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American Reformation
We believe the American church needs reformation. To go forward we must go back. This podcast will explore the theology and practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication and apply those learnings to our post-Christian/secular American culture. American Reformation is a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. Follow us at uniteleadership.org. We consult, bring together cohorts of congregations for peer to peer learning, and certify leaders for work in the church and world.
American Reformation
The Church in a Changing World: Insights from Australian Pastor Joshua Pfeiffer on American Christianity
What if the church could retain its mission and identity amidst the ever-changing social and political tides? Join us as we welcome Joshua Pfeiffer, PhD candidate at Concordia Seminary and an Australian pastor, who offers a profound perspective on maintaining clarity and confidence within the church. Joshua shares his observations from two and a half years in the United States, exploring the church's vital role as the tangible presence of Christ in a complex world.
We venture into the unique intersection of Australian Indigenous spirituality and Christianity, inspired by a personal experience involving Aboriginal dreaming stories. Through this lens, our discussion delves into how Indigenous spiritual practices coexist and integrate with Christian faith in Australia, with a particular focus on the efforts of Lutheran missionaries. Joshua and I draw intriguing parallels to American Christianity and Native American spiritualities, highlighting the delicate balance between preserving cultural traditions and embracing a unified faith.
Finally, we reflect on the timeless legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and his influence on preaching and civil rights rhetoric. Discover the spontaneous, unscripted moments of King’s iconic "I Have a Dream" speech and the powerful lessons contemporary preachers can learn from his vivid storytelling. We also touch on the adaptation of Martin Luther King's symbolism within Australian contexts, including its resonance with Indigenous narratives. Tune in for a rich conversation that spans continents and cultures, offering valuable insights for navigating the evolving spiritual landscape.
Welcome to the American Reformation podcast, Tim Allman. Here Today I pray the joy of Jesus, the curiosity of the crucified and risen one. As you carry out word ministry, as you are a proclaimer, whether you're a pastor, whether you're all of the baptized, we're all called to be proclaimers of the crucified and risen one by the spirit's power, so that the word would create and sustain deep and abiding faith. Today I get the privilege of hanging out with a student at Concordia Seminary in St Louis, a PhD candidate. His name is Joshua Pfeiffer. He is a pastor from Australia, a part of the Lutheran Church of Australia that the LCMS is in altar and pulpit fellowship with, and he's studying culture discipline with a concentration in homiletics. His doctor father is Dr David Schmidt. Shout out to Schmidt, Dr Schmidt, David. He likes to go by. Actually he's going to be on the podcast.
Speaker 1:I think lead time coming up here in short order. But Joshua is married to Kimberly. They have four children. He's just about ready to head back to Australia after two and a half years in study in St Louis. How are you doing, Josh? Very well, thank you Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Hey man, what a joy. So, as you've, obviously you're an Australia native. We're going to get into some of the culture of Australia, to be sure, but you've spent two and a half years in the US. There, in St Louis, as you look at the broader landscape of the church in the United, the very diverse landscape of American Lutheranism, American Christianity in general in the US, how are you praying for reformation, Josh?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very interesting question. You know, we're kind of just about to leave the US, and so it's been a good time for a lot of reflection on all the many blessings that we've received here generally and in the church especially. This is a wonderful place and a wonderful church body that we've been involved in. I think, as I leave, though, and as I reflect on different conversations with other international students, I think one of the things that I would really hope for for the Christian church in America is that she becomes a little more clear and confident about who she is as the church, rather than as any sort of an extension of a kind of social or activist or political group and I didn't mean to start off with anything controversial but that's just what comes to mind is that the church for the sake of the church in the world, for the sake of the world, the world for the sake of the world.
Speaker 2:The Christian church in America has just been so important in so many ways. The very fact that I'm here studying from Australia largely on the generosity of people in this country because they want to send people out it's just a wonderful thing. But sometimes people around the world just get a little bit nervous about the relationship between America and Christianity and how all that works out. And who the church is is one thing I'd be praying for.
Speaker 1:Dude, hey, I'm right there with you. There's no plan B. The church is the hope of the world. You just kind of pinged something. I heard this great quote yesterday from one of our pastors, Pastor Michael Hyden, who got it from Dr Joel Bierman have you got to hang out with Bierman at all?
