Claim. Rev. Yoshitada Sugita’s striking internal admission: “I’m afraid that our church members do not so much believe that our prayers have the power to make wishes come true, even our leaders, too. As leaders do not have confidence in prayer, they cannot lead the congregation. This is a big problem.”
Elaboration. Per the-seeker-model: Sugita’s diagnosis is structural. UC has detailed doctrine on spirit world (DP, CSG, SMM speeches on ancestral liberation, Cheong Pyeong-style ministry). But operationally, members and leaders do not behave as if they expect prayer to produce results. A leadership culture that does not pray with confidence cannot teach the congregation to pray with confidence; doctrinal richness becomes a quoted resource rather than a lived practice.
His remedy was eclectic and contentious: he taught members to pray using techniques drawn from Christian Science and the American New Thought movement — particularly “seeing in our imagination with three-dimensional images.” He claims this worked: “group prayer during worship created miracles.”
Three possible readings of the gap:
- Pedagogy failure. UC has the doctrine but lacks discipleship for confident prayer. Fix: better training.
- Mechanism mismatch. Sugita’s New-Thought technique produces results via a non-DP mechanism; UC needs genuine native prayer-pedagogy.
- Doctrinal over-promise. Operational disbelief tracks honest assessment of empirical results.
Worth a future thread once UC prayer-theology sources are ingested. Connects to holy-spirit.
See also. holy-spirit