The Myungsung Church was founded on July 6, 1980. At that time, South Korean churches were focused more on fasting prayer meetings and prayer vigils than on Early Morning Prayer service. Also, Early Morning Prayer service of the time used to be seen as something done by the poor, that is, the underclass. Against the background, however, Reverend Kim Sam-Whan planned a universal Early Morning Prayer service participated by all and named it the Special Early Morning Prayer Rally, which began in September 1980. At that time, an average of 22 believers used to attended a Sunday worship service while about 25 attended the Special Early Morning Prayer Rally.

The Special Early Morning Prayer Rally, since its inception, had been held only in September each year until it began to be held twice a year, March and September, in 1986. This change led to a departmentalization of the Special Early Morning Prayer Rally organization, which in turn resulted in over 1,000 believers joining one session of the meeting that year. It was during the same year that the meeting experienced a rapid growth, which was assisted in part by the completion of the main church building and the urbanization of the Gangdong Ward area. Eventually, the number of believers who attended a Sunday service increased to 11,000 while that of those joining the Special Early Morning Prayer Rally to 9,800.

The Myungsung Church has tried to develop itself qualitatively as well as quantitatively. In this context, it reduced the duration of the Special Early Morning Prayer Rally session from 20 to 30 days to less than 2 weeks. This change greatly contributed to the growth of the meeting, attracting some 23,000 believers in September, 1998.

Such efforts has brought the Myungsung Church an efficient system and accumulated know-how while the mission of Early morning prayer service going beyond South Korean churches to be known among foreign ones, which means the Myungsung Church has suggested a desirable example of Early Morning Prayer service not only in South Korea but in the entire world. It began to web-broadcast its meeting from March 2005, when 42,655 believers attended. The number of attendees increased to 48,000 a year later and to 54,800 at the September session of 2006, when its satellite broadcasting, viewed by some 5,960,000 persons, marked the second-highest rating among its kind (the program was also available in English and Chinese). Finally, its March session of 2007 recorded the highest rating in South Korea, participated by some 50,000 believers and viewed by over 7,700,000 persons. In the meantime, the March session of 2008, also joined by over 50,000 believers, was broadcast live and online worldwide with English, Chinese, Japanese and sign language translations.