Speaker 2:Josh, indeed, indeed.
Speaker 1:Listen to this, listen to this quote from one of his sermons the church is the bride of Christ. The church is the body of Christ. Think of that. The church is the tangible, visible presence of Christ in the world. The church is God here and now doing his work. The church is God here and now doing his work. The church is God's chosen means to bring about the salvation and restoration of the entire world. The future of the universe hinges on the church. The eternal purpose and meaning of the entire creation depends on the church. The future destiny of every single person in the world is in the hands of the church. You can't get any bigger than that.
Speaker 1:The church is more, far more important and more significant than any corporation or organization that exists or ever existed in the world. The church matters more, much more than the politics or the fate of any nation or any empire. Here in the church, god gives his grace. Here he extends his forgiveness. Here he speaks the story of all things made new in Christ. Here he delivers the truth of his plan to reclaim all that exists according to his design. The church is not one religion among many. It is the one true expression of God's truth and it is here, and here alone, that God is accomplishing his plan for the salvation and the recreation of the world. This is what matters, what rings true to you. As I read that quote Josh, I mean, let's just focus there, baby, right.
Speaker 2:I mean, first, what rings true is that it sounds like Professor Bierman, for sure, and his way with words and also the passion and strength with which he's able to put things. But, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think in the Western world in particular, with the challenges that we face in the church, one of the temptations is to think too little of who we are, you know, as Christ's bride, as Christ's body in the world. And it really is remarkable, especially for us who serve in the church, because we know all the problems, we know all the challenges, it's remarkable to think that this is the means by which God has chosen to bring His saving grace to the world. And so, you know, we shouldn't think too highly of ourselves that's a danger as well but we shouldn't think too lowly of ourselves as the body of Christ. And so, yeah, that's good words.
Speaker 1:Hey man, before we get into your article from the Concordia Journal, folks are probably wondering, like what's the origin story of the Lutheran Church of Australia you were sharing it just generally with me and how it kind of interconnects, intersects with the LCMS story. Tell that briefly if you would, Josh yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:So the Lutheran Church, lutheranism in Australia, actually has a very similar story in some ways to the LCMS. For those who know LCMS history, so in the early 1800s a group of German Lutherans left Germany and moved to Australia, largely for what they considered religious freedom issues, which is a very similar story to the Saxons who ended up here starting the LCMS. I think it was within about a year or 18 months. So it's very interesting how the history goes like that. But it was on a lot smaller scale in Australia and basically everything's on a smaller scale in Australia across the board, including in the church, and so the Lutheran Church has always been small in Australia. Now one little, just minor correction is that currently the lutheran church of australia is not actually in full fellowship with the lutheran church missouri synod, that's a little bit of a long story, but basically there was two synods in australia, because there was an early split.
Speaker 2:one of them was in full fellowship with the lcms, one of them wasn't. In 1966 they came together as one church and they put on hold their international fellowship arrangements, and the idea was to re-establish them over time as a new church body. That kind of never happened, though, and again it's a complex matter. But throughout all of that, we've had a very healthy, very fraternal relationship with the LCMS, which is again one of the reasons I've ended up here studying yeah. So that's Whoa.
Speaker 1:I'm so sorry, tim, if you're watching, the lights just went out on Josh. He is absolutely in the dark. Good thing you have the light of Christ. There we go.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 1:You're good, buddy. You're good. You're good, yeah.
Speaker 2:Anything more on the Australian story though that's a bit of a snapshot, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, well, let's get into your Concordia Journal article. This came out in Concordia Journal, winner of 2024. And the title is the Dream and Dreaming Australian Christianity, aboriginal Spirituality and Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 2:It was so well done.
Speaker 1:I mean right up front. It just sparked me. How in the world are all of these things going to connect? So tell us the opening story of your daughter coming home from school in Australia after hearing about Australian Aboriginal dreaming stories.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the article talks a lot about, I guess, some of the tensions in Australian society between different faiths, different spiritualities, what we could just think about as pluralism, I guess. And I start with a little story to kind of try and bring that to a concrete sort of place. And so my daughter has obviously been raised in a Christian family. She knows the stories of creation, of how the scriptures tell us that life came to be.
