Kwangshin Kim
Pastor Kwangshin Kim (김광신, David Kim). (born 1935 in South Korea) is Korean Protestant Christian Pastor. He is the president of Grace Ministries International (GMI, 은혜선교센터) that have created more than 7,000 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.
Biography
Family and Education
He was born in 1935 in a four successive Christian generation family in KyungSangNamDo, southern part of South Korea. He graduated MaSan high school and graduated Seoul National University, the most prestigious university in South Korea. He taught in a middle school for 11 years in South Korea. He flew to USA and became a businessman
Ministry
At the age of 42, Kwangshin Kim truly met Jesus Christ. He abandoned his then prosperous business and entered Talbot School of Theology one of the most prestigious theology school in the USA.
He led Bible studies as an elder and theology student. In 1982, instead of beginning church with now tight-bound bible study members, he began his church with only three families. This shows in fact one of the most characteristic feature of Pastor 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 Kwangshin Kim’s ministry is love and devotion. These philosophies of the ministries could be more concretely understood by the anecdotes in the below.
The most important emphasis of Kwangshin Kim’s ministry is “carry out the Great commission of God”, that is, to save the soul, evangelize and do missionary work. Based on this principle, the church dispenses more than half of the budge of the church for international missionary work.
Mission
Grace Ministries International have created 2,000 churches in Russia, 600 churches in Africa, 3,000 churches in China and 1,000 churches in Vietnam and many churches in South America. GMI sent more than 250 missionaries in about 50 countries. The size of mission of Grace Church was the number one in the USA as an individual church: more precisely, the mission size of the Grace Church was more than the double of the second and the third top American church mission.
Strategy of Mission
Kwangshin Kim and Grace Korean Church together with GMI prepared different mission strategies according to the region. For example, in Russia very concentrated theology school were created at the beginning. In South America, high-level and well prepared mission school were needed since 95% of the pastors did not graduate a theology school and 80% of them have only elementary educational level. In Japan, reasoning the truth of the Bible is necessary since Japanese won't accept easily a foreign idea if it does not convince them. In China secret mission in family level is necessary due to the political difficulty.
Glow of Love
Also know as Tres Dias, this ceremony held for 3 nights and 4 days has had graceful fruits for the participated candidates. Many of the programs have surprising feature that their programs are never described in detail since this could be a real spoiler. As the name of the ceremony shows, the ceremony is said to be filled with God’s love. Once in the USA, more than 2,000 candidates had wanted to participate in this program which cannot hold more than hundred and a half candidates. There are more than 10 Glow of Love prepared by Grace Church all over the world including France, German, Spain, Russia and the countries around it, Sout Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Africa.
G12
Grace Korean Church has special program called “Basket Operation” that is composed of successive 13 steps: 1st Phase Oikos Evangelism 2nd Phase Cell Church 3rd Phase Central Church 4th Phase Grace Encounter (10 weeks) 5th Phase 1 to 1 Discipleship (16 weeks) 6th Phase Tres Dias (3 days 4 nights) 7th Phase Discovery Seminar (8 weeks) 8th Phase Shepard Seminar (8 weeks) 9th Phase Grace Freedom 10th Phase Shepard / G-7 Member 11th Phase G-7 Leader 12th Phase Leadership College (1 year) 13th Phase Ministry Involvement
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 Kwangshin Kim . GMI created a theology school without delay in Russia just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the students told one day Pastor 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 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.