These changes are not only occurring globally, they are also occurring locally. Many sociologists predict that by the year 2050, the majority of U.S. residents will be nonwhite.⁷ A U.S. Census Report in 2008 revealed that “minorities, now roughly one-third of the U.S. population, are expected to become the majority in 2042, with the nation projected to be 54 percent minority in 2050. By 2023, minorities will comprise more than half of all children.”⁸ The election of Barack Obama as the United States’ first ethnic-minority president reveals the changing face of America. The public face of America is no longer a white male. Meanwhile, the trend of a nonwhite majority America will hit the churches faster than it will hit the general population. This trend is due in large part to the sustaining of American Christianity by newly arrived immigrants who bring their Christian faith with them. As sociologist R. Stephen Warner points out, “What many people have not heard . . . and need to hear is that the great majority of the newcomers are Christians. . . . This means that the new immigrants represent not the de-Christianization of American society but the de-Europeanization of American Christianity.”⁹ Contrary to popular opinion, the church is not dying in America; it is alive and well, but it is alive and well among the immigrant and ethnic minority communities and not among the majority white churches in the United States.

Shaped by Evangelicalism

My own story in coming to write this book is a result of my ongoing journey as a fellow pilgrim with other North American evangelicals. I was born in Seoul, South Korea—a nation bursting with spiritual renewal and church growth. It is a nation rapidly emerging as one of the epicenters for global evangelicalism. My family immigrated to the United

States when I was six years old and encountered numerous difficulties as an immigrant family. There was the drop in social status and the economic struggles that almost all immigrant families face. I remember the shame of being on food stamps and the indignity of being laughed at by classmates because I was on the free school lunch program. For a significant portion of my childhood, we lived in a rough inner-city neighborhood in Baltimore. The neighborhood comprised poor whites, poor blacks and recent Korean immigrants. Racial misunderstanding and incidents were commonplace.

Coupled with (and maybe as a result of) the trauma of immigration were the numerous struggles and tensions within my family. The main source of stress came from my father’s abandonment of our family when I was in elementary school. Now saddled with the responsibility of caring for four children in a foreign land, my mom’s limited English curtailed her employment options. She ended up working two different jobs at the same time: a cook in an inner-city carryout during the day and a night shift nurse’s aide in a senior citizens’ home. She would work twenty hours a day, six days a week. My father’s departure from our family meant that I lost both father and mother in one shot. In the midst of all these difficulties, it was an authentic Christian community that provided support and served as a lifesaver to our family. It was the church that gave our family stability and direction. It was an evangelical faith that transformed me from bitterness and defeat to an unwavering hope. I shudder to think who I would be without my evangelical faith.