The leader should be a good archangel for his members who are doing Home Church, constantly protecting and uplifting them.

How to Meet People in Home Church

Be creative in meeting and serving people.

Make a lot of noise

If people don't pay attention to you, ring a bell or play a trumpet all around your area, so people will come out and take notice. Then the curious ones will step forward to talk to you.

Make friends with the children

When you meet children, you can ask them to introduce you to their parents, and they will tell their parents about the interesting person they met. If children insist, then the parents will have to meet with you.

Sing deeply-touching songs

If you sing well, you can sing a beautiful song about America, even with tears coming down your face, and the people will surely come to look. Their hearts will be softened, and they will pay attention to you.

Offer free garbage collection

If there is a garbage strike, you can borrow a car or van and pick up the garbage for your people.

If you do it for free, you will have no competition. Certainly they will pay attention to you then. Maybe they will invite you for dinner and ask you to tell about yourself. You can tell them that you have no set place to sleep, that you stay with whoever invites you.

Play Santa Claus

Buy some little gifts for children and don a Santa Claus suit. You will draw a crowd of children, and after you distribute what you have brought, you can take off the suit and talk to the children.

Give talks

Look for opportunities to speak; in your speech, refer to different people in your area, and it will leave a big impression on them. Certainly, they will remember you.

Plant a tree

Leave a lasting mark on your Home Church area, such as planting a tree. A tree will remain for a long time and become part of the historical record of your Home Church.

Make a written history

You must provide historical material for your area. Keep a diary: make a written history of who started the Home Church, how it was begun, the indemnity course passed through in order to establish it, and the persecution you underwent. Your Home Church will be the sign of your accomplishment.

How to Work With Old People

You first need the recognition of the older people, and after that you will be able to get the recognition of the middle-aged people. When the young people recognize you, they will not want to leave you, but would rather follow you to be able to live together with you. Thus you will be able to witness to three generations, representing Adam, Jesus and the Lord of the Second Advent. When three generations witness to you, then you will stand in the position of God.

As you visit your homes, you may encounter just a few young people and mostly old folks. Actually, older people are a better medium for disseminating the Divine Principle. Once you, lecture to them properly and help them understand the Principle and become convinced of its truth, they will be able to witness to the truth. They will be able to introduce you to society.

Restoration begins with the old people, moves to the middle aged and ends with the young people. The old people will understand first and inspire the middle-aged people, who will then understand and inspire the young, who will join.

Old people are the root and represent the Old Testament age.

Middle-aged people are the trunk and represent the New Testament age.

Young people are the fruits and represent the Completed Testament age.

Old people are lonely

Older people have absolutely no reason to refuse the Divine Principle and its basic tenets, for they are lonely. By the time they have lived to a ripe old age, they are the loneliest people of all, because the young ones have gone away and become indifferent to the elderly. These old people have souls and are waiting to die, about to embark on a most uncertain journey. They find themselves with no hope, no security. They welcome the Principle idea of cherishing the old people; the older they get, the more the old folks should be cherished, loved and respected.

Gather their relatives together

Once the old people have absorbed the ideas of the Principle, you can have them gather together the members of their family and introduce you as a lecturer. If the grandfather or grandmother is impressed, he or she may want to be the master of ceremonies and make a good base for you to give a lecture to all the grandchildren. A birthday party can be a good occasion for such a lecture; the grandparents can invite the grandchildren home for the party, and you can help with the financial arrangements.

Reunite grandchildren and grandparents

You should succeed in getting the grandchildren to come and visit their grandparents, restoring such a close relationship that they would even want to come and live with them. That would be a newsworthy event, and journalists would be interested in coming to report on such a development. You could ask the grandparent, "How did you feel when all your family members were separated and lived independently, never even seeing each other very often? Now that you live together in one home, how do you feel?" The answers would make good stories for the newspapers. Living together like this will bring much fulfillment.

Have grandparents write letters

You can inspire the grandparents to write letters to their relatives who live far away, telling about you and your work. If they cannot write so easily, you could write the letters for them and have them sign them. Hopefully, you can impress the grandparents so much that they will say they have never heard talks such as yours in all their long years of attending church. They can write, "This person just visited me one day, and I am so impressed by him and really believe what he is teaching. I would certainly like him to share these teachings with you. As you know, I do not have so many years or months left to spend in this world, and if there is anything I would like to share with you or leave with you, it is these teachings." If the grandparents testify to you like that, it will have a real impact on their offspring.

Grandparents are the medium that can reach out to hundreds of people.

