Walter Kim currently serves as the president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and is on Christianity Today’s board of trustees, but he has been leaning on Christianity Today long before his current role as an evangelical leader.

“Christianity Today has been a faithful companion in the different seasons of my life. As I discovered that not only was God concerned about the transformation of my heart, but he was capturing my mind, CT played a role in the curiosity that was developing.”

Our understanding of our faith often begins with a realization, an experience, he says, and then we start to want to know more. After this experience, we crave education as we lean into God’s work in our lives. Christianity Today serves as one of the instruments of education helping Christians in all the nooks and crannies of the global church to understand living faithfully.

Kim describes his journey in three phases: first as a young Christian new to the faith looking for more answers, second as a pastor, and third as an evangelical leader at the NAE.

Growing up in an immigrant household, Kim attended church but did not feel a strong connection to the faith. In high school he began to see the transformational work of God in his life.

“I had planned on being a doctor. That was my parents’ plan for me, having immigrated to this country to give me these opportunities,” he said. “When I thought about what it meant for me to live out my faith vocationally, I had limited categories for my imagination. When I got to college, I had the opportunity to see friends come to Christ and I started engaging in campus ministry. This is when I began deeply sensing that God was calling me into the vocation of ministry.”

He describes this time in his life as “deeply morally transformational, very emotional, very restorative and renewing in terms of my emotional life.” He wanted something to help guide his growing sense of transformation, so he turned toward a theological education.

At seminary and later as a pastor, Walter Kim saw Christianity Today as a valuable resource to not only help his teaching but also see what topics the church was talking about, learn how other people were addressing current events, and even empathize with how other pastors were dealing with burnout.
“If I was in a season of exhaustion, I would run across an article of a pastor sharing with great candor his or her own journey of burnout or recovery. There was a deep moment of companionship through the pages that would unfold,” he said.

He specifically mentioned Christianity Today’s recent CT Pastors issue, Rediscover Wonder, as an addition to his CT rolodex. He said the issue was “an invitation to pay attention to the God who wants passion, but wants passion that can endure and that would be sensitive to the different seasons of life.”

As a young pastor, Kim had seen people in ministry pour out everything they have. This was inspiring, but as Kim grew in his ministry, he also saw that pouring everything out at once can lead to an unsustainable attitude toward ministry. Rediscover Wonder is a welcome reminder that ministry is a marathon, not a sprint.

As Kim served on the board of the NAE, and then as its president, Christianity Today has continued to be a companion to his work.

More specifically, Kim sees The One Kingdom Campaign as something that enhances Christianity Today’s ability to connect and inform the church. One person cannot know all of the various things that impact the church, but having a resource like Christianity Today connects the global church at one’s fingertips.

“The house of God has so many rooms, and I don’t always know what’s going on down that hallway or in that closet or in the den downstairs, and I could rely on CT to give me an inside peek as to what’s going on, to these different places of God moving.”

Kim’s position as NAE president allows him a great vantage on an inflection point he recognizes in the church, specifically in the United States. “Christianity can no longer be assumed,” Kim says.

“People have lamented the loss of the place of the church and its influence in our society. I view this as the greatest missionary opportunity that the church in America has ever had because now it’s a missionary opportunity that’s right at our doorstep, that’s in our neighborhoods, that is in our public schools. That is a profound opportunity.”

He continues, “Rather than viewing ourselves as the embattled, marginalized community of Christians trying to eke out a space in an increasingly pluralistic and post-Christian society, we ought to look at this and say we have an opportunity for God’s reviving spirit to bring fresh vitality.”

Christianity Today has a unique opportunity to remind the global church of God’s transformative work in the world. Whether it is a story about how communities are facing the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, what a new seminary president in Lebanon has to say about conflict within the church, or personal testimonies of how God is working in individuals’ lives, CT shares stories that give a glimpse of the kingdom around the world. These stories can connect people in all seasons of life with all sorts of questions with other Christians asking the same sort of questions.

Kim said, “Christianity Today, and The One Kingdom Campaign, postures itself as not recovering the embattled faith, but re-enchanting this beautiful vision of what it means that Jesus is the good news of the world in a comprehensive way that engages personal transformation, but also the transformation of our neighborhood and communities.”

Mia Staub is editorial project manager, online at Christianity Today