In 2026, the GC Podcast is shifting to a new format with two miniseries released throughout the year rather than monthly episodes. This change is going to allow us to go deeper into meaningful conversations that support our shared journey of Kingdom Living.

In the first half of the year, we’re excited to launch the series with Reverend Dr. Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and the keynote speaker for the 2026 Denominational Celebration. In this series, Dr. Kim joins me to explore what it means to live as citizens of God’s kingdom in today’s world, faithful to Christ, formed in community, and engaged in mission. So, stay tuned for this rich and timely series.

Cara: Hello folks, and welcome to today’s episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to best ministry practices and your GCI context. I’m your host, Cara Garrity, and today we are joined again by Reverend Dr. Walter Kim for our third mini episode of our miniseries on Kingdom Living.

Today we’re going to be exploring the missional nature of Kingdom Living. So, Walter, thank you so much for joining us again today.

[00:01:19] Walter: Oh, what a delight.

[00:01:22] Cara: For this missional episode, we’re going to be exploring this idea of seeing our neighbors and inviting them to follow. And developing this gospel fluency to demonstrate and proclaim the kingdom both in word and in deed.

And so, I want us to start off with what does it mean to be missional and what makes it essential to Kingdom Living?

[00:01:46] Walter: Yeah, this this notion of being missional is probably something that is really scary when we often think about how does it work out in my life that I am to proclaim Jesus to my neighbor? And sometimes the vision could be of uncomfortable conversations that we’re having while we’re telling people about their eternal destiny and having to break some really bad news only to worry if we’ve just ruined our friendship or ruined a family relationship.

And there is some measure of truth that to be missional means to have a proclamation of Jesus. And that proclamation does contain really bad news about the human state.

But when we think about the mission of God, when we think about what God is at work at in the world, his mission, yes, includes sending his Son to be the Savior of fallen humans.

But he also cares for the animals. He also has created the sun, moon, and stars. He is also holding the universe together. And even for those who don’t know Jesus as their personal Savior, he too has a love of nations and communities because they have been created in his image.

So, when I think about where we are in the missional episode, I really appreciate that there has been a progression here, relational, participatory, now missional, because I think we now have a bigger context for what we mean by missional. To be missional is to join God’s work, God’s mission in the cosmos that is incredibly and essentially relational.

And once we do it this way, once we understand it this way, then we begin to realize that this mission, while daunting at one level, is the most natural extension of just being a Christian, to bear the fruit of the Spirit, to seek in loving our neighbors, and even how we go about our jobs in the world. This is part of the mission.

Humans were created in order to care and tend the garden, like that was their mission, Adam and Eve. And so, when I think about our mission, it includes this much more expansive vision of participating and joining in all the things that God does that is highly relational, predicated on love, and of course includes the proclamation of Jesus as the Savior of the world. But it includes it. It not only includes it but includes many other things. And to make mission exclusively in this narrow way, a proclamation of salvation is actually to do injustice to mission. It’s not really the full mission of God.

[00:05:29] Cara: Yeah, I think that gives us a lot to chew on, and this, an invitation to expand our understanding of what the mission of God is and what it means to be missional and to participate in that. Yeah, that gives us a lot. I think that typically when we do think about being missional — I think a lot about my experiences — it has been specific to this idea of just or maybe limited to the act of sharing a gospel-kind of presentation or proclamation and not really expansive of these other elements that you’ve shared.

And I’m just wondering: can you speak a little bit more as to what it looks like to expand our vision of our understanding of what God’s mission is and what it looks like for us to consider all of these other aspects of his mission when we think about being missional?

[00:06:57] Walter: Yeah, so I think about the book of Isaiah. So much of how the New Testament understands the good news of Jesus Christ is through the understanding that was set up in Isaiah for which Jesus was the fulfillment.

And I think of passages like Isaiah 52:7 on “how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.” All right. You would think this is about proclamation of Jesus Christ the Savior for the forgiveness of our sins. That is in there. I want to be very clear. I really do believe Jesus is the Lamb of God, the Savior of the world. We need him for forgiveness of sins and our eternal destiny rests on those types of decisions.

But if that’s all the gospel was about, you would expect Isaiah to say it this way, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news” of the forgiveness offered to us through a coming Savior.

But what does the passage actually say?

How beautiful in the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns. Listen, your watchmen lift up your voices together. They shout for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes and burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations and all the ends of the earth will see it, the salvation of our God. [Isaiah 52:7–10]

So, this good news was to bring hope to a people who, as prophesied here, would be coming out of exile, whose city was ruined. So, the good news would be helping to put back a city, put back the fabrics of society. Something that watchmen waiting would long to see. Elsewhere in Isaiah describes it, that God will one day restore the temple and all nations will be drawn to it, and swords will be turned into plow shares and nation will not war against nation.

