David Kwangshin Kim

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.

Biography

Family and Education

He was born in 1935, as a fourth 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. After teaching in a high school for 11 years in South Korea he left for the USA and became a businessman.

Ministry

At the age of 42, Kwangshin Kim became a born-again Christian and abandoned his business and entered Talbot School of Theology.

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.

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.

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.

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. There is a fee to pay which is to cover the expenses. 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, this is a major source of income to the church. 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.

G12

Grace Korean Church has a special program called “Basket Operation” that is composed of 13 successive steps:

1. Oikos Evangelism
2. Cell Church
3. Central Church
4. Grace Encounter-10 weeks
5. 1 to 1 Discipleship-16 weeks
6. Tres Dias-3 days 4 nights
7. Gifts Discovery Seminar-8 weeks
8. Shepard Seminar-8 weeks
9. Grace Freedom
10. Shepard / G-7 Member
11. G-7 Leader
12. Leadership College-1 year and
13. Ministry Involvement

External links

• Seoul Grace Church
• Grace Korean Church in the USA
• GMI

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Name	Kwangshim Kim, David
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Date of birth	1935
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