How can Evangelicalism today reclaim its gospel identity through love, hospitality, justice, and comprehensive good news?

“I think anything other than that is an impoverished gospel.”

Pastor Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, joins host Nikki Toyama-Szeto on Credible Witness to wrestle with the future of evangelicalism. From Luke 4’s vision of Jesus’s inaugural message—”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me …”—Kim reclaims the gospel as comprehensive. It is meant for transforming individuals, communities, institutions, and systems.

He reflects on his immigrant journey, the gift of hospitality, raising a daughter with Down syndrome, and his deep longing for the church to embody “all of Jesus for all of life.” Alongside sobering reflections on spiritual poverty in the American church, Kim shares hopeful stories of holistic community transformation in Boston, Charlottesville, and Malawi.

With honesty and empathy, he calls Christians to move beyond ideological “whack-a-mole” and into a witness shaped by hospitality, solidarity, repentance, and joy. For Kim, this is not just about evangelical identity—it’s about reclaiming the credibility of Christian witness in a fractured world.

Key Moments

• Walter Kim’s immigrant background and early encounters with Christian hospitality
• Reflections on Korean American church life, belonging, and faith formation
• Diverse ministry contexts: Yale, Vancouver, Boston, and Charlottesville
• Story of his daughter with Down syndrome and discovering holistic gospel in Malawi
• Contrast of economic prosperity vs. spiritual poverty in America
• Evangelicalism’s “identity crisis” and politicization
• Critique of “ideological whack-a-mole” and fear-driven church witness
• Rethinking evangelicalism through multicultural expressions of faith
• Personal story of racial vulnerability with a friend in Charlottesville
• Vision of a comprehensive gospel shaped by empathy, hospitality, and delight

Helpful Links and Resources

• Luke 4:18–19
• National Association of Evangelicals
• Christianity Today
• World Relief
• Regent College
• Park Street Church, Boston
• Public Faith by Miroslav Volf

About the Contributors

Walter Kim is president of the National Association of Evangelicals, serves on the boards of Christianity Today and World Relief, and has pastored churches in Boston, Vancouver, and Charlottesville. He previously served as a chaplain at Yale University. As a Korean American and son of immigrant parents, he brings a global and deeply personal perspective to questions of Christian witness and evangelical identity.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto is executive director of Christians for Social Action and host of Credible Witness. She leads conversations at the intersection of faith, justice, and culture, inviting guests to share wisdom from their lived experience of discipleship and social engagement.

Show Notes

• Walter Kim on Jesus’s Luke 4 inauguration speech defining the gospel
• “I think anything other than that is an impoverished gospel.”
• Holistic gospel: personal salvation and systemic transformation
• Evangelical identity crisis and demographic shifts in the U.S.
• Immigrant church growth and Boston’s revival through global Christianity
• Story of Kim’s daughter with Down syndrome speaking in Malawi
• Contrast between economic and spiritual poverty
• Evangelicalism’s entanglement with politics and fear-driven witness
• “Ideological whack-a-mole” and cultural antagonism
• Learning from Asian American expressions of honor/shame in evangelism
• Hospitality, belonging, and community across ministry contexts
• Racial vulnerability, friendship, and solidarity in Charlottesville
• Recovering joy and delight as a vision of God’s love
• Examples of holistic community transformation in Boston and Charlottesville
• Vision for evangelical renewal rooted in repentance, empathy, and comprehensive gospel

Transcript

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Credible witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative,

Walter Kim: When we say Jesus calls us to love one another, when we understand, that the great command is to love God and to love our neighbors. When we think about Jesus proclaiming the good news, my deep desire is that this good news would be a comprehensive good news.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: What does evangelical mean and how can we answer this with real depth? Not just letting current political or religious or churchy stereotypes take over?

We can start by remembering the root word, evangel Greek for good news. The first time Jesus uses that word is in Luke four 18 to 19, and he’s quoting the prophet Isaiah.

The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has set me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Luke 4:18-19

So again, what is it to be a good news kind of person?

Walter Kim: Jesus, when he came and for he proclaimed good news, when he had a chance to define what the good news was. I think about the passage in Luke four, where he introduces himself to the world. and, you know, he is the Messiah this is his inauguration speech. he’s empowered by the spirit and he’s coming into Nazareth and he’s opening up the scroll of Isaiah, and he has the chance to define a gospel anyway he wants.

What does he say? The spirit of Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoner, sight for the blind, release for the oppressed and the year of the Lord’s favor.

I mean, this is an amazing gospel of individual, but also social transformation. I, I long for church to be rethought of in this way and to take its empathy to encompass the whole person.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: This is Walter Kim.

He’s the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, as well as a former Yale University chaplain and a pastor who served cities like Boston, Vancouver, and Charlottesville. When I think about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this world, of course there is the forgiveness of sin, but most profoundly the good news of Jesus Christ, to touch upon every aspect of life. Mm-hmm. The dignity, of the individual, of course. A relationship with Jesus that’s personal, of course, but a transformation of villages, of communities, of homes, of economic systems.

Walter Kim: that too is what it means to be a good news person. And what it takes for all of us, however, differently abled mm-hmm. God has gifted us that it will require all of us to be involved. I think anything other than that is an impoverished gospel.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: The way Walter points out the disparity between spiritual prosperity and economic prosperity between spiritual poverty and economic poverty, it really presses on that question of what it means to be a good news person, to be committed to the full application of the gospel that Jesus proclaims

and it presses very acutely on the church in America today. Are we living and proclaiming an impoverished gospel? Seems to me that Jesus was always most prophetically aggressive with the insider. And tremendously kind with the outsider.

