The Tim Ahlman Podcast
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The Tim Ahlman Podcast
The Idolatry of Self in Western Christianity with Rev. Dr. Michael Lockwood
The episode reveals profound insights into the challenges and triumphs of faith within the Asian cultural landscape, emphasizing the need for deeper reliance on prayer and scripture. Dr. Lockwood discusses the unique context of the underground church in China, the idolatry of self in Western Christianity, and the transformative power of the gospel amidst cultural and legalistic challenges.
• Examines the prayer reliance in Western versus Asian churches
• Discusses cultural influences on Christianity in Asia
• Outlines challenges presented by legalism in Asian faith practices
• Highlights the significance of language learning for mission work
• Explores the resilience of the underground church in China
• Introduces the Mission of Christ Network's grassroots initiatives
• Encourages practical involvement and support for mission efforts
Welcome to the American Reformation podcast, tim Allman. Here I pray. The joy of Jesus is with you, the promises of your baptism. You are called a child of God, you are a part of the royal priesthood and Jesus has wonderful things in store for you today. As you take the humble posture of a learner, I get to learn today with Reverend Dr Michael Lockwood. Let me tell you just a little bit about him. He and I talked a few months ago and wanted to have him on to tell the story of what he's doing right now learning Mandarin. After a multi-decade career as a pastor in the Lutheran Church of Australia, he now has been called to the China Lutheran Seminary there in Taiwan and he's in partnership with the Mission of Christ Network and we're going to explore his call there, the history of the persecuted church in China and the need for raising up more faithful confessional Lutheran leaders to share the gospel word and sacrament in China and beyond. How are you doing, dr Lockwood? Thank you for spending time with me today.
Speaker 2:I'm doing very well. Thank you for welcoming me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a joy. Yeah, it's a privilege, it's an honor. So, as you look, you've spent most of your career in Australia, Papua New Guinea and now in China. I'm going to ask this question a little bit different as you look at Asia, Southeast Asia, et cetera how are you praying for reformation? We're the church of the reformation, right? How are you praying for reformation as you look at the Christian church in your communities?
Speaker 2:If I look at the Western world, I'm praying that we would get back to being a church of the Word of God and prayer. So the Western world, the basic idol of the western world is the human self. Right, we don't worship gods of wood and stone, we just worship ourselves, we trust in ourselves, we live for ourselves, etc. And that's true of the western churches. In the western world as well, we share the idolatry of the surrounding culture and um. We often say that we are people of the word and say that we're people of prayer, but our behavior shows something else. For example, in the Western world, if we have a problem, what do we do? We have a meeting, of course, and we'll pray for maybe two minutes and then we'll plan and strategize for three hours, and that tells us where our faith is. It's actually in the planning and strategizing, not in the God, who hears and answers prayer. When I go and teach in a place like Nepal, if they face a problem, they'll pray all night. Now, at the end of that, they might come together and say, okay, did God reveal anything to us about what we should do? But the focus is on the prayer, not on the planning and the strategizing. And it's the same with the Word. I think in the Lutheran Church we're proud of being a church of the Word because we have this great doctrinal inheritance. But what that actually says is that our forebears were people of the Word and we're kind of living off the capital that they've built up for us. And you know, I've been a Lutheran pastor pretty much my whole adult life, spent most of that in the Western world, and I have several times asked from the pulpit, you know, put up your hand if you can honestly say that you've read the Bible from cover to cover at least once in your life. And it's scary how few hands go up right, so there's only one book that's ever come directly from God. It's the Bible. And most people on church pews have not read it, at least not all the way through. They've read snippets of it, of course. And I found the same with seminary students. You know, guys going out on vicarage, guys even going out into the ministry, never read the whole Bible. So we often we blame the culture for the problems of the church and say, oh, the culture's against us or whatever. Well, the culture's always against the church. I think the biggest problem is that we rely on ourselves instead of actually relying on the. It's always against the church, right? I think the biggest problem is that we rely on ourselves instead of actually relying on the word you know, the word of the Lord to change us, to change our hearts, to shape us, to form us, and then relying on him through prayer. So that's the Western world Going to the church in Asia.