Speaker 2:But there have been a lot of challenges between Indigenous people in Australia and white settlement, as there are in most countries around the world, and so one of the ways that they try to work towards reconciliation and cultivating better relationships with our Indigenous people is by teaching some of their cultural stories in our schools.
Speaker 2:And so your typical Australian child will learn some of these Indigenous stories and they're together known as the dreaming stories, and we might come back to that later, but essentially they're stories about how this world came to be.
Speaker 2:And so she heard these at school and she kind of came home young and fairly innocent and just asked you know what's the deal, dad? How does all this fit together? And it was at that moment that I knew I was going to give a confession of my Christian faith and reaffirm the biblical story, but I have to admit, I did feel some tension within myself of, okay, how should I do this though? Because I don't want to just trash this important piece of our cultural history in Australia. I want to think about how I engage with that sensitively, whilst also giving a Christian witness, and so I think that kind of tension I felt within myself is one thing that exists more broadly in Australia and probably the whole Western world in one way or another, and it's one thing that I sort of came to, particularly through a particular cultural artifact in Australia that we'll talk about a bit more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's awesome. So listeners probably have very little context for Aboriginal spirituality in general. And no lie, like I, I have never outside of this, I've never studied anything about the Aboriginal culture in Australia. So for those of us who are probably baseline, like us, how do Christianity, aboriginal spirituality relate to one another? Josh?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in broad terms, obviously the indigenous people were in Australia before white settlement and they had their own spirituality, we could call it from our point of view. They had stories about how the world came to be, they had rituals, they had sacred sites, they had beliefs, and then, with white settlement, the Christian gospel comes to Australia, and so in one sense, the relationship between them is simply that these sort of things coexist in Australian society. But then what makes it more interesting is that many Indigenous people became Christian, and so there were many missionaries who went to the parts of Australia where the Indigenous people lived and proclaimed the gospel, including many, many brave Lutheran missionaries who traveled through extremely harsh conditions with big, heavy German clothing on and set up churches. And so then the question becomes for these indigenous people okay, so how does this spirituality that we have from our ancestors and all of the culture that goes with that, how does that relate to my newfound Christian faith? And this is, of course, one of those questions of contextualization that missionaries all around the world wrestle with in different ways, and so I explore that a little bit in the article and just think through how there are different approaches then when it comes to how these two relate.
Speaker 2:And so perhaps the more traditional approach was to sort of say you really have to reject everything to do with the former culture, and the early missionaries sometimes went this route. And then you know, as always happens, the pendulum swings. And so in contemporary times sometimes people have wanted to see a lot more continuity between this Aboriginal spirituality and Christianity and to sort of see how this is maybe something like the Old Testament that's fulfilled in Christ. But you start to get into something that sounds very much like syncretism when you go that route. And so what I talk about in the article is that the sort of way between, I think, is when Aboriginal Christians themselves, often over quite a period of time, they discern for themselves what they can retain from their culture and what are things that need to be left aside now the gospel has come. So it's a pretty complex relationship, aboriginal spirituality and Christianity in Australia. But those are a few sort of guiding comments yeah, I know that's.
Speaker 1:That's helpful. It sounds like american christianity in relation to native americans, right a lot of similarities.
Speaker 2:I'll think that that's not a bad point of reference for people wanting to get their heads around it yeah, and and kind of the olive branch.
Speaker 1:I guess, from a missiological perspective, was the first article God as creator, right and how he reveals himself in his creation. I think that's a helpful starting point, that there are a lot of mysterious things how the world works. That is above me, and then I think, the through line and Luther. I was just reading a brand new book by Bob Kolb yesterday. Face to Face man, he's an amazing Luther scholar, missiologist. Have you got to hang out with Bob at all, joshua?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I have yeah, he's an amazing dude, a great friend, and he was talking about how Luther I mean he connected to God in creation and the Roman Catholic traditions, god in creation ritual kind of connected there, but then his robust reliance upon the word right and the word made flesh in in Jesus. So they just kind of connect that, connect that story, and it's a lot like the apostle Paul's approach. Right, I see that you have many gods Athens, mars Hill. Let me tell you about the one God who is not. Now there's going to be a whole bunch of other moral things. You know that we have to get to, I think in the early church, right, the Gentiles come in. I think this is Acts 10 and kind of the Gentile conversion. I see that they've received Christ. Now what do we command them to do? We're not going down the circumcision route, but don't eat meat, sacrifice to idols, avoid sexual immorality, like there were a couple kind of moral statements that were made there.