Walter Kim: His most unsparing words were for religious leaders. His kindest, gentlest, was with the outsiders. and I think sometimes we have it flipped Our kindest words, come when we’re trying to rally around, uh, the internal troops and protecting our leaders. and the most unsparing and unkind words for those who are on the outside of the church, those who we deem as threats.

And so it’s not just what, it’s how that I would seek to be contending for.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I’m Nikki Toyama-Szeto, and this is Credible Witness, A collection of stories and wisdom from faithful people, wrestling with and bearing witness to the credibility of Christian life today. Each episode is an invitation to listen generously and courageously to one person navigating social tension and moral complexity.

Negotiating doubts, struggles and fears, overcoming obstacles, and pursuing justice and living out the convictions of their faith. And every voice reminds us that the church is called to be a credible witness to Christ, a living reality of hope, justice, truth and love.

Walter Kim when you meet him and he says he’s a pastor, you’re not surprised. He’s got something about that warm smile, the way that he is exuberant in his greeting for both old friends and new acquaintances alike.

His care is evident. His love for people is obvious, and he is generous with his friendships.

He’s been a pastor of churches in big towns, in small cities, including Boston’s Park Street Church.

I’ve heard Walter described as a pastor’s pastor, he’s a person who loves the church and loves the people of the church and loves God and longs to see. Church step into the fullness of all that she can be.

Walter is now the president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

He sits on the board of Christianity Today and World Relief and Leads a weekly podcast looking at the state and the health of the church.

In this episode with Walter Kim, we discuss

how contemporary evangelicalism faces existential questions, questions that bring us to the very root meaning of the gospel.

The meaning of hospitality, deep community, and belonging.

The impact of allowing fear to define Christian public witness and what it takes to overcome it.

what it means to contend for the meaning of evangelicalism and living and experiencing the holistic gospel

Walter, thank you so much for joining us in this conversation.

Walter Kim: Oh, Nikki, it’s really a delight to be here.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Can you tell me a bit about your background?

Walter Kim: Uh, well, I was born in New York City as a son of immigrant parents. My dad was actually refugee, it’s escaped communism, and literally crossed a river in a barrel to get to South Korea where he met my mom. And, after they got married, they immigrated to America.

I was born in New York City. Mm-hmm. grew up there, but actually moved around a lot. So I, I, I had this experience of growing up in a cosmopolitan. Setting deep, Korean, Korean American community in New York and New Jersey. and then had this stretch of growing up, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in western Pennsylvania.

Very different small town America, kind of a fading coal town area, um, and all that that entailed. and since then, also, I’ve been moving to different places in the country. Lived in Canada for a while, Boston for 20 years, where my kids were born and raised, in the most recently Charlottesville, Virginia.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Walter has served as a pastor in such a variety of cultural context from the intellectual elites at Yale. To the secularity of Vancouver and Boston to the Christian culture of Charlottesville, Virginia. Each place required a different approach to living out Christian faith.

He highlights the importance of remaining rooted in the substance of the gospel

while working at a different application based on the needs and cultural milieu of geographical setting.

And can you tell me a little bit, as you were growing up, as you’re a young adult, what are some of the things that sort of shape how you understand church?

Walter Kim: Well, my, my experience of faith, though, I would say as with a lot of Korean American immigrants there, there is this, connection with the Korean American church. It’s a landing place for immigrants, certainly from the sixties and seventies. Alright. and, and my parents were very much a part of that, that it was a little bit of social service, opportunity to reconnect with your community.

Uh, spirituality and Christianity was definitely a part of it. for the most part, it was a social experience from my parents. But nonetheless, it gave me a deep sense, uh, of belonging. I would also have to say that my own experience of religion in America was one generally of hospitality.

So, there was a Lutheran pastor that kind of helped my parents in the immigration process and welcomed them to America.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: When they first

Walter Kim: That’s right. And, that, that actually met, my parents in Korea in doing some humanitarian work and helping the country rebuild after Korean War and had kept in touch.

And when they moved to America, was a part of that welcoming, crew. I also lived in the basement of an Irish Catholic family in the Bronx. And those, kids, the McGovern kids, they taught me how to ride my big wheel and how to get to the park. And there was this real sense of hospitality. And then, there was a, a Baptist youth pastor who introduced me to Jesus when I was, just about to begin high school.

And in each of these cases, like my own experience of Christianity was one generally of hospitality. So I, I combined my sense of, church when I was involved in a Korean American church, as a little kid, maybe not as robust in understanding of. The Christianity part, but a deep understanding of community.

Mm-hmm. And a sense of belonging. I also had a sense from some of these, interactions over the course of my life that Christianity could be an experience of deep hospitality and welcome, but there’s also been a lifetime of really complicated experiences. Mm-hmm. Um, a as a minorityson of an immigrant, in places where I often didn’t fully sense belonging and putting those pieces together, my own kind of ethnic identity, immigrant child status, with the place of faith and how that works, that, that’s been a lifelong, lifelong journey for me.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: there are some who would say there’s no need to rethink church. If the church would only focus on its core work, things will fall into place. How would you respond to that?

Walter Kim: I would think about what is the core work? How do we even define the core work? If, if we mean that the core work is just preached Jesus and everything will take care of itself, well preach. What about Jesus? And I’m gonna use, um,mean, just my recent life experience. So I have a, a daughter with Down syndrome and I realized this past summer that I, a prayer that I had prayed 18 years ago, and I didn’t know how God would answer it.