Speaker 2:It depends so much from country to country. You really can't generalize about Asia. You know, you've got highly developed countries, you've got very poor, underdeveloped countries. You've got places where Christians can worship freely and operate freely. You've got places where the church is very much persecuted. So it's very hard to generalize. Except for this Christianity in Asia is almost always extremely legalistic, very heavy emphasis on the law and not enough emphasis on the gospel, one of the reasons, again, it's hard to generalize.
Speaker 2:But I could talk about Taiwan. So Taiwan is very much shaped by this kind of Chinese cultural heritage and the ancient culture of China is very much shaped by Confucianism. And so Confucius, I would say he was a very wise philosopher, teacher, ethicist etc. And many of the things that he taught were very good. In fact, one of my colleagues here at China Lutheran Seminary, stephen Oliver did his doctoral thesis comparing the ethical teachings of the New Testament, particularly in the book of James, with the ethical teachings of Confucius and found that they're very similar.
Speaker 2:So Confucius taught people to work hard to support their families and serve their families, to work hard to serve their communities, to be honest, to honor heaven. It's a bit vague about what's in heaven, but nevertheless taught people to honor heaven and so on. These are all good things, and you see this in Taiwan. So, for example, in Taiwan, I almost never drive a car because it's too hard to find a place to park that car. So I almost always drive a little motorbike or a pushbike and I'll usually have my phone on a phone holder so I can navigate. And I've lost track of the number of times that I've forgotten my phone and just left it on the bike while I've gone into a short shop or something, and it's always still there when I come back.
Speaker 2:So they are very honest people, but what's missing? What's missing is the gospel. So Confucius taught them to honor heaven, but he did not know the one who came from heaven. So there's no forgiveness of sins and when they fail they experience deep shame and there's nothing to take that shame away. And if you look at their religion, they worship many different gods of wood and stone. It's very transactional. So if you want a particular blessing, there's something you need to do to get that blessing. If you want to pass your exams, you go and pray at the temple to Confucius right and offer burnt incense before him, et cetera, hoping that he will then help you on your exam. If you want to get rich, you go to the Taoist temple of Khaishan and you pray to him and offer sacrifices to him, hoping that he'll make you rich in return. So it's very transactional.
Speaker 2:What tends to happen is that when people become Christian, they swap out their old gods of wood and stone for a new God, but they bring the same thinking with them, thinking that it's all about what we do to make ourselves into virtuous people and to earn the blessing of God. And they struggle to understand that in the Christian faith, that in the Christian faith, god gives us every good thing by grace and anything that we do is simply a response to what he's first done for us. That's probably the biggest problem. I think the other big problem is that Christianity in Asia tends to be shaped by the churches that have worked in Asia, tends to be shaped by the churches that have worked in Asia. So it tends to be shaped by the Roman Catholics who've worked in many countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam, but also by sort of reformed Protestants.
Speaker 2:And although reformed Protestants teach justification by faith so they definitely teach the gospel they don't tend to emphasize it the way that Lutherans do, and so what tends to happen is that they will preach the gospel to new converts. So when you first become a Christian, you'll have the gospel proclaimed to you, but then, once you're already in the church, now it's about all the things you need to do, and so you sort of graduate from Christ to Moses, right. And so I've found that when I've taught about how you know the gospel is the driving force in the whole Christian life, it's not just about our justification, it's also about our sanctification, because it's the gospel that actually changes the heart, so that we love our Lord from the heart. Christians here find that quite revolutionary.
Speaker 1:Well sure, there's nothing like it, dr Lockwood. The gospel is the most radical teaching of grace and love that's ever been dispelled upon all of humanity, all of the cosmos for that matter. It's very unusual. I heard recently and this is exciting, I think, in our American context Lutheranism and when I say Lutheranism I mean word and sacrament, gospel-saturated conversation is having a ripple effect in the wider evangelical church here in America.