Speaker 1:But it is the messy middle when cultures kind of collide. And Christ enters in and Jesus. So final comment here and I'd love to get your take. But and Christ enters in and Jesus. So final comment here and I'd love to get your take. But this is the way of Jesus, jesus with a woman at the well, you know, I know way more about what's gone on in your life, but let's talk, and I love how she goes. Let's talk about worship. What does worship looks like? Let me? Let me tell you about this one who's revealed himself to me and she goes back as as really the first evangelist in the book of John, right In John 4. So, anyhow, anything to add to that kind of messy middle way before we get more into your article.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, just what's really interesting in the history of the coming of the gospel to indigenous people in Australia in the Lutheran scene which is what I know more about is just how this actually did kind of happen over time. And so, you know, there's some very interesting anecdotes from the mission field where one guy I looked at whose father was the missionary and then he became a lay missionary there. So he was there for decades and decades and what he saw were rituals that his father had forbidden and he was trying to. You know, he was trying to do the right thing, he was trying to form them into a Christian identity, and but that was that was the decision he made.
Speaker 2:And this guy discovered later on that the people were still doing these things secretly, and so he talked to them about it. But what they told him was that, no, no, we understand what he was saying, but we worked out that actually there's sort of a spiritual element to this ritual. There's also a cultural element that we can now that can be redeemed I didn't use that language, but that can be redeemed in Christ. And so we continue to do this. So the people were quite profound in the way that they worked out how this all happens Now. It takes time, it was messy, as you say, but there were a number of these kinds of things where this younger missionary in the family kind of saw look, in some sense we need to work with the people to whom the gospel comes as they discern for themselves. You know how this all works out over time in their culture.
Speaker 1:So good, all right, so let's connect. Now we got the Aboriginal kind of context there in Australia, but then you have a section on I have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King and his Christian worldview as a pastor and how that merged with his role as a civil rights leader. How did that? I have a Dream. It was really catalytic into way more than just racial equality. So feel free to speak about the prophetic role of his speech in shaping the imagination of his heroes, joshua.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this was. I mean, I never expected to write an article where Martin Luther King Jr's I have a Dream speech kind of came together with this Australian and indigenous spirituality. So just briefly how that happened.
Speaker 2:My PhD is in homiletics, so I was interested in Martin Luther King Jr and his rhetoric and how he, kind of, as a Christian preacher, transposed that into a for his civil rights work is one way to put it. So I was studying that but then, just completely out of the blue, I found this mural that was painted in Australia of Martin Luther King Jr, and this set me off on this whole other trajectory to do with how that sort of was contextualized in Australia in relation to indigenous issues, racial issues there, and so it was kind of like just following the trail, so to speak. That's how I got there. So to speak, that's how I got there. But I was really interested in the first place in Martin Luther King Jr as a civil rights leader, but then also how his Christian faith impacted that, how that all worked, and I think that is quite interesting and worth thinking about.
Speaker 2:I think you know that some of the biographers even downplay the Christian element of his work. The biographers even downplay the Christian element of his work. But King himself, when he wrote, he said things like fundamentally, at heart, I'm a Baptist pastor, baptist preacher. That's who I am. That's how he most clearly identified. Now everyone knows his civil rights work as the big thing, right, but behind that, that's where he was sort of coming from. Now there's obvious ways in which you can see this, such as just all of the biblical, not only quotations but allusions in his rhetoric. So if you go back and read closely the transcripts of his speeches, they're full of scripture or scriptural allusions and imagery. I think, to be honest, even some of the contemporary biographers they kind of miss some of this. Just how it's if you know the Bible it's saturated through and through. But then there's deeper patterns there as well in his speeches, and particularly in the I have a Dream speech as well where really what he is doing and this isn't my own idea, I've got this from other people that have studied his work is you can sort of see that he sees himself in continuity with the prophetic tradition of the scriptures, where you meet people in a time of distress and a time of suffering and you point towards something in the future where God is going to intervene and that brings you hope in the present, to bring you through. This is sort of something like. This is the general prophetic something in the future where God is going to intervene and that brings you hope in the present to bring you through. This is sort of something like. This is the general prophetic pattern in the scriptures.