Mm-hmm. This past summer I realized, oh. God answered my prayer. And this was my, this was, this was the prayer I was sitting after my daughter was born in the nicu, looking at my daughter in an incubator, hooked up to all these tubes, wondering, you know, would she live? I mean, how’s this all gonna work out?

And I remember sitting next to the incubator and praying beyond the living and the breathing. What am I actually hoping for in

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: her life. Mm-hmm.

Walter Kim: And I remember, thinking I want my daughter to experience the joy of the Lord

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm.

Walter Kim: and to be a source of joy for others. I didn’t know how God was going to answer that prayer,

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yes.

Walter Kim: because what I saw in front of me was just, is she gonna live?

How are we gonna make it outta the nicu? Fast forward 18 years. Started this work with the National Association of Evangelicals and part of that work is connecting with the humanitarian organization World Relief, which is the humanitarian arm of the NAE. And we are in Malawi, Africa, visiting some of the villages and the, the nature of this kind of comprehensive application of the gospel we’re in this beautiful setting in which the gospel wasn’t just about personal salvation.

The gospel also had implications of how do we help, women in more tribal patriarchal settings. How do we develop sustainable farming practices? How do we grant a vision for what God would design marriage, and life to be like? what about developing microfinance and saving in loans to get people into sustainable economic systems?

And this was all an application of following Jesus. It wasn’t just the altar call for the forgiveness of sins. And it also included, an invitation that the, village chieftain had issued to my daughter

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Hmm.

Walter Kim: with Down syndrome to address the villagers. And here she was. I didn’t know what would come out of her

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Were you surprised by that invitation?

Walter Kim: this is, this is remarkable. And I’m like thinking she might just give a whole message about Disney princesses ’cause that’s what she’s into, you know? And she gave an exhortation to the children to, to work hard to study. For everyone to thank God. And he, she concluded just by saying chia, thank you in the language. And it struck me.

God had answered that prayer. I had no idea beyond the living and the breathing, what joy from the Lord to be received and offered to the world would look like through my daughter. Mm-hmm.

When I think about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this world, of course there is the forgiveness of sin, but most profoundly the good news of Jesus Christ, to touch upon every aspect of life. Mm-hmm. The dignity, of the individual, of course. A relationship with Jesus that’s personal, of course, but a transformation of villages, of communities, of homes, of economic systems.

that too is what it means to be a good news person. And what it takes for all of us, however, differently abled mm-hmm. God has gifted us that it will require all of us to be involved. I think anything other than that is an impoverished gospel. And it is a deep, deep longing that as I encountered, economic poverty Yeah.

In Malawi, and I expected that. I was surprised by the spiritual prosperity there. I come back to America, a place of great economic prosperity. But I would say a place of deep spiritual poverty at times, even within the church, an impoverished gospel. And I think some of the challenges that we face as a country, as, as a society in our communities, is a function of an impoverished gospel.

Yeah. That we are not able to offer all of Jesus for all of who we are as individuals, but also as communities and as a country. Yeah.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: What are some of the things that signal to you? Spiritual poverty in the church. In America.

Walter Kim: Yeah. I mean, I think we’re playing like ideological whack-a-mole in our country. So you, I, I don’t even forget, I grew up at a time where arcades, in malls, existed.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Quarters. Stacks of quarters. Yes,

Walter Kim: Stack of quarters. Yes. Stacks of quarters. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you know, you’re gonna have to go Google it. there was one game, whack-a-Mole that I, I, I recall there were these five plastic, I love moles, right?

They pop up and you have this like foam, uh, mallet that you’re trying to whacko and frankl. You’re never able to keep up with all the, the moles that are popping up. It feels to me that that’s what the church is often doing. We’re just playing ideological, whack-a-mole. and oftentimes the thi the moles, they’re like moles of our own making, you know, perceived threats to our place in society.

and I, I would say this is a function, of fear that somehow we’re losing our place in society. It’s also, perhaps an insecurity. About the essence of the gospel itself. Again, an impoverished imagination of the richness of what it means to follow Jesus in this world. And when we are stuck in this kind of ideological whack-a-mole, I, I think we continue to foster an attitude and a position of hostility and antagonism, toward the very people in our culture and society that we’re called to reach.

So, you know, kind of hearkening back to this, my own experiences of hospitality, I mean, that’s welcoming, that, that makes Christianity enticing, ideological, whack-a-mole does not make Jesus enticing.

and I think I, is there a place of disagreement and speaking prophetically? Absolutely. but this sense that we need to be driven by our fear.

Often shaped by a truncated imagination of what Christianity could be when we rely too much on being in the center of places of power rather than working from the margins, which as the son of an immigrant, as you know, navigating, spaces in which at times growing up I was only like person of color.

You begin to realize there’s a difference between navigating a space when you’re in the center of power versus when you’re in the margin.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm.

Walter Kim: yet I think I’ve come to a place where I have this growing appreciation that the way of Jesus is often the way of influence from the margins. And,my, my sense is kind of the turmoil that’s often fomenting in the church is this concern that the church is no longer the center, uh, of American society.

That we’ve been pushed, pushed to the margins and, is that loss real? Of course. And with every sense of loss, there’s all kinds of things that get provoked, but I, I, I think it’s an incredible sense of opportunity because when you think about the global church and where it’s growing, it’s growing in places in which the church has existed in the margins powerfully.

and so I think this is an actual opportunity for the church in America to recover a deeper reliance and dependence upon God and not dependence upon our technique

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm. Or

Walter Kim: or our social dominance.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Hmm. So this, the church learning to be in sort of a different place in society doesn’t necessarily mean it’s calling. Its role is different. It’s just operating from a different place. I’ve heard you talk a little bit about this difference between kinda spoken ideologies, but then also like a lived experience.

