Where are you from? That’s a hard question for me to answer. My parents were from Korea. I was born in New York City but spent a significant portion of childhood in small-town, western Pennsylvania. Adulthood brought many more transitions from the West to the Midwest and then the East Coast. Where I am from is shaped by assorted people and sundry places.

Where is Christianity from? While the cradle of Christianity is the Middle East, the Church rapidly expanded from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria and towards the ends of the earth, as commanded by Jesus (Acts 1:8). And the explosive growth of the Church wasn’t linear or centralized.

Mission receiving cities quickly became mission sending churches. Persecuted Christians from Jerusalem and believers from Cyprus and Cyrene proclaimed the gospel to both Jews and Gentiles (Acts 11:1–2). God’s Spirit soon called that fledgling multiethnic church to send Paul and Barnabas as missionaries throughout the Roman Empire (Acts 13:1–3). The geographic distribution of Paul’s epistles in a few decades reveals a diverse network of faith centers throughout the Roman Empire. And this doesn’t include missions to Africa and India by the earliest Christians.

As noted by Allen Yeh (see “Polycentric Missiology: 21st Century Mission from Everyone to Everywhere”) and other missiologists, Christianity now has many centers of influence. The Church in wealthy, industrialized countries continues to have enduring import for fulfilling the Great Commission. Yet, by God’s Spirit, many areas of the world have moved from being a mission field to a mission force.

In 1910, about 80 percent of Christians were in Europe and North America, but now the inverse is true with nearly 80 percent of all Christians distributed between Africa, Asia and Latin America, according to a recent Lausanne Movement report. Korea, the host country of the recent Lausanne Congress, is home to many of the world’s largest churches; Africa has more Christians than Europe; Pentecostalism in Latin America testifies to the blossoming of God’s kingdom.

The Church is now polycentric with many thriving nodes of influence radiating in multiple directions. Missions is from everywhere to everywhere. As our Lord Jesus proclaimed and we dramatically see, “people will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). 

Walter Kim

Walter Kim became the president of the National Association of Evangelicals in January 2020. He previously served as a pastor at Boston’s historic Park Street Church and at churches in Vancouver, Canada and Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as a campus chaplain at Yale University. He preaches, writes and engages in collaborative leadership to connect the Bible to the intellectual and cultural issues of the day. He regularly teaches in conferences and classrooms; addresses faith concerns with elected officials and public institutions; and provides theological and cultural commentary to leading news outlets. He serves on the boards of Christianity Today and World Relief and consults with a wide range of organizations. Kim received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, his M.Div. from Regent College in Vancouver, and his B.A. from Northwestern University.