His parents had life all planned out for “Timothy”: Go to a top-rated university, become successful, make a lot of money.

 

It’s a familiar script for the American-born children of many hardworking Korean immigrants in the United States.

“Korean-Americans grow up with our parents always telling us, ‘If you don’t go to Harvard or Yale, you won’t get a good job,’” explains Timothy, now in his early 20s. “There’s only three things you can do: go into business, be a lawyer or be a doctor.”

But Timothy decided to rewrite the script. When he graduated from college, his parents asked about his next step.

His response: “I’m going to China” — to tell young adults about Jesus Christ.

Timothy’s path to China
He’d actually been to China before, as well as India, on volunteer trips with his church. “My pastor really encouraged us to think globally, to think cross-culturally,” Timothy explains. “He had a big influence on my life.”

His pastor, also Korean-American, steered him toward an assignment that brought him to a major Chinese city for two years. Timothy made friends easily in China, where many people like Koreans and follow them as trendsetters. He formed relationships with students, engineers, lawyers, even a bodybuilder. They came to his apartment each week to talk, read the Bible and learn how to follow the Lord.

“I remember sitting in those meetings and thinking, ‘Man, this is cool. I’m in China, there’s people in my living room, we’re studying the Bible and they’re getting it,’” Timothy says. Now some of his Chinese friends are leading their own Bible studies and starting house churches.

Timothy is one of the younger Korean-Americans involved in international ministry around the world, but he works alongside others from varied age groups and backgrounds. John,* another Korean-American in China, is over 70 — old enough to be Timothy’s grandfather. He went to China after retiring from a management job.

“In [God’s] work, there is no retirement,” John declares.

Koreans serving worldwide
Globally, ethnic Korean Southern Baptist missionaries now number some 350 — more than 5 percent of the total force and the largest non-Anglo group represented among IMB personnel. Hundreds more have begun the missionary application process or have committed themselves to go when support funds become available.

“They go to pour out their lives,” says IMB President Jerry Rankin. “You don’t have to talk with them about lifestyle and sacrifice and risk. When they come down the aisle to make a commitment to missions, they fully expect you to put a passport and an airline ticket in their hands to leave the next day. That’s the kind of passion and devotion they have.”

The South Korea-based Foreign Mission Board of the Korea Baptist Convention fields another 600-plus missionaries. Overall, Korean Protestant missionaries of various denominations total more than 17,000 worldwide, according to 2007 figures, second only to Americans in total number of mission workers.

More than 100 of the 800-plus congregations in the Council of Korean Southern Baptist Churches have sent volunteers on short-term international mission trips. A growing number of Korean churches have committed themselves to strategic partnerships with the IMB to reach unreached people groups. More than 20 new partnerships were launched earlier this year at the first Korean Baptist World Missions Conference, attended by about 1,200 people.

“They caught the vision for people-group strategy by giving priority to the unevangelized rather than just starting Korean churches,” says Rankin, who helped coordinate the event with Korean Baptist leader David Gill. “We continue to put before them the lostness of the world and the responsibility of the local church to take ownership for calling out missionaries.”

Judging from the commitment of servants like Timothy and John, Koreans are taking ownership.

Names in quotation marks have been changed.

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Korean-Americans interested in learning how  you can be involved in  global missions, contact Gihwang Shing, missional church strategist for Korean mobilization, at (800) 999-3113 ext. 1495.