Um, and, and you have been a person where, where are some of the places where, you’ve been in formal ministry or, or sort of your career path a bit, just so we can, what are some of the, key, key stopping points on that, that it would be good for us to

Walter Kim: Yeah. Yeah. So, for a while I served as a campus chaplain at Yale. You know, a place where education is highly valued, that Christianity is not particularly valued,and what it means to understand that. Mm-hmm. my experience there was also really formative for my ethnic identity, because it was a place where,the Asian American Christian groups were really thriving and growing and it was representing a different face to what it meant, to be a follower Jesus and an evangelical.

because the Asian American community was perhaps the most thriving evangelical presence, on that campus. That’s a very different story to tell. so that, that’s part of it. I spent some time in Canada, and my wife and I studied at Regent College in, in Canada, and that’s very post-Christian.

place in the world, one of the least church places, in North America, Vancouver. And that too was a really powerful experience having a chance to study at Regent with a global community, people from all over the world, trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus in their own context in a city that was long settled into a post-Christian mentality.

Mm-hmm. from there, spent 20 years in Boston in various forms of graduate school and working at a church called Park Street Church in downtown Boston. and then, the last several years in Charlottesville, Virginia. And, and each of these places, represents not only deep differences in, kind of regional cultures, but even how you navigate church is very different, in each of these spaces.

And I, I think for all of them, but they’ve been very formative for me. In, in terms of how I understand, Christianity being lived out. So in a, in a number of these places where c you know, people have, whether it’s in Vancouver or in Boston, long settled into the realization that Christianity is not the dominant worldview.

You’re gonna have to live as a missionary. So any sense in which you’re trying to, work out your faith, you’re working out your faith as perhaps one of the few Christians that, you know, that’s a very different place to begin with than if you’re in a situation where you assume, people around you, are Christians.

And, um, it’s, it’s, uh, you know, I remember moving from Boston where there’s no Christian radio station, the 1:00 AM station that would sometimes play some church services o otherwise there was no Christian radio station. So being used to that. Then moving to Charlottesville, Virginia where there were like six when I, you know, I drove around there and there’s a country music Christian radio station, the pop one, and there’s a, you know, Christian talk radio.

Uhhuh, this is a really different place to be working out your faith. Mm-hmm. You know, a place where one, you are looking at Christianity as a missionary endeavor to reach a, a culture that is mm-hmm. Maybe not Christian at all, versus Christianity as being the dominant space. Mm-hmm. And you’re trying to preserve it.

That’s a different, that’s a really different type of experience. Oh yeah. One of preservation and fighting to preserve territory puts you in a certain mentality that’s different from one in which you are trying to reach fresh ground. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and I think there’s things to be learned from both places.

so it’s not a, a, a knock on one place or the other. but I do think we need to really take seriously lessons that could be learned from both places.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: The question of understanding what it means for the good news of Jesus to resonate and thrive in these various places. It underscores the themes of hospitality, belonging, and finding community.

It’s just so interesting to observe how the good news can be lived out within the tensions or struggles that a particular region might inhabit. You know that tension between personal and public implications of Christian faith, but the gospel actually thrives in complexity

I mean, so to follow up on that, how, how did each of those places shape and form you? What do you think about those really different experiences have kind of affected or influenced or changed how it is that you think about the role of the church or Christian communities?

Walter Kim: Yeah. I, I think, you know, there are places in which my own sense of the individual transformation, the institutional ideological transformations, are held in tension. I think there are ways in which the evangelicalism I encountered as, as I was kind of living out my experience in Boston was one that.

Made sense to my immigrant experience. Okay. in Boston, the, one of the least Bible reading churched areas of the country, long again post-Christian, actually from 1960s to 2015, experienced incredible revival. So this kind of least churched area of the country, the number of churches in Boston, doubled from the mid sixties, around 300 to 600 churches by 2010.

But most of it were immigrant churches.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Is that

Walter Kim: Yeah. The immigrant Portuguese speaking church. The Immigrant Cambodian church. The immigrant Korean American

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So kind of more following down, uh, the demographics of city growth and people were bringing their Christian faith with them.

Walter Kim: right. that was a really interesting. Experience. Wow. To see Christianity in its global form

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yes,

Walter Kim: come to America and work itself out in the ways that I described earlier of it’s your social center, it’s the place you learn faith, it’s the place you make friends. It’s the place you understand your own ethnic identity.

It’s also the place that you’re navigating post-Christian urban life. And to me what I sensed was a resonance with my own experience as an immigrant

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Okay. So that that mirrored, that mirrored your experience that you had of church, so,

Walter Kim: institutionally and ideologically, I think there was a deep resonance. Mm-hmm. But, you know, new England is not personally the warm and fuzzy place in American life. and so while I might have found some institutional and ideological resonance and hospitality. It wasn’t always the most individually hospitable place.

Okay. My experience in the south has been really interesting because it’s kind of flipped that as some of the most warm and hospitable individual

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yes.

Walter Kim: expressions of hospitality. a warmth of invitation of friendship on the individual level, was profoundly offered to me, but in largely homogenous spaces.

My own experience of life as the child of an immigrant, as a person of color was not always comfortably fitting in. So it was something flipped, you know, that maybe there was this institutional ideological warmth, and sense of life and Boston, but not so much individual hospitality kind of being flipped in another context.

as I was navigating life in Charlottesville, which is really complicated with its racial history, personal warmth, absolutely offered,

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: What did the personal wa what, what did that look like?