Speaker 1:And I read a book recently from JD Greer. He's a megachurch, multiple congregation, southern Baptist, but he's reading a lot of Luther and in his book it's a missiological book, it's called Winning by Losing, and it's a sending book. It's about how many leaders they're sending to start new ministry. It's wonderful. Start new churches, it's great. But one of their mantras I'd love to get your take on this is the gospel is not the diving board. And this didn't make sense for me until I understood right their context, because I would have agreed with this. Why do we even have to say this? He says but the gospel is not the diving board, the gospel is the pool in which we swim and live. I'm like that's exactly right. It's all immersed in grace. This is, this is a love, this is a Christian freedom. This is the joy that comes from Jesus. This is the now invitation Our God is very invitation, the invitation to go and love our neighbor, as we've received his radical love Right. So it's the entire pool.
Speaker 1:And I don't know, maybe even in Lutheranism we can have a tendency to move toward Pharisaism or legalism around a number of different topics and we miss the freedom. This is what it appears like Luther is getting after. We miss the freedom. This is what it appears like Luther is getting after. We miss the freedom that Christ has come. It is for freedom that you have been set free. We don't use it to justify ourselves or to prove ourselves. We've died to ourselves. We no longer live. Christ lives in us, and so it's just an outgrowth. Our sanctified life is just an outgrowth of the love that's been showered upon us in our baptism, mobilizing us for the mission of God to bring love and light into a dark world. So any response to that diving board and pool analogy there, dr.
Speaker 2:Lockwood, well, I agree with what you're saying. It's not the diving board, it is the pool. It's what we as Christians swim in and all too often we sort of take the gospel for granted and fail to appreciate the full scope and dimension of it. In my doctoral thesis, one of my chapters was about self-justification and all the different strategies we use to justify ourselves. And after exploring that for a while, you can't unsee it, and I see it in myself, always having to fight this tendency to justify myself instead of actually coming clean about what a sinner I am and trusting in the grace of my God. But I see it in the people around me all the time, and Lutherans are great at it. We are masters of self-justification.
Speaker 1:Say more about that. Yeah, what do you mean?
Speaker 2:I think one of the tendencies for us as Lutherans is that we think we're justified by being right. We have this wonderful, pure doctrine. Now don't get me wrong I love Lutheran theology, I think it's fabulous. But I'm not justified simply because I've got the Book of Concord on my shelf or I've got paper sitting on my shelf, as wonderful as these treasures are, I'm justified by the Lord, jesus Christ, and so it's easy for us, as Lutherans say. Well, thank God, we're not like other people. You know, we've got our theology all sorted out, and aren't we great? That's not actually the same thing as living by the gospel.
Speaker 1:Amen.
Speaker 2:Actually getting the log out of my eye.
Speaker 1:Amen, amen, yes, and we got a little bit of a lag for those that are listening. He's crossed the world and it's close to midnight where he's at right now, so thank you for being here. It's bright and early in the morning for us here in Phoenix, arizona. So you wrote a book on Luther. Would you tell the story of writing? There's been so much literature written on Luther. What was the nature and I have not read your book, I'd love to what was the nature of your Lutheran exploration there into Luther's life? Was it a biography of sorts? Or yeah, just tell that story a bit, dr Lockwood.