Like, this is the good news of Jesus transforming all things. And it’s a participation in that good news. I think of Luke 4 and Jesus introducing himself to the world in Nazareth and cites Isaiah 61: the Spirit of God, the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news.

And again, if we reduce good news narrowly just to the forgiveness of sins, then we would expect Jesus to say this because this is his inaugural address, like he’s introducing himself to the world in this section of the Gospel of Luke. So, you would want to get it right. And in quoting Isaiah, he makes it clear that the gospel includes the forgiveness of sins.

But it goes so much beyond that. Proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the oppressed, sight for the blind. Liberty for the oppressed. Freedom for the prisoner earlier, and then liberty for the oppressed, the year of the Lord’s favor.

And the quotation, the year of the Lord’s favor, refers back to the practice of jubilee, the Lord’s favor in the release of slaves, in the restoration of lands. So, like, this is a gospel that’s huge!

To be a part of the mission of God is to be a part of all of this. It includes proclamation, but it involves so much more. And when the church has done this, it has actually made the proclamation so much more compelling.

Why did early people, why did people become Christians in the early centuries? It’s because of their witness. The gospel often didn’t make sense to people because a proclamation, first of all, of one God was an unusual thing in the Roman Empire.

And that one God would be manifest through Jesus who won a victory through his death on the cross of crucifixion. This is only for criminals. It was foolishness to the Greek. It was a shame to the Jews. This is not a market-tested message. This is not something that anyone that works in marketing would ever conceive. It had all sorts of built-in obstacles, built-in guarantees for failure.

Why did it succeed? Because Christians met the widow, the orphan, the poor. They lived such transformational lives that it made the gospel not just plausible, it made it utterly compelling. And so, the proclamation of Jesus in Word was made not just plausible, but compelling by the demonstration of the gospel in deeds.

And the two, in the best moments of the church’s life, have always come together, because the gospel has always held things together. Jesus holds all of this together.

[00:12:42] Cara: Yes. And I think that you mentioned of, Jesus making all things new and I think about what does that mean when we talk about Kingdom Living?

And this reality of Jesus making all things new. It’s the living into and out of that and not just this proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, right? So, we’re reflecting what life in the kingdom is like, what life is like when all things are made new. And so, we see this kind of bigger picture that you’re talking about of this jubilee of this newness of things, that when they’re transformed as they’re brought into this redemption and brought into the beauty of how they’ve always been created to be.

And so, yeah, I think that then connects to what you’re saying about word and deed, that we’re not just talking about what the kingdom is, but we’re actually living these moments of the kingdom, these pieces of the kingdom right here and right now. And I know we use this phrase a lot, but “now, but not yet.” But we’re still … those deeds are reflecting what the kingdom is like in these maybe short and fragmented moments. But I think that’s, like you said, compelling, a really compelling thing when those words and deeds come together, because we’re not just saying, hey, this far off kingdom, yada yada, but it’s like this far off kingdom that for the last 20 minutes we experienced a little bit of a taste of. And that’s just a taste. And it was good. It was good.

[00:14:49] Walter: Yeah.

[00:14:52] Cara: Yeah.

[00:14:52] Walter: Cara, I want to swing back to something that we talked about in the last episode about consumerism.

[00:14:58] Cara: Yes.

[00:15:01] Walter: If we have a reduced gospel, a gospel that simply is about the forgiveness of sins, and again, hear me really clearly: forgiveness of sins is non-negotiable; that is a part of the gospel.

But my concern is that it feeds into the consumerist vision of the Christian life. The gospel is about meeting my need for the forgiveness of sins. So, once my sins are forgiven, I’m good. Why would I need anything else? Like, I have what I need. And so, I can move on.

So, a gospel that ironically focuses so much on the forgiveness of sins can oftentimes just leave people in their sins. In other words, it’s an impoverished vision of all that is meant by the good news of Jesus Christ. The proclamation of peace is a proclamation of personal wholeness, of social wholeness, of communal wholeness, of cosmic wholeness. It’s the whole shebang. It’s the kind of thing that would give hope to an exiled, broken people, that God could put back a city.

Like, cities require infrastructure. They require people getting together. They require all sorts of social work and vocations. If we have a gospel that stops with forgiveness of sins, then we have a gospel that I think will feed into consumerist mentalities.

No wonder we would have a hard time to convince people. Oh, you’ve been forgiven your sins. Now you have to do these other things. Wait a second, that’s still feels like a bait and switch to me. I thought the gospel is about the forgiveness of sins.

