Kim Dong-myung (pastor)

Life

Kim was born in Cheolsan, North Pyongan Province, the third son in a pastor's family. He is reported to have graduated from a technical college in Kobe, Japan, and from the College of Engineering at Seoul National University. In 1948 he went to the United States to study. That same year Ahn Ei-sook, who had been imprisoned for her opposition to Shinto shrine worship, also went to the United States, and the two were married there. After their marriage they traveled to churches across the United States to preach. Kim graduated from a Southern Baptist seminary in Texas. Reliable sources for his exact years of birth and death are lacking. He should not be confused with the poet Kim Dong-myung, who was active during the same period.

Ministry and Accomplishments

• Founding Korean Baptist churches: In 1957 the Southern Baptist Convention appointed him its first home missionary to Koreans. That same year he founded the Korean Baptist Church of Los Angeles, where he served as senior pastor for more than thirty years before retiring.
• Care for international students: While he was in the United States, his church and home came to be known as the "Dong-myung Restaurant," because he and his wife, Ahn Ei-sook, fed and cared for lonely Korean students living far from home.
• Denominational service: The Southern Baptist Convention recognized him as a leading Korean pastor. He served as vice president of the California Southern Baptist Convention from 1964 to 1965 and as vice president of the national Southern Baptist Convention from 1981 to 1982. In 1982 he became the first president of the Council of Korean Southern Baptist Churches in America.
• Ministry after retirement: In 1989 he was called as the second senior pastor of Buckland Baptist Church in Palo Alto (now Saenuri Church). In the mid-1990s, in his seventies, he reportedly returned to Korea and founded Saenuri Baptist Church in the Daedeok Research Complex in Daejeon.

Christian news outlets report that he founded a total of twenty-five churches in South America, Korea, and the United States.

Influence on the Korean Church

Kim is regarded as a pioneer in establishing Korean immigrant churches within the Southern Baptist Convention. The Korean Baptist Church of Los Angeles, which he founded, is one of the earliest Korean churches in the United States. His role as the first Korean pastor to take part in the leadership of an American denomination and his organization of a convention of Korean churches laid the groundwork for the Korean Baptist pastors who followed him. His support for the testimony meetings and writing ministry of his wife, Ahn Ei-sook, is also noted. Ahn Ei-sook published works including If I Perish.

Assessment

Most records about him appear in memorial articles in church newspapers or in writings about his wife, Ahn Ei-sook. As a result, they focus chiefly on praise for his church planting and service. Korean American media wrote that throughout his life he lived as "one indebted to the grace of God" and devoted himself to a ministry of embracing believers who had gone astray. No published criticism of him has been identified. However, basic facts such as his years of birth and death, his education, and the number of churches he founded rest on reports in the Christian press and require further verification.