Walter Kim: I mean, it, it looked like,it looked like the ways in which someone would engage you, with bringing a casserole over to your home. Love via casserole love via l.

My children being cared for. I mean, there would never be a date night that we couldn’t go on because we couldn’t find a

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Is that right?

Walter Kim: I mean, there was just this sense that we own you personally, now that you’ve been a part of our tribe here. but there was also a deep ambivalence as to my ethnic identity

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Okay.

Walter Kim: because, you know, for, for many of the folks, I mean, this is the first time that they’re running into, in predominantly white, predominantly white settings, uh, uh, anon-white pastor.

And I think again, there’s this individual warmth and, and, and are still working out the public implications of faith. So, and this is where I think I would take my own personal experience Yes. And map it onto what I sent sense some of the tensions are, in American religion, that sometimes, we have this sense that Jesus personally can transform you.

Mm-hmm. But we don’t have a sense for what that public implication looks like. Oh, that’s true. What is the public implication of the good news of Jesus Uhhuh? Not just the personal implication.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So, uh, I follow Jesus. I, I’m kinder, I’m forgiving people. I’m releasing of hate

Walter Kim: Yeah. What does it look like for the systems in which we live? The laws that create the context in which we navigate life, the social practices that might advantage or disadvantage people, not because the individual is a racist. But because the social context in which we live Absolutely. And almost automatically provide certain opportunities for others and not for different folks.

And those, those things are really, really powerful. And oftentimes there isn’t an imagination for how the good news of Jesus could impact that. What does that look like? but once again, you know, I, I, I think about my experience in Malawi, the good news of Jesus should impact every single aspect of life. There shouldn’t be this false division between the personal transformation of

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm.

Walter Kim: forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. With the sense in which,Christianity impacts every aspect of how we think about economics, how we think about family structure. How we think about the way that, we navigate hierarchy in our community and what are the political implications for laws that provide advantages for some and disadvantages for others.

And almost this invisible hand that will guide some to flourishing and others, to languishing and, and those, those are a part of the good news of Jesus. Jesus came to deal with all of it,

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Again, the gospel thrives in complexity because Jesus came to proclaim that good news and offer it to everyone regardless of their social location.

The social issues that Walter is here advocating for, they’re often invisible to us. Depending on where we are in that social location, it’s possible for us to miss the holistic and complete expression and extension of the gospel.

So I wanted to hear from Walter about developing the skills of spiritual awareness and intention. to help us to see the complex realities of life where the gospel is so needed.

Depending on where we are in that social location, it’s possible for us to miss the holistic and complete expression and extension of the gospel.

So I wanted to hear more from Walter about developing the skills of spiritual awareness and attention.

What is it? Some of the things that you’re describing are fairly invisible to a lot of folks. What do you think it is about either your story or your experience that makes those things visible to you?

Walter Kim: I think. About my own heritage as Korean Americans, specifically Asian American. Why did my parents immigrate in the mid sixties? Because there was a law that was changed that enabled immigration and the country, I think by and large, has greatly benefited from the change of that law, that law permitted immigration patterns, that revitalized, uh, churches all across America.

So I described this rapid transformation from 1965 to 2015 in Boston, 300 to 600 churches, most of them immigrant churches. That wouldn’t have happened if a law had not been changed. You could have had a lot of individual Christians. Saying, I really like other people. I really want to encounter other people.

I really hope to learn about Christianity by encountering different cultures. It doesn’t matter how much personal desire you have, if there wasn’t institutional change, that personal desire would be unfulfilled. There really needs to be both happening. The Civil Rights Act, if that didn’t pass, I think we would be experiencing all deeper forms of racism and segregation in our country.

institutionally, like laws need to change. It’s not enough just to, to have goodwill and personal transformation because this is actually what we mean about culture. And we get it in certain other ways. Like,you know, for those committed to the pro-life movement, you totally get it. You need to change social structures and you have to change laws.

You have to create community centers, crisis pregnancy centers. There’s an imagination with certain issues that it’s not enough just to personally care for, a pregnant mother. Mm-hmm. And have a personal love for a, a, a situation in crisis. It takes a holistic approach, changing laws, changing community structures, creating nonprofit organizations, movement, building, all of it.

I, I would say our imagination has been so limited to one or two issues in, in the American church. And ironically, the one or two issues often are different issues for different parts of the church. And so we’re criticizing each other for well. Why aren’t you doing it in this other place? You know how to do it here.

and, and this is also speaking to the, the deep fractures that exist in our church.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I think Walter is saying something quite bold here. Goodwill and personal transformation are beautiful and necessary, but they just aren’t enough.

In his book,Public Faith, theologian, Miroslav Volf, argues for the irreducibly public dimensions of Christian faith. The gospel is meant to impact the full spectrum of human life and cultural exchange. So for the church to embody the good news, we need to come to appreciate this reality

So as you think about rethinking Church, Walter, Kim, what are the things that you dream about that you hope for, that you long for, for the future of the church in America?

Walter Kim: when we say Jesus calls us to love one another,

when we understand, that the great command is to love God and to love our neighbors. When we think about Jesus proclaiming the good news, my deep desire is that this good news would be a comprehensive good news. And understanding that, that Jesus, when he came and for he proclaimed good news, when he had a chance to define what the good news was.