What isn’t a bait and switch is if you are given a vision of the gospel that in the forgiveness of sins, you now are invited into a family. And that family comes with all sorts of joys, but also responsibilities. And you’ve been given a new mission and vocation and that comes with all sorts of joys: an overwhelming joy that even any challenges in this world will pale, will just feel like a momentary light affliction, compared to this eternal weight of glory. If that’s the case, then I think we are giving people, right from their birth, the DNA for their growth.

So, do we have a gospel that gives people in their birth DNA, all that is necessary for their growth DNA? And I would say this is where it becomes essential that we have a robust and full vision of the mission of God.

To be missional is an invitation to the breadth and beauty of all that God would have for us to understand in the good news of Jesus Christ. And that means that in the proclamation in word and deed, in the demonstration of the gospel, in the breadth of all the ways that the Church is at service, this is not just to convince people to accept Jesus.

It’s not just like apologetic. It’s not just a bait and switch. This is what they are actually accepting. You’re accepting not just the forgiveness of sins, you’re accepting the entrance into new life, new family, new vocation, new purpose. It’s an entry into all of this. And if that’s the case, then it makes sense to me that Jesus would say, consider the cost. Consider the cost.

Not many will find a narrow way. That doesn’t make sense. If it’s just about a consumerist, you get the forgiveness of your sins. Who wouldn’t want that, right? That’s a broad way.

But the way that requires a crucifixion, not just a crucifixion of Jesus, but you have to take up your own cross and follow him. Oh whoa. Wait a second. I didn’t sign up for that. I just signed up for the forgiveness of my sins so that I could get to heaven.

And I’m speaking a little bit of a caricature, but enough of truth, I think, in this, that we have to ask the question, are we consumerists in the church because we have been feeding them with a consumerist gospel.

[00:19:49] Cara: Yeah. And I think that’s a really helpful question for us to wrestle with. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think about you saying what … this idea of why Jesus invites us to count the cost and all of the different dimensions of what we’re being invited into. Not just the forgiveness of sins, but being invited into a new family, a new life, a new way of being and moving through the world.

And so, I’m wondering two different pieces here. What does it mean to see and invite our neighbors? And then, who are — this kind of age-old question, right— who are our neighbors?

[00:20:43] Walter: Yeah. This is where the church unleashed into the neighborhoods becomes essential. I think we need to have more church members on school boards, volunteering not simply inside the walls of the church or at a ministry of the church, but volunteering in community events because it’s in that normal way of life that Christians are showing up that all of a sudden provides an opportunity for witness.

And not witness from the outside. You’re not witnessing throwing gospel grenades into people’s lives. You’re witnessing with people who are just living life together.

I think of Katrina, for instance. There was after the hurricane Katrina, and New Orleans and other cities were being put together. I know in a number of campus ministries, having worked in campus ministry before, Christians were using their spring breaks and other opportunities to go down to help rebuild the city.

And there were non-Christian students who were eager to join as well because they didn’t have a volunteer structure in ways that Christians had. Like, we have the Salvation Army. We have all sorts of ministries that are created to do this kind of work. So, for Christians to be able to volunteer, that’s like second nature.

We spend our spring breaks and summers and holidays volunteering in this way. Churches know how to do this. And so, some of these non-Christian students were realizing they didn’t have what Christians had, but they wanted to do some good in the world. And so, there were a number of campus ministries that said, you know what, we’re going to let these non-Christians come with us and join our teams as partners.

Of course, they would have to attend the morning devotionals. But there was a recognition that we’re just going to do this together and we’re going to join together. That became some of the most powerful evangelistic moments because this was being done in partnership, participatory, even with non-Christians.

These non-Christians weren’t recipients of ministry. They were joined together in doing stuff. And it’s in sharing that life where, up close, non-Christian students were able to see, wow! So, when you read the Bible and when you pray, this is what you’re praying about, you’re praying for the rebuilding of cities, you’re sharing personal prayer requests that are so vulnerable. I’ve never done this with anyone else. My friends?

How else are non-Christians going to see a compelling vision of life if they’re not exposed in some of these intimate ways, which we want them to come into the hostile territory of the four walls of the church in order to begin to experience that.

And of course we should still invite people to church. Absolutely. But I think there are some really creative ways that we could be sending out Christians two by two to be a part of civic life in our communities. And in that context, partnering with people, just rubbing shoulders with people to demonstrate that there is something really compelling in how Christians navigate this world. And maybe even to do so in a manner that demonstrates what Christian life could look like outside the walls of the church.

