SEATTLE, Wash. (BP)--Gihwang Shin, a church-starting missionary to the 177 language groups in metropolitan Seattle, has been called by the International Mission Board -- and funded in partnership with Korean Southern Baptist churches – to enlist Korean Southern Baptists to be involved in going, giving and praying for international missions.
Korean churches across the Southern Baptist Convention have become increasingly strategic in their global focus, said David Gill, former second-vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Where Koreans once focused primarily on the needs of Koreans in the United States and abroad, today they’re reaching out globally to many people groups. And increasingly they’re doing it in partnership with the International Mission Board.
“We have 6.5 million Koreans in 172 countries,” said Gill, pastor of the Concord Korean Baptist Church in Martinez, Calif. “It is God’s providential will to spread so many Koreans in so many countries for world mission.”
Gill arranged a meeting last May that brought together 11 pastors of Korean Southern Baptist churches in the United States with IMB leaders and 11 pastors of Baptist churches in South Korea to discuss what they saw as God’s direction.
“We wanted to learn and discuss how Korean churches can work together with the IMB to reach out to other people groups in the world,” Gill said. “We have 213 (Korean) missionaries; we are aiming for 1,000 with God’s help. So Gihwang Shin will be a tremendous asset for this recruiting and mobilizing.”
“This is a kind of giant step – for Korean Baptist churches to work with the IMB with the same goal and same vision,” Shin said. “In the past, Korean churches had a focus on missions, and especially overseas, but they didn’t know how to do it in a cooperative way. They just did it by themselves.
“In the past two years they have seen more power and more fruit with the IMB and Cooperative Program. Many laymen are ready to go out and serve – both in career and long-term (volunteer) missions.”
IMB President Jerry Rankin noted a growing interest on the part of Southern Baptist Korean churches to partner with the mission board.
“(SBC Korean churches) are catching the vision of cross-cultural witness to unreached people groups, and hundreds of their members are surrendering to missionary service,” Rankin said. “Gihwang Shin has been a key influence in helping to nurture our relationship with these churches and will be a great asset in training and equipping them for involvement in our Great Commission task.”
The International Mission Board has led at least 10 missions-awareness programs in Korean churches in recent years. At one of the first such meetings, conducted at Los Angeles’ Berendo Street Baptist Church in May 2003, more than 400 people accepted a call to career or long-term global missions involvement. In all, more than 800 Korean Baptists have made similar responses.
“This is a pretty amazing thing,” Shin said. “Now is the time to follow up.”
Shin, his wife, Hyesun Kim, and their three children children moved in December to Richmond, Va., where the mission board is located.
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