How to Work With Young People

List all the young people connected with your area

As you go around and meet the people of your area, prepare a roster of the youth in the area and focus on reaching them first. In the beginning it may appear that not so many young people are around, but connected with each house must be some young people -- perhaps attending school in another city, working in a different state, etc. Make a complete roster of all the young people reachable through a given family. Actually, surrounding each of the .360 homes, you will find an array of aunts, uncles, cousins, distant relatives or friends. You may find tens of thousands of people associated with your 360 homes.

Find out about the absent young people

Look through the family photo albums and find who is missing. Try to discover everything you can about the absent people. Grandparents really love to brag about the wonderful personalities and qualities of their grandchildren: listen very carefully and later write down all the points they mentioned, as if you were writing a resume of the person.

Meet these young people

When you have a chance to meet the person during one of his occasional visits to his grandparents, they will introduce you to him. This is your opportunity to pay him some compliments. You can become very close to him after just a few minutes, based on your knowledge of him and the entire family. When a relative comes to visit, you should know him so well that he will wonder how many days you spent looking for good information about him.

He will feel your concern and interest and be amazed, because these days few people show much interest in others. You can say, "I am very interested in you because wonderful grandparents like yours are really hard to come by these days: there are not many people like them left." After paying him many compliments, you can ask him to spend a lot of time with you, since you have been thinking so much about him. You can have him attend a one-day or even two-day workshop. Thus, all the effort you invested in learning to know him will concentrate on the one or two-day workshop which may save his life.

Go visit the young people

If the young people do not come home for visits, go to them, if the distance is practical. If someone agrees to let you visit him, bring along a relative who can introduce you. If one member of the family is impressed by you, he can accompany you when you visit the other relatives, introducing you and providing a good environment in which you can speak. Choose a significant day for your visit, such as a birthday or anniversary.

Connect the young people with CARP

Don't isolate the young people or let them stand by idle. As soon as you meet them, introduce them to CARP.

How to Work With Prominent People

Among your 360 homes, you will probably find some prominent people. In order to make your Home Church work effective, you should establish and maintain relationships with the key people, the well-known residents of your community. Once you learn to know someone, don't ignore him, but rather create activities for him to participate in. Keep him involved in your activities and let him use his influence for the good of these activities.

Some suggested activities

plan a conference and involve him in it

form a cultural or cooperative organization and have him give a lecture in his field

invite a musician to play for birthday parties

interest him in some community activity

Involve him in your programs

Try to gradually increase your contact's involvement in your community activities. Maybe he can co-sponsor some program and take responsibility for a small aspect of it. When he sees the good results, he will be grateful to you for helping him produce them. Later you can invite him to one of your lectures, and he cannot refuse since he was a co-sponsor of your previous activity. You can give him lectures either formally or informally.

Get him to give a Principle lecture

Once he listens to your lecture and is moved by at least some part of it, you can push him to learn to give the lecture, insisting that he, of course, is much more experienced in teaching than you. You will naturally have to give him material to study in order to prepare the lecture. Then you can be master of ceremonies and he the lecturer, concluding the lecture with his testimony of how he felt the first time he heard the Divine Principle. When a prominent person gives a lecture, it is often more persuasive than when a seemingly ordinary person gives it.

Ask him to assist you in visiting 360 homes

While he is full of enthusiasm from having studied and lectured the Principle, ask him to accompany you as you make your rounds visiting the 360 homes. His presence will add effectiveness to your program. You can give him responsibility for part of the homes and after he visits them you can check with the families about their reaction to his lectures. Then you can report to him, "That family you lectured to was so aloof, even arrogant, when I used to go there; but since you talked to them about humility, they have really changed. All the credit goes to you." When someone pours out his heart to give a lecture and receives such a compliment, he will naturally appreciate it.

Don't try to do everything yourself

In principle, it is good to do things all alone, but in practice it is not always wise and in fact is sometimes foolish. No matter how powerful an individual you may be, there is a limit to your ability. If you use good strategies, your field of influence becomes almost unlimited. Take a lesson from the game of pool. When you strike a ball, it rolls and hits several other balls in succession, setting up a kind of chain reaction.

Use this method in your Home Church work; take this advice seriously, because it is absolutely important and necessary.

How to Work With Negative People

The best people are either hot or cold. Those who oppose you will be your target, because they will be your best members when they turn around.

Absolute rejection will bring you absolute friends. People who see you being mistreated will be anxious to know something about you. The more dramatic the persecution you receive in your Home Church area, the better it will be. If you are kicked and knocked unconscious, people may think you are dead, and headlines will proclaim that the Moonie was kicked to death. Then when you revive, headlines will announce your resurrection. If this happens two or three times, you will easily restore the whole area.