Speaker 2:Well, it started as my doctoral thesis. So I did my doctorate at Concordia, st Louis, and eventually, after I completed the doctorate, I thought I made so many wonderful discoveries writing this. A wider audience needs to hear this, and so I ended up taking that and rewriting it to make it more accessible and then published it as a book through CPH. So I was writing on Luther's theology of idolatry, but I mean that's a huge topic in and of itself. In many ways the book ended up being an introduction to all of Luther's thought, because the way that Luther approaches the question of idolatry is, he says first you need to know the real thing, you need to know the true and living God and what it is that he does in human life, and once you know that, then it's easy to spot all the things that we put in his place Right. So first you've got to understand Luther's theology of the true and living God and what he does in human life, and then you can move on to what he says about idolatry. But on the basis of Luther and the scriptures I argue two main things in that book. One is that the self is always the greatest idol. Who do I really love? It's me, not necessarily in the sense that I always like myself, but in the sense that I want. I want the world to revolve around me and my desires. Yes, you know, I want what I want and I want God to give it to me. I want the world to give it to me, I want the people around me to give it to me, so it's all about me. And then, secondly, who do I want to be able to trust in? I want to be able to trust in, I want to be able to trust in me, because if I can say, well, I did it, then the glory goes to me. But if I have to say that God did it, the glory goes to him, and the sinful nature doesn't like that so much, which is why we're so intent on justifying ourselves. If I'm simply a sinner, saved totally by grace, all the glory goes to Christ, whereas if I can justify myself, then the glory goes to Christ, whereas if I can justify myself, then the glory goes to me. And so that's why self-justification dies so hard.
Speaker 2:But then the second thing I argue is that if you're not going to worship the true and living God, idolatry is not optional. It's compulsory, because God simply plays too big a role in human life to just leave him out of the picture and not put something in his place. But what you're trying to replace is the triune God and therefore you effectively have to find substitutes for Father, son and Holy Spirit, and your idolatry will look very different depending on which member of the Trinity you're trying to compensate for. So something like money is a functional substitute for the Father and his work of providence. If my wallet is fat, it will provide. I don't need the Lord to provide, but that doesn't help you in other areas of life.
Speaker 2:So in relation to the Son areas of life. So in relation to the Son, if I will not allow Christ to justify me with a righteousness that is not my own but is given to me as a gift, I will be forever compelled to try and justify myself, and then I'll turn my own righteousness into an idol that I put in the place of Christ. And then, thirdly, if I will not allow the Holy Spirit to enlighten me through His Word, then I will be forever compelled to enlighten myself and I will turn my own wisdom, or human wisdom, whatever it is that I think is wise, into an idol that I put in the place of Christ, put in the place of God's Spirit and His Word. I should have said so. It's a nutshell what I argue. I go into a lot more detail in the book. Oh, obviously, obviously.
Speaker 1:That's so cool. I'm right in the process right now hopefully in 2025, middle of, I have a sabbatical coming up taking my thesis and put it in book form, making it a little bit more readable, as you did with CPH. So wonderful, wonderful. We could go deeper into Luther and I'm sure we will talk more about Luther. But I'd love. You're learning Mandarin right now, like you're spending a whole year learning a language of which you were unfamiliar. Now you're conversant, but you're preparing to teach Lutheran theology in Mandarin. That is. That is. That's amazing and I applaud you for it and the call of Christ upon your life. Not many folks would take up another language at this. And you're not old by any stretch, but at this season of life, the older we get, a lot of times we say it's harder, harder to learn something new like this. But you are pressing the boundaries of the human mind, human potential. Praise God all for the expansion of the gospel. So what is that journey like? Just learning Mandarin, michael?
Speaker 2:where I can teach in it. I've been learning it for two years, about half time, but from now on.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be accelerating that and I'm basically doing it full time. The US State Department estimates that it takes three and a half times as long to learn Mandarin as it does to learn something like German or Spanish or French. So it's like learning German, spanish, french and then throwing into Italian as well. This is one of the most difficult languages in the world for an English speaker to learn, so it's a challenge, but it's a joyful challenge because language it opens up a culture, it opens up a big piece of the world, and there are one billion people in the world who speak Mandarin as their first language, their heart language, and just as we find Mandarin difficult, they find English very difficult, and that really is like this huge firewall that keeps the English speaking world and the Mandarin speaking world separate, and so you learn a language like Mandarin. It just opens up this whole new world and it is an enormous world.
Speaker 1:Well, say more about the enormity of that world, because I think most of us here in the West like we. While there's so much political you know jargon that goes on about China and economics and all of that, what are you learning about that culture, especially in learning Mandarin? That should shape our view of China and Asia in general. And I mean, let me just bring it here. I mean we know that the underground church in China is exploding. I don't exactly know in the West here what that looks like, but maybe use this as you're opening up that brand new world, learning Mandarin. Use it as a bridge to talk about mission, what the Lord is doing to elevate his name through the local church in a different form than we're often aware of here in the US.