Speaker 2:Now, admittedly, what he's doing is something that is perhaps a little bit risky, which is sort of transposing that from a sort of spiritual register to a civil rights one, and he's saying well so in King's rhetoric in the I have a Dream speech. What is the kind of hope in the future? Well, in the first place, it's just equality for people of different races. But the more I listen to and read his speeches, always sort of just beneath the surface for him is something divine, is some intervention of God that he's also hoping for, but he's kind of blending these things together. If you listen to his speeches, by the way, they just sound like sermons as well, and so I don't know how else to put it. But other people have commented on this that you can. You can listen to different speeches, read different speeches. When you listen to Martin Luther King Jr, it feels sermonic, if there is such a thing, but that's, you know, that's just what it sounds like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's, that's wonderful. So let's dig in more to the. I have a dream speech. Mlk Jr he's such a controversial figure in in the American Christian story. I mean, I was listening to a guy the other day say he wasn't even close to a Christian. You know, um, and and others say he's like the most robust Christian with, especially because the gospel is going into the world to, to bring justice, et cetera, right? So regardless of all of that, just finding ourselves in the moment of the, I have a dream speech. Uh, what do preachers have to learn from, from that speech? And with that in context, uh, so I'm a. I'm a dream speech. What do preachers have to learn from that speech? And with that in context, I'm a preacher first and foremost. That's my ultimate calling.
Speaker 1:I'm a third generation LCMS pastor and listening to a lot of sermons from. I dug up some grandpa sermons. He was a smoker for many years. He had a really raspy voice. He went to be with Jesus a bit ago, but I listened to my dad, not a smoker and shout out to Dave Allman. There's kind of this undercurrent, and Dr Schmidt teaches this so well. There's this crescendo and then there's this, and this is kind of the Lowry loop approach, right. And then there's this kind of ah, we're all just kind of rejoicing in and in, in light of the, I have a dream speech in just the imagination coming alive and what could be in the future. So what do preachers, pastors, have to learn from the? I have a dream speech, as you've dug into it, joshua.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think two things come to mind. One thing that was very, quite surprising for me as I studied that speech is that the so some people are aware perhaps perhaps many people aren't that the, the, the famous I have a dream refrain was actually not in his manuscript that he prepared, and so, and the story goes that somebody from the crowd actually called out do the dream, or something like that.
Speaker 1:And he kind of went into the dream. I sort of like tell him the dream that's right, that kind of thing Someone's yeah, yelling out Yep.
Speaker 2:Now, when you first hear that, you think, okay, well, either this is a moment of incredible divine inspiration or the guy's just a complete rhetorical genius. But when you start digging a little bit deeper, what you find is that it's actually something quite different, which is that this is something he had spoken versions of in different places and using it in different ways. Many times before In the years leading up, in different speeches he'd been doing a version of this sort of I have a dream refrain, and, and I've read some of those speeches and they're they're very, they're far less well known and um, and you can see he's kind of trying it out here and trying it out there, and and then in the famous speech it really just all comes together in the perfect way, you know, and it was there, it was ready, and so one thing I draw from that actually is something surprising, which is that I think you know public speaking in general and preaching, it's as much about actually just perspiration as it is inspiration. You could say so, you know, like I think of, you know, the 10,000 hours and all that kind of thing is like Martin Luther King Jr had actually done a lot of hours of speaking, and particularly with the content in this speech, before he got there. I don't think it was just necessarily this moment of unique inspiration, but I think it was the result of a lot of hard work.
Speaker 2:I think of Tim Keller as well, you know, and his material on preaching and he's very well known for his preaching, quite famous. Gone to be with the Lord now. But when people asked him about it he said well, you know, I was in my first parish preaching twice a week for years and years. I just preached thousands of sermons, you know, and so there's no shortcuts in some sense and this was a bit of a surprise for me to learn this from, because obviously Martin Luther King Jr was immensely rhetorically gifted, but that's not to say there wasn't a lot of hard work that went into it.
