I am a product of American evangelicalism. Much of what I believe, know and try to live out arises out of my involvement and development in the North American evangelical subculture. I grew up and found a personal faith in the context of a Korean immigrant church that tried to balance the best of the Korean homeland with the best of the “American” version of the Christian faith. I am steeped in the American education system—through elementary, secondary and higher education and the evangelical expressions within the educational system, such as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and North Park University. I have planted and pastored evangelical churches and have been and am currently a part of numerous evangelical small groups, networks, organizations and denominations. I currently teach at an evangelical seminary in training up future evangelical leaders. In many ways, evangelical Christianity defines my identity and status in American society.

Yet I am confronted with the reality of feeling marginalized in the context of my own faith tradition—that as immersed as I am in evangelicalism, I am oftentimes still seen as an outsider. In my journey as a neophyte believer, a youth pastor, a campus ministry participant, an emerging leader, a church planter, a local church pastor and a seminary professor, I have increased in my sense of frustration with the cultural captivity of the church. I grow weary of seeing Western, white expressions of the Christian faith being lifted up while failing to see nonwhite expressions of faith represented in meaningful ways in American evangelicalism. But as someone who loves the body of Christ, I long to see what immeasurably more God is able to do in the North American evangelical church.

The Next Evangelicalism Is Here  

In the early 1990s I left my hometown in Maryland to begin seminary studies in New England. In preparing to move to the Boston area, my home church in Maryland took the time to pray that I would not lose my faith and spiritual passion in a region of the country that was perceived as spiritually dead. Every story that I heard or concern that was raised seemed to assume that the city of Boston represented the worst of a post-Christian region, and that secular humanism had completely overtaken that city.

But when I arrived in Boston I found a very different scenario. I found that Christianity was not only alive in Boston, it was flourishing. “From 2000 to 2005, the evangelical church grew in 28 states and declined in 22 states. . . . Massachusetts [was one of the five states that] had the greatest attendance percentage increase.”¹⁰ In 1970, the city of Boston was home to about 200 churches. Thirty years later, there were 412 churches. The net gain in the number of churches was in the growth of the number of churches in the ethnic and immigrant communities. “Since the first churches were started in the 1960s, more than 100 Spanish language congregations have been started in Boston. Beginning in 1969 the Haitian Christians began planting churches. More than 50 Haitian churches now serve the large Haitian population in greater Boston.”¹¹ While only a handful of churches in 1970 held services in a language other than English, thirty years later, more than half of those churches held services in a language other than English.