Speaker 2:Well, I think one of the Luther was a great translator. He translated the Scriptures into German and he was a very good translator and that's always been a feature of Lutheran mission that one of the first things we do is we translate the Scriptures Whenever we're going to a new unreached people group and work very hard at learning their language. Whenever you try and communicate the gospel, it's very important that if at all possible, you use people's heart language. So even if they know two or three languages and you could speak to them in a different language and they'd still understand what you were saying, it doesn't tend to have the same impact on them as if you use their heart language. So Mandarin is the heart language of one billion people. So if we want to reach those 1 billion people, we need to be working in Mandarin and China Lutheran Seminary, where I teach in Taiwan until very recently I thought it was the only Lutheran seminary in the world that was working in Mandarin. I very recently discovered that there's a very small Wisconsin Lutheran seminary in Hong Kong that's also working in Mandarin. But China Lutheran Seminary here in Taiwan is much bigger. So it's certainly, in terms of its size, the most significant Lutheran institution in the world that's working in Mandarin, and so that means it's kind of got this. It's got an enormous mission, not only to the people of Taiwan but also to the wider Mandarin-speaking world.
Speaker 2:Now, when you talk about the wider Mandarin-speaking world, most obviously you're talking about China. So Mandarin is the official language of China, also the official language of Taiwan. But you go to any major city in the world today, what do you find? You find Chinatown, right. So there's a huge Mandarin-speaking diaspora scattered around the world. You know Southern California is more than 10% Mandarin-speaking. You know quite a few regions of the US have large Mandarin speaking minorities. Same is true of Australia, and so you find these Mandarin speaking communities right around the world.
Speaker 2:Now, zeroing in on China a little bit, china's quite complicated. I mean, this is a country of 1.3, 1.4 billion people, so it's hard to generalize about it. But you've got to remember this is one of the world's great civilizations. I mean Chinese culture and history and civilization goes back thousands of years, much longer than Western civilisation, and they've brought many great treasures to the world. So it's a culture that needs to be respected.
Speaker 2:Now, it's true that you know at the moment they have a communist government and in many ways communist thinking is a challenge to the western world and a challenge to christianity. I mean, communism is an avowedly atheistic system and it tends to be a totalitarian system. So if people understand the distinction between dictatorship and totalitarianism, a dictator doesn't hold elections. A dictator wants to stay in power, but a dictator doesn't necessarily try to control every aspect of your life, whereas a totalitarian system does try and control, or at least most aspects, many aspects of people's lives. So you think of a place like China where until recently, they had a one-child policy. Just think about what that means. You don't get to choose how many kids you have, the government gets to choose how many kids you can have, and that spills over into all sorts of other areas of life, and so that tends to be a challenge for christians, um, to be under a regime like that. But again, you can't really generalize. So christianity is not illegal in china.
Speaker 2:Um, you have two kinds of churches in China.
Speaker 2:You have the registered churches, so they can operate openly and legally.
Speaker 2:So the Catholic Church is registered, and then there's sort of a general Protestant church called the Three-Self Church, which is legally registered.
Speaker 2:But being legally registered means that you have to play a bit of a dance with the Chinese Communist Party. You have to keep the party happy in order to be able to continue to operate, and in some places that might be relatively easy. You might have your local communist party leaders might be fairly lenient. In other places they might be much stricter, and so you've got to really watch your step. But many Christians don't want to play that dance. They don't want to be restricted by the Communist Party in terms of what they can say and what they can do, and so they go underground. And so you have an enormous underground church in China, and it's impossible to get accurate figures in terms of how many underground Christians there are in China, but it is an enormous number and it's growing rapidly by all reports, and that includes underground Lutheran churches that you just don't hear about except by word of mouth, that you just don't hear about except by word of mouth.