I think about the passage in Luke four, where he introduces himself to the world. and, you know, he is the Messiah and this is his inauguration speech. You know, this is a, he’s empowered by the spirit and he’s coming into Nazareth and he’s opening up the scroll of Isaiah, and he has the chance to define a gospel anyway he wants.

Mm-hmm. And what does he say? The spirit of Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoner, sight for the blind,release for the oppressed and the year of the Lord’s favor. I mean, this is an amazing gospel of individual, but also social transformation. I, I long for church to be rethought of in this way and to take its empathy to encompass the whole person.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I hope Walter’s words really land here.

Empathy, to encompass the whole person for the gospel, to embody this kind of whole person connectivity. must be so much more than a personal faith, this kind of whole person care. It can’t really exist without empathic solidarity and a comprehensive communal expression of Christianity

to explain. Walter told me a story about how a friendship in Charlottesville deepened when he was able to express the emotional realities of fear and talk about race-based hate crimes

Walter Kim: So I’m gonna, you know, there was this moment where, I remember having this conversation with a friend of mine. In Charlottesville, who was, deeply concerned about getting to know me as a person, and I recognized he didn’t have knowledge of a very particular part of me. Okay. We talked about lots of stuff.

Mm-hmm. Sports, what we were learning, our quiet times. but there was this part of my racial ethnic identity that he didn’t even know how to ask. What does this mean for you to navigate life this way? I recall a, a moment, in which after some of the, Asian hate crimes committed during the pandemic, there was one particular moment where in, uh, the Sam’s Club in Texas Oh, yes.

Where the father was slashed and the child was slashed as well. Mm-hmm. I remember, being in Charlottesville, going to Costco on a Sunday afternoon. That’s a, a place where Sunday afternoons, the Asians come to Costco. So it’s really interesting. Phenomenal. It’s a thing.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: That’s a thing.

Walter Kim: So you go to Costco and you wanna know, you know, where’s the Asian community?

They’re, they’re, they’re there on Sunday afternoon doing their shopping

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: go.

Walter Kim: So I’m sitting in the parking lot, and I couldn’t help myself. It just came outta my mouth and I was praying. I prayed, Lord, I pray that every Asian American makes it out alive. And then I thought, in what world do I have to be sitting in a parking lot praying, something like that. My friend didn’t know how to even ask me how I am processing what was unfolding in our country.

I just sat him down and I said, listen, we never talk about this, but I’m just gonna tell you what I experienced this past Sunday because if you really want to know and love me, if we are really to be brothers in Christ, you’re gonna need to love the whole me. And his response is like, I just never knew. It just never even crossed my mind. I’m so sorry that you would experience this. And how can I learn what it means to love you as you really are a comprehensive gospel, but a comprehensive form of love in which we really have solidarity. With the whole person mm-hmm. That we’re sitting across from with the whole community, where their concerns and their hurts are not something to be a part of this ideological, whack-a-mole, but it is the call to love our neighbor as they are and all of who they are.

I think that’s my hope.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Going back to that moment when you sat down your friend, what did it feel like for you to tell him what happened for you that Sunday afternoon?

Walter Kim: a strange mix of things. Um, a little bit of insecurity, like how is he gonna respond to this? Mm-hmm. What will I do if it’s dismissed? I mean that,

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: That’s a pretty risky thing you did. That’s the risky thing, right? Yeah.

Walter Kim: then I will feel all the more Isolated. Mm-hmm. Would it be viewed as a political statement and not as an expression of faith and friendship?

Yes. I mean, all those things are running Yeah. Through my mind. But there was also a moment of, oh, forget it. I, I just need to say it because if, if this is going to be a real friendship Yeah. It needs to have this part of it. Yeah. Otherwise,I am failing as a friend by not inviting him more deeply, and perhaps I’m failing him as a brother in Christ by not offering to him an opportunity to learn and grow.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: so it was an expression of dependence on my part, which is not, you know, an easy thing. It’s not fun to

Walter Kim: no, it’s not fun to do. And when you navigate most of your life as a minority mm-hmm. in majority spaces, you become very careful. About how you express yourself because of the accumulated disappointments.

Yes. Of will this actually not only be misunderstood or ignored, but will it actually be weaponized against me? I mean, the number of times that ethnic jokes were made in the playground,wait, that’s a risky thing to do. And yet this is, I think if we’re going to really learn to love as Jesus loved and to be loved, those risks are going to be necessary.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: This step towards personal connection, this risk of vulnerability, a willingness to let our guards down in a trusting relationship. This often feels so risky, so costly. from Walter’s perspective, there is so much on the line contention over not just the meaning of Evangelicalism today, but the legitimacy of the public expression of it.

Walter’s love for the church is undeniable and because of that very love, he’s hoping for renewed attention to the holistic gospel rooted in Jesus’ own expression of the evangel. The good news

Walter, there’s a contending for what the word evangelical means. What is it that you’re contending for? Yeah.

Walter Kim: I’m contending for the way that Jesus defines it. I, I go back to that Luke for passage. There is a comprehensive way in which the good news of Jesus is being defined. We’ve seen moments of this. In, in the great revivals in in America. I, I think of what happened in the second great awakening and the abolitionist movement that came out of this and, um, the, the history of child labor laws being changed, social movements that were created out of these revivals that also included, proclamations of Jesus and under tents and on the frontiers to come to saving faith.