Have pride in being a Moonie; don't hesitate to proclaim your connection with Father and don't shrink when people oppose you. How can you be a prophet if you become scared when a dog barks? Find out who are the most nasty people in your area -- the white people or the black people -- and go there.

Confront them

You can be very strong with people who oppose you. You may act dramatically, but please don't do anything foolishly. Plead with God to be allowed to get even with a negative person who is always pushing you around, and God will support you.

If someone is especially nasty and chases you away with a broom, go again early in the morning and bang on the door, telling him you have come back. Plan your scenario in advance. When he comes to the door, greet him and demand to know why he is an enemy of the Moonies. "You only live for yourself," you can tell him, "and you do nothing for the community, but we Moonies are giving everything for the sake of America (or whatever country you are in). If we don't do something soon, this country will have even more problems."

"What's wrong with what I am doing?" you can persist. "It's better than what your son does, who is always getting arrested. I only try to guide him in the right way. We Moonies are living for the sake of the community and the nation. What's wrong with that?"

Anticipate how he will respond and what your next words will be. When everything follows your scenario, then you can have confidence and joy.

Eventually all the neighbors will agree with you, wondering why that person should be so antagonistic towards a nice Moonie. Finally, at some point, he will ask what you are up to, and you can reply, "I was hoping you would ask that. Please come with me and listen."

Don't worry about how you are treated. If someone mistreats you seven times, then he probably treats his family the same way. His relatives will remark on how courageous you are to be nice to him and that you are the only person who stands up to him. If someone continues persecuting you, eventually his sons and daughters will come over to your side. When you get even with a nasty person, everyone will follow you instead of him.

Even though people oppose you, knock on their doors and make your appeal, once for the formation stage, twice for the growth stage, and a third time for perfection. If they still reject you after three times, you will have fulfilled your responsibility and they cannot accuse you.

Suggested Social Activities

In order to make heaven out of your Home Church, you have to interact with all kinds of people and communicate freely in various directions and on many subjects. As a rule, different age groups don't mix with each other these days, and people live within a limited range of associations. Young and old rarely interact, and one or two years may elapse without relatives seeing each other, let alone having a deep discussion. Therefore, as part of your Home Church work, you should set up networks among all kinds of people.

Dialogues between various groups

between the laboring class and upper class

between policemen and judges

between professors and students

Many such combinations are possible, limited only by your imagination. Once people meet, they will probably express the typical viewpoints of their groups. You can lead the discussion in a natural way, interjecting your own comments and observations. This can be an extremely interesting exchange.

Contests

poetry contest

knitting contest

public speaking contest

amateur fashion show

Music

Find musically inclined young people and form a band. Go around and play for everyone's birthday.

Intellectual activities

discussions of favorite magazine articles; you can read an article and explain why you liked it, stimulating other people's thinking and comments

lectures by scholars

lectures by lawyers

mock trials; have people play the roles of judge, lawyers and jury

forums on local, national or international issues; since you want to expand the scope of people's thinking, at the very least you can talk about the problems of your city: juvenile delinquency, drugs, prostitution, crime, etc.

Social affairs

birthday parties

wedding parties

anniversary parties

summer camp

children's story hours; tell stories that have some moral, expressing your deep heart. The children will be moved and tell their parents about what they have heard.

Service programs

garbage collection

group clean-up of some problem area

build up a scholarship fund for needy youth in your area

Economic programs

Establish a community fund. You can go door to door and collect money from each person and have that money be stock in a community fund. If you collect $1.00 from each family, you will have $360.00. With these funds you can make investments that will be common property among all the families. If someone in your area is business-minded, you can ask him to manage the money for you, and he will be happy to do so, because it is his specialty.

As the fund grows, even though the total is small, it will make everyone in the neighborhood happy. Then people can borrow money from the common fund instead of going to a bank. If you manage the money well, getting anonymous donations, it can increase to thousands of dollars. You might devote one night per month to raising money for this community fund. After you have raised a sizable fund, the community would certainly not want to see you leave, because you are the manager of all that money. The fund can be used as a source of scholarships or a "center of hope." In other countries, it is sometimes called the village bank or village community fund.

Be a mediator

A good goal is to try to unite one divided family. That would be a great testimony to your effectiveness. People will wonder why you do the things you do and start to compare you with their relatives and children. They may not say it aloud, but they will study you and wonder how you are able to do such good things. "He has a critical mind and good judgment," they will think, "but still he serves others so humbly. What power motivates him and makes him that way?" Eventually, when conflicts arise, they will ask you to serve as a mediator.

In conclusion, we should constantly think about how to create some activity, how to foster the widest possible variety of networks and associations. We must always promote activities that help people learn to know each other. As we do so, heaven is gradually being formed. The seeds we plant will grow and eventually become perfected. 

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