Speaker 1:Well, could you I love this Could you go deeper in terms of like, what does that church expression look like? And I don't think and I'm asking it because I care about our brothers and sisters across the world, and not necessarily that this sort of an experience could come in short order to the United States, though if it did, the gospel would go forward. That's the way it always works through persecuted seasons. And to go back to what you're talking about before, we lean less on the self and more on Christ and His provision and more on community care and support. So could you paint a picture? I know it's kind of hard when it's underground and it's kind of secret, but can you paint a picture about how the gospel word and sacrament, specifically Lutheran ministry, how that multiplies in China?
Speaker 2:When you're in a persecuted situation, you really can't operate as a large institution. It has to be much more organic and you know small groups of christians gathering together, sharing the gospel by word of mouth, um studying the scriptures for themselves, because a because a lot of other you know, the sort of big projects of an institutionalised church are just not possible. But look, here you're going a little bit outside my expertise because I live in Taiwan. I don't live in China, right? In fact, I've never actually been to China. I've been to Hong Kong. I show a great interest in all things China and I've never actually been to China. I've been to Hong Kong, I show a great interest in all things China and I hope to get there one day, but a lot of my information is secondhand. I have, however, taught firsthand in many countries in Asia where Christians are persecuted, so I have firsthand knowledge of many other countries.
Speaker 1:One of those places is Nepal.
Speaker 2:One of those places is Nepal, and the church in Nepal is growing by an average rate of 13% per year. Whoa, it's gone from basically zero, just a handful of underground Christians in 1990, to a million or more today, and doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Generally in Nepal at present, it's not illegal to be a Christian, it's not illegal to gather together and worship, but there is an anti-conversion law so you can be thrown in jail if you are found guilty of converting a Hindu. Wow, and often there are Hindu militant groups that make life very, very difficult for the Christians. There are two. It's also a very poor country.
Speaker 2:So how does the church spread? It tends to spread largely by word of mouth. The average pastor in Nepal has no formal training at all. It's basically just handed a Bible and told go for it, and so they've got very little resources in terms of what we come to expect in the west, but they got the word of god and they got prayer. So that's what they use because they don't have much else, but they've got bibles, they study their bibles, they know their bibles and because they are poor and they are persecuted, they pray, pray, they have to pray. Their prayer. Life puts ours to shame, and the Lord is choosing to bless them. One of my good friends in Nepal he says you know, we don't know what we're doing. We're just living in this season of God's grace where he's doing something wonderful in our country and we are running to keep up. However, there is one thing that they do very deliberately, and that is that they are very, very active in charitable work.
Speaker 2:Now, this is partly because it's a Hindu context. So you know, hindus teach the doctrine of karma. According to the doctrine of karma, if you do good things, good things will happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. What this means is that if they see someone who's poor and down and out, they assume that this person must have done something wrong either earlier on in this life or in a previous life, and that's why they're suffering, and therefore there's no reason to feel sorry for them, because they deserve it. Furthermore, if you try to do something to help them, karma is going to get them anyway, so it won't actually help. So that's the Hindu mentality.
Speaker 2:The Christians, on the other hand, they go out of their way to help everybody who's down and out, regardless of caste or creed, and this is just absolutely revolutionary, and it always leads to the question of why are you doing this to help us? And that then gives them the opportunity, one-on-one, to share the gospel. Also, what that tends to do is it gives them protection, because if there are other groups of people in Nepal that try and go after the Christians, often the local Hindus will say no, no, no. These people are doing such good things among us, we want them to stay, so please leave them alone. And so I can. You know I don't have the same firsthand experience of China, but I imagine the same would be. The case is that you can win over a lot of people by simply living a Christ-like life and serving them, going out of your way to serve them, and a lot of people even if they don't become Christian. That generates a lot of goodwill and helps to protect the persecuted church.
