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Choir
[Worship & Rites]A choir is a body of singers that sings praise to God on behalf of the congregation during a church worship service. It is also called a sacred choir or praise choir, depending on the church.
Offering
[Christian Life]An offering is money that Christians give to God as an expression of gratitude and faith, or the act of giving it. It is usually presented during the offertory in worship. In the early Korean Protestant church it was commonly called yeonbo.
Sunday School
[Christian Life]Sunday school is an educational program in which a church teaches the Bible and the Christian faith to children and youth on Sunday. Today it is also known as church school.
Ecumenical Movement
[History]The ecumenical movement, also called the church unity movement, is an effort by Christian churches divided into many denominations to cooperate and seek unity while acknowledging their differences. Its leading international body is the World Council of Churches (WCC); in South Korea, its leading body is the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK).
Smyrna
[Bible]Smyrna was a port city on the Aegean coast of western Asia Minor and the home of one of the seven churches to which the risen Christ sent letters in Revelation 2. It corresponds to the modern city of İzmir, Türkiye.
Christian Symbols
[Doctrine & Theology]Christian symbols are signs that express the content of the Christian faith through images, letters, or objects. Prominent examples include the cross, the fish, the dove, and the Chi-Rho. Denominations differ in how they use them and to what extent.
Worship Music
[Doctrine & Theology]Worship music is music sung or played in Christian worship to praise God, respond to his Word, and enable the congregation to confess its faith together. It includes hymns, gospel songs, choir anthems, and instrumental music.
Organ
[Doctrine & Theology]The organ is a keyboard instrument that produces sound by sending wind through pipes or across vibrating reeds. It has long served as the principal instrument for accompanying worship in the Western church.
Bell Tower
[Doctrine & Theology]A bell tower is a tower or structure from which church bells are hung. It has been used to announce times of worship and prayer. In Korean churches, it long served as an architectural element symbolizing the church building.
History of Protestantism in Korea
[History]The history of Protestantism in Korea extends from the arrival of American missionaries in 1884–1885 to the present day. It encompasses the arrival of missionaries, revival movements and church organization, persecution and the Shinto shrine worship controversy under Japanese rule, and denominational divisions and growth after liberation.
Shincheonji
[Heresies & Cults]Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (Shincheonji), is a new religious movement founded by Lee Man-hee in 1984 in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Major Korean Protestant denominations, including the Presbyterian Church of Korea (Tonghap), the Presbyterian Church in Korea (Hapdong), and the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church, have declared it heretical.
Chinese House Churches
[Denominations]Chinese house churches are Protestant congregations in China that remain outside the government-registered Three-Self churches (those affiliated with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement) and instead meet separately in private homes and similar settings.
Excommunication
[Organization & Polity]Excommunication is the most severe stage of church discipline, in which the church removes an unrepentant member who has sinned from the church community and revokes that person's membership.
Donatism
[History]A schismatic church movement that arose in North Africa in the early fourth century. Holding that sacraments administered by clergy who had abandoned the faith during persecution were without effect, it separated from the Catholic Church. Through its controversy with Augustine, it left a lasting mark on ecclesiology and sacramental theology.
Simony
[History]Simony is the buying or selling of spiritual things, such as church offices or sacraments, for money or material goods. The term derives from Simon the sorcerer in the Acts of the Apostles.
Oriental Orthodox Churches
[Denominations]The Oriental Orthodox Churches are a communion of ancient Eastern churches that did not accept the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451) and recognize only the first three ecumenical councils. Members include the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopian churches.
Excommunication
[History]Excommunication is a penalty by which the church cuts off a believer from its fellowship and from participation in the sacraments because of grave sin or false teaching. In Korean Protestant church law, the same penalty is usually called chulgyo.
Papal States
[History]The Papal States were the territories in central Italy that the pope ruled directly as a temporal sovereign from 756 to 1870. They are regarded as the predecessor of present-day Vatican City, which was established by the Lateran Treaty of 1929.
Ecclesiology
[Doctrine & Theology]Ecclesiology is the branch of systematic theology that addresses what the church is (its nature), how the true church is recognized (its marks), who serves in it and how (its offices), and for what purpose it exists (its mission).
Baptized Member
[Church Offices]A baptized member is a church member who has received baptism (or baptism by immersion) and become a full member of the church. A person baptized in infancy who later becomes a full member through a confirmation examination is called a confirmed member, and the two categories are sometimes referred to together.