Speaker 2:Just one other thing I could speak a lot about his lessons for preachers. But one other thing that was interesting is that it's this famous lofty speech with this incredible rhetoric, but he actually starts in a very simple way which is less known as well. He starts with an image of the people coming to Washington to cash a check. He says, and he says the basic picture is that the Declaration of Independence is like a promissory note for all people, but it's been like a bad check and these people are coming to cash it. And what's interesting is that this was the march on Washington for jobs and freedom, so it actually had an economic kind of context, and I think what King was doing there was using. You know, he was immensely rhetorically gifted, as I've said, but he could speak very simply, very clearly, and use an image, an illustration that was anchored in the lives of the people to whom he was speaking. Right, and I think that's that's a great lesson for preachers to that use.
Speaker 1:Dude, so good, so this probably isn't going to ring true for you. Are you into NBA? Do you pay attention to the National Basketball Association?
Speaker 1:A little bit. So Allen Iverson. Allen Iverson had this quote back in the day we're talking about practice, man, not a game. We're talking about practice. Well, yeah, you got to practice preacher, and I don't care if it's a group of 20 people or 2,000, somewhere in between. Like putting in those reps over, time pays off and then audience understanding what is going to speak to your audience.
Speaker 1:Both of those are absolutely, absolutely crucial and simple. I've found shorter sentences, simple images that the vast majority of people can attach themselves to, that serve as the hook, if you will, to telling the greatest story of all time God's love for us and the person and work of Jesus. Like that really, really works. I want my kids to come home. I got three high schoolers now this year. Pray for us, joshua. Anyway, I want my kids to come home and say, yeah, yeah, I can give you the one kind of main thing that you were driving home today and he kind of.
Speaker 1:So to just piggyback on what you said, the I have a dream speech. That is the hook. Like it is famous because everybody remembers man, I have a dream, and we actually attach a number of different meanings then, and this is where it gets messy. So I have a dream quote Because I think his some people may say socialist, communist etc, I don't know I just know he was praying for racial equality. I think that's definitely definitely clear. But people have attached a number of different dreams to that. I have a dream speech, and so that kind of piggybacks into the MLK mural in Sydney Tell a little bit of that story. That's a good segue.
Speaker 2:Very well done, because what happened basically is that there's a suburb in Sydney and in the early 90s there was an illegal graffiti mural on this giant wall of Martin Luther King Jr's face and the words I have a dream, and under that a number of different people sort of arm in arm, and a few other little details about the place. And so this is an area of Sydney which is known for its diversity, and so it was trying to appropriate King's dream in Australia. And what's interesting is that it went through a number of phases where the community seemed to kind of register a protest, you could say, and so it was actually defaced. Early on You'd think it would be maybe uncontroversial, but what happened was they stopped the attacks on the mural by putting an Indigenous Australian flag underneath, and this seemed to settle things down. And it's hard to know exactly what to make of this. But I think what's going on is that, at a number of levels, one is just that Australians do tend to have a little bit of a instinctual sort of reaction against Americanization and American icons being transported in and thinking they can just be used straightforwardly, and so there's a little bit of that going on. But then it's a bit more complex than that, because I think you know, the racial issues that were happening in America are obviously related to our own Australia, but they're different as well. There's a lot of differences, and so it seems like the emergence of an Indigenous Australian flag on the mural was sort of saying yes, king, yes his dream. But it has to look a particular way here in Australia. And I think there's also spiritual things sort of going on behind that, because the mural sort of paints King as like a transcendent figure. There's a little Bible verse on the side. The Australian Indigenous flag is closely connected to their concept of the land and their spirituality, and so this was all going on.
Speaker 2:But it gets still more interesting because then they added another painting to the side which had a traditional Aboriginal dot painting depicting one of their stories from the dreaming. And above this it had the words we have the dreaming, and so you have Martin Luther King's. I have a dream. But now the people in Australia, and perhaps particularly people either Indigenous themselves or wanting to reflect Indigenous concerns, are saying yes, there's that dream, but how does it relate to our dreaming here? And this is all you know street art, by the way. So you know, it's just fascinating to see quite complex dynamics and thoughtful things sort of going on in this space, and what's interesting to me is that they're kind of just there, just left out in the open now, and the passerby is not going to stop and think about all this most of the time.