Speaker 1:Hey, dr Lockwood, that's so powerful what I hear in summary. Christian in the West and in the US in particular, lutheran, follower of Jesus. Let's focus more on the word. And that seems to be a very Luther a robust prayer life, radical dependence rather than our intellect, our reason, and this is very Lutheran too. It's scripture over reason, right, it doesn't mean reason is downplayed, but it's scripture first and a radical dependence upon and trust in God to show up and show off, and we take none of the credit. Lord, you must move, holy Spirit, you must speak, and as you move, as you speak, we will follow Christ. You are our head, you are our leader, you're our Lord. Radical prayer dependence and then robust mercy work, and in the US that looks like hey, what are the felt needs of our community? They'll know we're followers of Jesus by the way we not just love one another, but by the way we love our neighbor who are far from Jesus. So for us it's mental health concerns. The church has to be speaking there. We got to care for the family, make sure the family is strong, that marriages are strong, parents are strong and caring for the next generation. We have a lot to say there. Are we known for partnership with and this is a very open place freedom of speech, et cetera here in the United States, but are we known for our partnership with local officials who are trying to solve issues of poverty and addiction and mental health crisis? Are we there in that space? And a lot of times in our Lutheran world we can be separate from suspicious of those sort of relationships with the other Could be another type of Lutheran or it could be one of another type of faith.
Speaker 1:One cool story that I got to share is our La Mesa ministry. This is a working, poor and homeless ministry that we've been running now for about a decade and there's two different sites meal and worship on Tuesday and Thursday night respectively. We're looking to meet a lot of felt needs and give people that hand up right to restore dignity to the individual who has lost their family and resources, etc. So the church can come alongside them to provide those resources, care on that long journey toward Jesus sufficiency or self-sufficiency, right. And guess who's been one of our main partners in meeting that need? The Latter-day Saints, our Mormon neighbors. Yeah, so Mormon neighbors. They've stepped up thousands of dollars, a whole bunch of drives in partnering to meet those felt needs. So we've kind of established goodwill with our Mormon neighbors on mercy work and they have a different motivation, justification for it. Right For us we're swimming in the pool of the gospel but nonetheless are we known for that sort of work today and I think in our Lutheran circles specifically for those who are in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod we have a ways to go specifically on a robust prayer and then intentionally meeting felt needs in our local community. So thank you for highlighting that Our strategy is hopefully going to go deeper in light of that work.
Speaker 1:I want a last question here. Would you talk about the Mission of Christ Network, mcn, what the Lord is doing? You're a missionary now there at the China Lutheran Seminary of Mission of Christ Network. Tell how it was founded and how can people support it, dr Lockwood.
Speaker 2:Well, mission of Christ Network was founded in 2013. The historical origin is that at that time, or at least for a few years, a lot of LCMS missionaries had been pulled off the field. I think for two main reasons. One was, initially, there was a lot of budget cuts and due to budget cuts, a whole lot of missionaries who had been doing good work suddenly didn't have a job anymore and were pulled off the field. Been doing good work suddenly didn't have a job anymore and were pulled off the field. I think another reason was just this sort of happened later was a change in policy or direction from LCMS International Mission.
Speaker 2:So, under the Harrison administration, lcms OIM have said that they will focus on three things One is theological education, the second is mercy work and the third is planting Lutheran churches. Now, all of those are three good things. I'm not being critical of it. Those are wonderful things to be focusing on, but it did mean that other things that maybe didn't fit in those three categories got cut, and that included a lot of lay people who were just functioning as lay evangelists.
Speaker 2:Things like theological education and planting Lutheran churches tend to require pastors, whereas lay people can often just be very effective evangelists without necessarily doing one of those two things.
Speaker 2:And so the LCMS lay evangelists tend to all get pulled off the field at that time.
Speaker 2:And so there are a whole lot of former LCMS international missionaries who got pulled off the field, who felt like they weren't done with mission, and so they joined together and said well, look, why don't we do this in a grassroots way, instead of doing this directly through the synod? And let's go to the people of the church, let's go to the congregations, let's go to the people sitting on the pews and see if they will support us? And so MCN look, it functions within the LCMS. It has the same confessional stance as the LCMS, but it's a much more grassroots organization, and it began sort of with supporting, recruiting and training lay evangelists and then partnering with churches and church groups overseas and sending these evangelists to work with them. Since then they've branched out. Now they also employ pastors like me and do engage in things like theological education. But it tends to be, rather than trying to compete with LCMS, oim it's let's find gaps that are not being filled by OIM and let's see if we can fill those gaps.