There was a refugee community in Boston when I was a pastor in Boston. And one of the things that we did with a number of these refugees was host soccer events where we would just play soccer together. And again, that becomes a very compelling thing to just share life together.

And in the course of sharing life, questions get raised, but they get raised in the most natural forms of living: playing soccer, sitting at a picnic, chasing your kids. This is just natural ways of life where you hear each other’s stories and share the story of Jesus.

[00:25:20] Cara: Yeah. I really appreciate that, what you shared about participating in church life being let’s be neighbors to one another and be active neighbors to one another. And that’s the context in which then we get to see and share and invite rather than only having a unidirectional way of inviting neighbors into the four walls of the church, but we’re going to actually live life with one another.

And I really love your example of also serving with and alongside one another, not just this kind of, a posture of, I have something you don’t, let me make you the recipient of my volunteering or a charity or whatever, but let’s do it together and then you can experience what this Christian community and living is all about.

And then, as you experience that, maybe there is something transformative, something compelling about that, that you experience, that you want to ask more questions about, and then that kind of naturally grows from there. And so, that makes me think of, you join the rhythms of your neighborhood or you build rhythms of doing things alongside one another, whatever that looks like.

And so, I’m thinking about what it means for us to develop these missional practices, these missional ways of being and moving through the world. What are some of those rhythms that we might be able to develop to support the growth of our missional way of being?

[00:27:14] Walter: I think storytelling is very powerful, and just to give a very practical to-do, think about the testimonies that we highlight in our church services. Oftentimes, what are the ministry moments? What are the mission moments?

We’re often highlighting personal victory, like, how I overcame an addiction or whatever, or we’re highlighting a ministry like this is how small groups changed my life. You should get involved. This is how being part of a youth group has changed my life. You should send your kid to youth group. And even things that we highlight of mission, we’re often highlighting in ways of this is what our church is doing out there in the community for the community.

That’s not quite the same as having people share life and talk about, this is what I’m doing as I’m serving on our parent teacher association in the local school. This is what I’m doing just as I’m volunteering at the fire station. This is what I’m doing, not in my involvement in a church ministry. But this is what I’m doing in my involvement in the Rotary Club or some other.

That kind of storytelling begins to normalize and dignify the mission of the church of everyday Christians, and for pastors preaching, what are your sermon illustrations? What are the things that you highlight as really compelling pictures of the nature of the good news of Jesus Christ?

Are we telling stories of what teachers are doing or what a sanitation worker might be doing in following Jesus in caring for or talking to others? I think these become really incredible opportunities to begin to normalize and dignify what we mean by mission. So, that’s the question I would ask. In the stories that you’re telling, in the things that you’re advertising, in the volunteer service that you’re highlighting, what are you normalizing and dignifying as the mission of God in this world?

I would love for it for people to be praying. Yes, pray for your missionaries. Pray for your small groups. Pray for your children’s ministry. Pray for all the things that we do pray for, but spend time praying for people who are volunteering, again, at schools. Pray for first responders and for those who are just part of life in caring for our communities. Like, what we pray for, what we tell stories about, what we illustrate in our sermons, they normalize and dignify something. And let’s be intentional about what we’re normalizing and dignifying.

[00:30:21] Cara: Thank you. That’s really helpful and thoughtful. And so, I invite listeners to really just sit with the insights that Walter has shared with us this episode, and really invite you to, with one another, allow yourself to expand your concept, your vision of mission, your understanding of what it means to participate in mission, to live into mission, and what that means and how that reflects Kingdom Living.

So, as we close out this episode, Walter, if you would pray for our people, for our neighbors, for our growth in being neighborly and being missional in our living, I would really appreciate that.

[00:31:17] Walter: Yeah. Let’s pray.

God of creation, you who set in motion, spoke the universe into existence, you who continue your work in holding all things together, you who sent your Son, the firstborn of creation and the firstborn of the church, you who will one day in the already and not yet that we’ve been talking about, one day will create a new heavens and a new earth, we want to join you in this mission. We want to join you in the fullness of the gospel that brings us personal peace and the forgiveness of our sins, relational peace in the invitation to a new family, missional life that includes meaningful vocation and service. And even in a world that will not all receive Jesus, we recognize that you are at work seeking to bless. And so, we pray to be a part of that for the glory of Jesus Christ. And in his name, we pray. Amen.

[00:32:29] Cara: Amen. Thank you, folks, and until next time, keep on living and sharing the gospel. Thanks for listening. We would love to hear from you. Email us@infoatgci.org and we hope to see you at the 2026 denominational celebration in Texas from July 23–26, 2026. Visit us at gci.org/dc26 for more information and to register.