Speaker 2:But I think what's reflected here is some of that tension in our Australian society that I spoke about earlier. You know who are we, how are we dealing with our own sort of issues here, and how do we, how do we deal with the use of a of an american icon being brought here, with our own indigenous issues and all of that. So that that's, in brief, the story of the mural it's. There's so many more interesting facets. Just look it up on on youtube. There's a great documentary about it, um, if you'd like to know more do you live in sydney?
Speaker 1:I should have asked. No, I don't.
Speaker 2:I've never seen the mural in person, so I've only seen it online and I'm looking forward to visiting it now. It's also in um, it's all. I can't remember the song, but it's also in a Coldplay uh video. They record on the streets of Sydney and this mural shows up in the background. It's the one where he's got the drum on his chest and all the instruments going on.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so good, so yeah. Where do you live? In Australia?
Speaker 2:I'm from Adelaide, originally in South Australia, but I've taken a call to the state of Victoria in the Southeast of the country.
Speaker 1:Okay, smaller community, rural suburban.
Speaker 2:Small community, yeah, so a little place called Tarrington, near a town called Hamilton in Victoria.
Speaker 1:I'm super interested in getting to Australia. Is it flat? Are there hills, like? What does the topography look like?
Speaker 2:So Australia is a wonderful place. It's roughly the size of the mainland United States of America but there's only 25 million people because 85% of people live on the coast and there's large arid desert regions in the middle where not many people live. There are many different landscapes. There's some beautiful mountainous, hilly country but a lot of flat through the centre. Yeah, and life really is um, yeah, on the coastal regions. In many ways that shapes the sort of australian outlook and, um, and this you know, relaxed sort of laid-back nature, we hope, and that's yeah, so is your.
Speaker 1:Is your town on the coast?
Speaker 2:we're about an hour from the coast. Yeah, but that, but that's. I mean, I'm in St Louis now and this is the furthest I've ever lived from the beach by about like 1,000 miles or something, and like this is yeah, it's been different, but you've got lovely lakes up here and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's something about the ocean, though. Man there is Mesmerizing, yeah, and reminds me how small I am and how big God is. So you mentioned the dreaming in Aboriginal culture there in Australia. What is the dreaming?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you're in Australia for any length of time, you'll hear this term come up and it's used in sometimes different ways, but mostly it's used to refer to the stories of sort of prehistory, in the indigenous way of seeing the world. Sometimes they use phrases like eternal time or the every when, and I think the term dreaming is kind of meant to pick up on some of the sense of like um, you know that experience of waking from a dream in into reality, um, not to say that they wouldn't see these, these dreaming stories, as as part of reality. But there is something kind of um different about that from from the time, the place we live in now. It's another realm, if you like, and so often the stories are of supernatural beings or other creatures who have sort of done certain things to bring shape to the physical world and human life, and it also affects social order and custom, all those sorts of things, and so then out of that, particular locations where things happen in these stories become sacred sites, and the problem that often many Westerners like me make when we sort of try to assess these things is they tell us stories that are far, far in the past, in a time of pre-history in a sense.
Speaker 2:And so we don't. We tend to think they don't necessarily have a connection to the here and now. But nothing could be further from the truth for the way traditional Indigenous people sort of see the world, these things all affect the here and now because the spirits of those stories they inhabit physical landmarks or other creatures, and so these creatures take on sort of totemic significance for people today and these sites take on spiritual significance for things today. And so because of all this, then Indigenous people have an extremely strong connection to the land in Australia and particular places in the land. And so out of all that, I mean dreaming is sort of used mainly for those stories, but then it's also used sometimes just to describe the whole kind of outlook, the whole spirituality, the whole worldview of traditional Indigenous people, the dreaming. And so that's kind of what's in play.
Speaker 2:When you have this mural which has I have a dream, and then you have we have the dreaming, and you sort of think you know what's the emphasis there Is it, we have the dreaming and we have the dreaming. You know they're making some point that there's significant history here in this country, there's a significant spirituality in this country that also needs to be sort of taken account of. Yeah, but that's a little bit about the dreaming. In Australia indigenous culture.
Speaker 1:So in indigenous spirituality there it's more about the we than the me. It sounds like.
