Korean Pastor Emeritus, Who Walked 3,000 Miles So Far, Remembers Decades of Church Planting

Dr. Paul Kim holding a sign that says, "I've walked 3000 miles!"

When longtime New England Baptist Pastor Paul K. S. Kim laces up his sneakers and leaves home on any given day, his thoughts and prayers turn to everything that has happened in the fifty years since he received God’s “Macedonian call” to a life of church-planting. At 75, he also looks hopefully to the future with a renewed stamina that comes from walking some 1,300 miles a year.

Kim’s thoughts and prayers turn to the forty churches in the United States, South Korea, Japan, Central Asia, East Asia, and Russia that he and his wife, Rebekah, started worldwide. Fifteen of those churches continue including in Washington. DC, and Fairbanks, Alaska.

The second church plant, Antioch Baptist Church, Cambridge, MA, their website unabashedly says, follows the example of another church planter named Paul, the first-century missionary-apostle who cofounded with Barnabas the church at Antioch, where Christ-followers were first called “Christians” (Acts 11: 19 ff.).

The Kims planted the Boston-area congregation to reach university students and young professionals a decade after they had launched Berkland Baptist Church, in Berkeley and Oakland, CA, forty-two years ago this month, on March 1, 1981.

Their lifelong commitment to church planting started when Rebekah Kim made a vow to become a missionary to China when she was a junior at Seoul National University. Later she received a Master of Divinity from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (now Gateway Seminary, Ontario, CA) and a Doctor of Ministry from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA).

Dr. Rebekah Kim, Dr. Paul Kim, and their daughter Pauline Han at the 15th Bereshith-Amen Scripture Institute Conference

For nearly thirty years, she has served as a chaplain at Harvard University. She also teaches BSI (Bereshith-Amen Scripture Institute) Hebrew and Greek languages seminars, the fifteenth iteration of which was held February 24-26, 2023, in Plymouth, MA.

A native of Daegu, South Korea, Paul Kim lived in Hawaii and volunteered for the US Army from 1967 to 1969. He committed his life to Jesus Christ in August 1968 when a missionary shared the Gospel with him. Kim graduated with a political science degree from the University of Hawaii, Hilo in 1973.

He then moved to Texas and received what he calls a “Macedonian call” (see Acts 16:9) to a life of missionary service. He graduated with Master of Divinity and Master of Religious Education degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. Today he represents the BCNE as a trustee of the seminary. In 1976 the late SBC president W. A. Criswell, then pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas, ordained Kim. In 2000, he received a Doctor of Ministry from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (now Gateway Seminary).  

Kim represented the BCNE as a trustee of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board (1996-2006) and as an Asian-American Relations Consultant to the denomination’s Executive Committee. He was the BCNE’s board president (2006-08.) Since 2020 he has been the National Chaplain for the Korean War Veterans Association.

Dr. Kim gathered with BCNE Asian pastors from Greater Boston

He continues to generously support BCNE ministries and mentor pastors and leaders including Duc Pham, who planted a Vietnamese Baptist church in Quincy, MA, the first Vietnamese church to affiliate with the BCNE.

BCNE Executive Director Terry Dorsett commented, “A hallmark of Dr. Paul Kim’s ministry has been mentoring younger pastors and leaders. His team approach has allowed him to multiply his leadership exponentially. Even though he is retired from his full-time position at Antioch Baptist Church, he has not retired from full-time ministry. We are grateful for his faithful leadership.”

Kim owns eight pair of sneakers and walks about 1,300 miles a year. Following a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery in 1997, he decided to walk every day for health reasons. As a US Army veteran, he later accepted an invitation from the American Legion post where he is the chaplain to join their “100 Miles for Hope” walk. Within a month, Kim completed that distance, so he decided to keep walking.

“A chaplain’s role in the military is to build morale,” he told the American Legion in 2022. “I want to encourage other veterans. . . . That is why I keep walking . . . . It is by the grace of God that I am alive today and able to continue to do His work”.

Kim has logged 3,000 miles since August 2020 on his way to completing a personal challenge of walking 5,000 miles by Christmas 2024. The discipline gives him health and energy, as well as weight loss and improved sleep. He demurs when compared to Forrest Gump, the fictional movie icon, but his commitment to walking is justly deserved.

Kim walks around Harvard University and MIT in Cambridge, numerous historical sites in Boston, and through the famed Mount Auburn Cemetery, the final resting place of notables that include poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and US Senators Henry Cabot Lodge and Charles Sumner.

Some days Paul Kim even walks by the spot in the iconic cemetery where he and his wife plan to be buried.

 

A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor.

Dan Nicholas

A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor

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