And, and there’s this dynamic foment, that was occurring. I, I think this is a holistic gospel that we see in our own history, in the shining moments of God’s spirit working, but there’s also ways in which that has been squelched. Mm-hmm. Kind of, I, I think of the great revivals then, but also the fact that there have been reactions to it, in our country.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. where racism. Was not only institutionally, but theologically reinforced as a reaction, to the dynamics of liberation that was starting to take place in various parts of our country. And,and that speaks to the incredible complexity of our moment. So there’s, um, both a contention for, I think a comprehensive gospel that should transform individuals, institutions, society, all of it.

I, I’m contending for a way forward that gets out of this cultural whack-a-mole. Mm-hmm. Um,to say that it’s not just what we stand for, but how we stand for it. That’s the way of Jesus. seems to me that Jesus was always most prophetically aggressive with the insider. And tremendously kind with the outsider.

Mm-hmm. His most unsparing words were for religious leaders. His kindest, gentlest, was with the outsiders. and I think sometimes we have it flipped in the church. Mm-hmm. Our kindest words, come when we’re trying to rally around, the internal troops and protecting our leaders. and the most unsparing and unkind words for those who are on the outside of the church, those who we deem as threats.

And so it’s not just what, it’s how that I would seek to be contending for.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 10 15. Once again, it’s a paraphrasing of the prophet Isaiah. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news?

I want to hear more about the kinds of communities that are inspiring Walter and embodying the comprehensive holistic gospel that he’s talking about

you’ve referenced this picture of a gospel, that is proclaiming the good news by bringing freedom to the captive and, and healing and sight for the blind. Is there a community experience or is there an experience that you had, in a, a community of Christians that gave you just that taste of, of that picture or gave you a glimpse of that picture?

Walter Kim: Yeah. I think there have been several places where that’s happened. I, I’ve seen that happen both in my time in Boston pastoring there, but also in my time in Charlottesville, pastoring there, despite the complexities of each of those places and the racial history of each of those places. I, I think of the particular work in Boston that,a number of us, not only at Park Street, but in the Boston community, in the development of outreach, okay.

to homeless communities, in the growing work of, ethnic churches, immigrant churches, and the collaboration that was beginning to take place. I think about the refugee community that was starting to move into the Boston area and seeing some of the beautiful work of reconciliation and outreach and hospitality that was being extended. To me, those were some of the most powerful impulses. Mm-hmm. Of a comprehensive expression of faith. I also think about the community development work that the churches in Charlottesville had pursued even before, the. The United the Right Rally in, in 2017. this recognition that Charlottesville had deep divisions and racial history, and that it was the responsibility of the church to engage in a holistic community development initiative.

so there have been beautiful moments like that. the painful part is that so much of it at times have recently has become politicized. So what would have one point been deemed as, oh, this is of course an expression of a holistic gospel. Now it often feels like you have to make a defense that, oh no, this is not just a, a right wing advocacy of response to mm-hmm pregnancy issues or awoke response to racial justice issues.

everything has a political tinge to it now.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: It’s putting pressure on each of these things, right? It makes it carry more than it was intended to carry.

Walter Kim: And other than it was originally designed to carry.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Walter’s description of these beautiful expressions of holistic gospel and the seemingly constant politicizing of the faith. This just highlights again, the incredible complexity we need to appreciate in the public expression of faith.

This is the identity crisis that Evangelicalism is currently facing. There have been moments when the good news has come across pretty bad, when the church compromised instead of proclaiming when the church sought alignment with the powerful instead of solidarity with the poor. When the church turned away, those very sinners that Jesus came to save.

This is why we need to rethink church so that we can come back to the originating hopes that Jesus outlines in Luke four as good news.

I asked Walter to comment on the ways Evangelicalism is confronting these challenges

Walter, it seems like right now the Evangelical Church is, wrestling with some pretty significant changes, is trying to understand its identity, its role in society, and its public witness. Can you help us to make sense of what is going on in this moment, do you think?

Walter Kim: you’re right. I, Nikki I think there is a profound, identity crisis that’s happening right now in Evangelicalism, both in terms of its historic representation as predominantly a white, pheno religious phenomena. Uh, I think about, even the founding of the NAE.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: National Association of Evangelicals.

Walter Kim: So there’s a, in, in the office of the NEE, there’s a, a, a portrait above the mantle of the fireplace of its founding, and it’s a room full of white men uhhuh in three piece suits. That was the representation of evangelicalism. Okay? This is not what America looks like right now. and so the question then arises.

As to what is Evangelicalism And as white Evangelicalism itself is undergoing all sorts of fractures, ways in which it has been politicized, or ways in which it has become more of a general civic and cultural identity, uh, rather than a transformational, formative, identity. Like this is all happening, Evangelicals that,itself, its own history, uh, as white, white evangelical expression of faith mm-hmm. Is now not only experiencing those tensions. Within its own history and trajectory, but introduced into that is the radical demographic shifts in our country. Right. As the first, those 18 and under are the first generation to be a majority minority generation.

It’s very different. Yeah. Worlds. And that means, I think Evangelicalism is not only having a sociological, moment of reckoning trying to figure itself out and a historic moment of reckoning. Are we predominantly a white religious phenomena that actually has a theological moment of reckoning? And I’ll gi I’ll give a a an example of my own efforts to share my faith.

I’ve been very much reared in, white evangelical expressions of evangelism. Mm-hmm. For which I’m deeply fi you know, profoundly grateful. It was because someone shared the four spiritual laws with me. After watching Star Wars, that Baptist pastor, I literally prayed to receive Christ on the side of a road in a car after watching Star Wars and Obi one Kenobi and his giving up his life so that the others could escape the death star.