Speaker 1:Amen, I love it.
Speaker 2:And I think one thing I enjoy about MCN apart from the fact that they've been extremely supportive of me is, I guess, their priority. So John Mayle, who's the executive director of MCN, once said to me. He said we really only have one rule, and that is that you take every opportunity to proclaim the gospel. And I'm like, yeah, I can work with that.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. You're a gift brother. I'm so glad that you're a part of, you're connected. I mean, I'm a part of the Lutheran Church of Missouri. We have a number of listeners to this podcast that are outside of the LCMS but that you're still using your, your gifts in the in the church we you were, and we're not going to talk about this right now, but folks may not know you serve for a while in the office of international ministry there Before transitioning. Could you just tell what your work was there in OIM?
Speaker 2:So I worked for LCMS OIM for three years. Initially I was called to teach at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Baguio City in the Philippines.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And we were all ready to go as a family. We had our bags packed, we shipped all our possessions to the Philippines, we had our plane tickets in hand, and then we couldn't get there because of COVID. So we waited for two years trying to get into the Philippines, and during that time I taught for this seminary via Zoom, and during that time I taught for this seminary via Zoom. But after two years of waiting we sort of gave up and we were persuaded to accept a call to Taiwan instead. So Taiwan opened up before the Philippines did.
Speaker 2:We were able to get into Taiwan and we were told that there was a great need here in Taiwan. Look, we would think that this was the Lord's hand at work. If he wanted me to work in the Chinese-speaking world, he had to throw COVID at the world to get me here. So I then worked for a year and a half here in Taiwan with LCMS OIM as a theological educator. There were plans to eventually use me to teach in Taiwan with LCMS OIM as a theological educator. There were plans to eventually use me to teach in Taiwan. So I was learning Mandarin, but in the meantime they were also sending me to many other countries to teach, and so I was supporting the training of pastors and church workers in many different countries, which was a continuation of work that I'd actually been doing while I was still a parish pastor in Australia.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful, wonderful, hey, dr Lockwood, praying for you and your ministry, your journey learning Mandarin. You are a gift to the wider church, brother, and if people want to connect with you, how can they do so? What's email? Best way to get in touch with you and support you?
Speaker 2:So my best email address for me is michaellockwood at missionofchristorg, and if you send me an email I will happily sign you up for my newsletter, so I'll be able to give you a lot more information on what we're doing. If anyone would like also to just find out more information online or to support us financially, they can go to missionofchristorg forward slash Lockwood and they'll find my page and that includes a donation portal. So I don't actually draw a salary from teaching at China Lutheran Seminary. We do have to raise our own support, and so we very much depend on the good-hearted people of God who want to partner with us in Christ's mission.
Speaker 1:Amen. I pray many come forward. Dr Lockwood, you're a gift. This is the American Reformation podcast. Sharing is caring to get words about Jesus, to multiply disciples, to release the church, to go after those that are far from Jesus. I pray this conversation today gave you a lot of joy, that the wheels are turning and maybe there's less logic, linear planning. What I'm taking from the conversation is hey, tim, at your staff meetings we spend about 15, 20 minutes in prayer. Maybe we mix it up at one of our upcoming executive meetings and we spend the entire hour and a half in prayer and in the word we're going to do it. It's going to be amazing. It's such a countercultural thing to even kind of consider. Dr Lockwood, you know but definitely worthwhile.
Speaker 2:Go ahead. In Nepal they'll pray all night, so but baby steps for you guys.
Speaker 1:Baby steps for us, that's what it's about Baby steps in the Jesus direction. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. We'll be back next week with another episode of American Reformation. Thank you, dr Lockwood.
Speaker 2:You're welcome, thank you.