David Kwangshin Kim
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pastor David Kwangshin Kim (김광신) (born 1935 in South Korea) is Korean Protestant Christian Pastor. He is the president of Grace Ministries International (GMI, 그레이스 미니스트리스 인터내셔널) that have created more than 9,000 churches in Russia, Africa, China, Vietnam and South America. He had been the principal pastor of Grace Korean Church (은혜한인교회) in the USA and now he is the principal pastor of Seoul Grace Church (서울은혜교회) since 2004.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
[edit] Family and Education
He was born in 1935, as a fouth generation Christian, in Gyeongsangnam-do, which is located in the southern region of South Korea. He graduated from MaSan High School and graduated from Seoul National University, the most prestigious university in South Korea. After teaching in a high school for 11 years in South Korea he left for the USA and became a businessman.
[edit] Ministry
At the age of 42, Kwangshin Kim became a born-again Christian and abandoned his business and entered Talbot School of Theology, one of the most prestigious theology schools in the USA.
He led Bible studies as an elder and theology student. In 1982, instead of beginning a church with tight-bound bible study members, he began his church with only three families. This, in fact, shows one of the most characteristic features of Pastor David Kwangshin Kim and Grace Korean Church: his ministry is focused on helping other churches or other church members instead of expanding his own church. The other characteristics of his ministry is love and devotion. These philosophies of the ministries could be more concretely understood by the anecdotes listed below.
The most important emphasis of David Kwangshin Kim’s ministry is to “carry out the Great commission of God”, that is, to save souls, evangelize and do missions work. Based on this principle, the church dispenses more than half of its budge for international missions work.
[edit] Mission
Through Grace Ministries International, churches have been planted all over the world--2,000 in Russia, 600 in Africa, 3,000 in China, 1,000 in Vietnam and many more in South America. GMI sent more than 250 missionaries in about 50 countries. In the United States, Grace Church is considered to be doing the most mission work for an individual local church. More precisely, the size of its mission endeavors is more than double that of the second and third top American church missions put together.
[edit] Strategy of Mission
David Kwangshin Kim and Grace Korean Church together with GMI has prepared different mission strategies according to the region. For example, in Russia a very concentrated theological school was established in the early stages of GMI's ministry there. In South America, high-level and well prepared mission schools were needed since 95% of the pastors did not graduate from a theology school and 80% of them only had an elementary education. In Japan, reasoning the truth of the Bible is necessary since the Japanese people will not easily accept a foreign idea if they are not convinced of it. In China, secret mission work on the family level is necessary due to the political difficulty.
[edit] Glow of Love
Also known as Tres Dias, this 3 nights/4days program has had produced many fruits in the lives of the candidates that have participated. Because many of the aspects of Glow of Love have surprising features, they are never described in detail by those that have graduated from it because it could spoil their effect. As the name of the program suggests, it is said to be filled with God’s love. At one time in the United States, more than 2,000 candidates had wanted to participate in this program which cannot hold more than hundred and fifty candidates. There are more than 10 Glow of Loves prepared by Grace Church all over the world--including France, German, Spain, Russia and its surrounding countries, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Africa.
[edit] G12
Grace Korean Church has a special program called “Basket Operation” that is composed of 13 successive steps:
- Oikos Evangelism
- Cell Church
- Central Church
- Grace Encounter-10 weeks
- 1 to 1 Discipleship-16 weeks
- Tres Dias-3 days 4 nights
- Gifts Discovery Seminar-8 weeks
- Shepard Seminar-8 weeks
- Grace Freedom
- Shepard / G-7 Member
- G-7 Leader
- Leadership College-1 year and
- Ministry Involvement
[edit] Some stories
His ministry might be well understood by some concrete examples. A well know anecdote during Russian mission clearly manifests the first philosophy of ministry of David Kwangshin Kim . GMI created a theology school without delay in Russia just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in order to evangelise among the Korean diaspora groups there (such as Sakhalin Koreans and Koreans in Central Asia). One of the students told one day Pastor David Kwangshin Kim that he wanted to change his Order into Grace Korean Church because he became so attracted to the Grace Korean Church and their teaching. Kwangshin Kim persuaded students not to do that but more and more students asked the same requests. On the graduation ceremony David Kwangshin Kim invited the leaders of each Order in Russia and he declared clearly that the Grace Korean Church did not came in Russia to expand the Grace Korean Church but they came to help Russian Church. The leaders were so moved to this pure passion of the Grace Korean Church that many of them later decided to change their church name into Grace Korean Church.
Second characteristics of Kwangshin Kim’s ministry is his endeavor and love. Another anecdote in Russia shows these ones. The theology school created in Russia by Grace Korean Church offered every students scholarships that could cover living expenses. Later Kwangshin Kim found out that the most of the students had families to support and he wanted offer the students extra scholarship for the living expenses of their family. The other staffs of the school opposed to this idea because of the financial difficulty and the possible abuse of the students. Kwangshin Kim did not yield and the extra scholarship were finally given to every student. One of the students met Kwangshin Kim to return the money saying he could not receive since he was already too thankful. Kim sent him back suggesting him to offer it to God for the church service if he really insists. On the next church service, every student gave back the money. Love were planted in the church in this way.
The third characteristics is devotion. Kwangshin Kim went the deepest Amazon jungle with only two more assistants and crossed the wild river with a small motor boat. The place was already seriously dangerous as showed the death of a Korean missionary dispatched from the same church.