That, that was like for me, my conversion story, Uhhuh, my father-in-law is Taiwanese immigrant and, not a Christian. And for 30 years I’d been sharing my, my wife had been sharing my faith with him, but I’ve been sharing my faith predominantly. From the heritage of my white, even evangelical conversion.

God loves us, we’ve sinned against God and this, and we’ve accrued this debt against God and kind of a forensic way of understanding the Christian life. That God, God is a judge and we’ve broken the law and Christ paid the debt for us. Mm-hmm. And, and so we received that gift. Mm-hmm. And I’ve been all these years trying to explain my faith to him, and it made no sense.

And then one day, literally decades after trying to do this and praying about it, it dawned on me, wait a second, I’m an Asian American.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: What is an Asian American way of expressing my faith? And I completely shifted Tony and my wife and I, how we presented our faith to her

and these Taiwanese ears. That’s right. Uhhuh.

Walter Kim: we began talking about honor and shame.

Mm. The ways in which, God would be dishonored by children who did not express the loyalty owed to parents. Mm-hmm. And how that shame would bring dishonor to the family and what could recompense that? Well, in some Asian traditions, a death is required to restore honor. Mm-hmm. That’s a very different motif. The moment I shared it, my father-in-law said, okay, I understand I didn’t become a Christian on the spot, but after years of saying this whole Christianity thing doesn’t make any sense to me,

Uh.it’s that makes sense to me. Mm-hmm.

I think we’re in not only a sociological moment of reckoning, predominantly white religious phenomena now multicultural setting, a historic moment of reckoning. How does evangelicalism deal with ways in which it has been a part of the tragic racial history in our country? But there’s a theological moment in which we’re being challenged to say, we need to learn from this growing diverse community that theologically is in fact evangelical.

Many of the immigrant churches are evangelical theologically. For historic and sociological reasons, will they choose to identify as evangelical or say that’s not for us? I think we have a moment in which there could be perpetual fracturing that will solidify in our polarized moment, but a beautiful moment where in humility we could be learning from one another and saying, even in the expression mm-hmm.

The truthfulness of the gospel, it finds an incarnation, it finds a way of expression that is true to a different cultural mindset. That is true. Mm-hmm. To the metaphors and life practices of different culturals that exist now, not in other countries, but here in our very neighborhoods. And if evangelicalism doesn’t take this mindset of hu humble outreach and learning from.

Acknowledging and owning and repenting of the history, embracing the changing sociology, and looking with curiosity at theological transformation that I think will only enrich us if we can equip being afraid of one another.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Here. At the end of our conversation, I asked Walter to come back to that story about his daughter, the kind of expression of joy and inclusion and belonging. That was indeed a beautiful expression of the gospel.

As I listened to him, I heard him describe the kind of joy that goes beyond mere duty or obligation.

Beyond responsibility, beyond fixing anything to a much, much deeper and profound love that he experienced through his daughter and in solidarity with a community bound together in unity by the gospel. going back to the moment that you were in Malawi Yeah. And your daughter is there preaching at the invitation of the country leaders, what did that feel like for you as a father?

Walter Kim: See, I mean, I’m gonna, even just talking tear up about it

to me that, um,I, I think personally it’s a function of being a firstborn son of immigrant parents, Asian American navigating spaces as an outsider.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm.

Walter Kim: I think I have this personally, this overweening sense of responsibility, serving as president of the NAE Now, I feel like, and I’ve had people ask me, it’s what are you gonna do to fix evangelicalism?

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: like that is

Walter Kim: responsibility seeing my daughter in that space. I was just delighted. I was so delighted. And I was struck by the fact that as a father, I experienced the delight of a father. That I looked at what my daughter was doing, not as a fulfillment of responsibility, but as an expression of her dignity and identity and freedom in Christ, not a duty that she needed to fulfill.

That was a profound lesson for me of this recovery, of this sense that God. Actually wants to delight in his children, in his church. And if we could recover that deep sense of the love of God for all of who we are, even in our brokenness, even in the fractures, even in the ways that we have truly failed to live up to our duty Of being Christ followers, to recognize that God is so longing to delight in his children. I, I think would be absolutely transformative. It is transformative to me. I, I am learning from that moment, even yet now, and I think till I go to the grave, I will be holding onto that. Mm-hmm. As a remembrance that God actually loves us so much that he truly delights in us.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm. Thank you. It’s a beautiful picture.

You’re making me cry.

Did you bring the Kleenex? Come on. That’s, that’s a great word. Thanks so much, Walter.

Walter Kim: Thanks, Nikki.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Walter Kim outlines a program of renewal for evangelicalism, a renewed sense of humble seeking and learning, a genuine repentance that can strengthen and secure our identity. And openness and curiosity to look at and appreciate the rich theological foundation that undergirds the church a softening to the experience of the other or the stranger.

A willingness to be welcomed and hosted by the love of the poor and the outcast and the different.

Walter inspires me with his hope and determination. He’s rooted in faith, his expression of delight in real friendship, the tenderness of his relationship with his daughter, and her message of self-respect and love for each other.

And in the beauty of these communities all over the place who are already embodying the comprehensive expression of Jesus’s gospel.

And that sounds like good news to me.

Credible witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative, produced and edited by Mark Labberton, Sarey Martin Concepcion, and Evan Rosa. And I’m your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto. Thanks to Fuller Seminary, Christians for Social Action and Brenda Soter McNeil for sharing her book title with our podcast.

Special thanks to all of our conversation partners in the Rethinking Church Initiative and Network, both public and private and above all, thank you for your own courageous listening and your own credible witness to the gospel. For more information, visit crediblewitness.us.

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