Speaker 1:I think that'd be fair to say yeah, yeah, and so what is the ultimate goal? What is the end? What is the end and how does the individual kind of fit into the end? And where is God beyond this broken world and based on, you know, our own ethic, our own morality, etc. And our own worship of the God above, and then the ancestors, who are kind of above, who occupied this, who occupied this land. The lights just went out on Joshua again. I love it, I love it. So, yeah, give us a little bit of the end goal and I'm asking this from a real humble, I'm asking this from a real humble place Like, just educate us in terms of what I'm trying to draw, what is the olive branch of understanding, if you will, to connect Christ into that worldview of where there is no Christ and there is this future, dream, reality, right, help us there, joshua.
Speaker 2:Right. I should say that I'm by no means an expert An expert.
Speaker 2:In terms of indigenous spirituality, and I should give a shout out to many of our faithful pastors and other church workers who work to this day in with our indigenous brothers and sisters. My, my own brother, is a pastor in central australia, which involves a lot of that work, and there's a lot of people that have um in our church back home that know a lot more about this than I do. Having said that, I my, my sense has been that in this traditional kind of way of seeing things that they're just, it's very hard to say what salvation would be, what the equivalent would be in that way of seeing, seeing the world. I think even, and actually looking at this, this whole project and the way in which the Christian faith influenced the way Martin Luther King Jr saw the world, it helped me to think a little bit about this very issue, because, you know, the dreaming for Indigenous people is really about way back when and that has significance for now, but they tend to make, seem to make sense of the now by looking way back Now.
Speaker 2:Christians do that too. Creation is important. Obviously, the whole story of the people of God is important and affects the here and now, but I think it is. Maybe we take for granted just how unique it is that really, fundamentally, christians look forward, that we look forward to the promise of God in the future and that brings up hope in the here and now. And this is really, I think you know, just deeply embedded in the way that Martin Luther King Jr saw the world and we take for granted, perhaps, just how much of a Christian idea that really is, this promise of future salvation, that all will be renewed, that all will be put right, and King gets to a place where he's speaking about this in the political realm and people just say, yeah, sure, that's just how we talk. We look to the future, but actually that's a very Christian impulse that comes from our faith.
Speaker 2:And so, yes, I think for the Indigenous people, traditionally they don't necessarily look to that in the same way that we would. They look to the here and now and how you're living as a community, how you're honoring your ancestors, as you say. Now, the contact point for the gospel, as it has been in some other traditional cultures like this, has often been to do with the fear of the unknown, the fear of evil spirits, these sorts of things, and the peace that can come from Christ and from the gospel, from his protection. Those are some of the sorts of things that you'll hear the missionaries speak of when they have had success in bringing the gospel to these cultures.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that's helpful. Here in America there's an increase in spirituality, even toward the darkness. There's an influence of and I'm just kind of touching the surface of this we have a movie coming out here in the next year or so connected to Red Braille Studios, one of our partners called Wretch Like Me, and in it the producer and writer, director, Todd Freeman, who's been on this podcast. He's talking about the Mexican Catholic tradition connected to ancestors, kind of the saints, but then also this like robust deep um interconnection between, uh, pagan kind of demonic worship and and even in this movie that's coming out, which is going to be a very scary movie, he's teasing out. He's teasing out even, uh, the church of death. There's a place called the church of death and when you look back like you're confronted with death. And I'm sure in that tradition there's this kind of robust recognition of light and dark, of spirits, and I think this is one of the olive branches in a post-Christian culture today. This is where we have to start is the recognition that things are not as they should be. There is evil in the world and that evil impacts me, that darkness can flow from me and I have been impacted.
Speaker 1:I've heard a lot more conversation recently in terms of generational sin in the american christian church. Like I, I am impacted at a deep genetic level, if you even will, um, by the sin of my father and and his father and his to the third and the fourth generation. I think a lot of times in scripture we don't, we don't spend, especially in the western church, we, we spend very little time looking at the third and the fourth generation, and that actually makes, if you look at just history, right, that makes about a century. So those that live within a century of me impact me at a subconscious, deep level. Now, I'm not yeah, I'm a deep, robust, confessional Christian. I'm a future hope guy, to be sure, but I think we have a lot to learn in looking at our recent past. I'm a historian too, so anything to say to that. Like I think this is impacting American Christianity more than often than we realize, especially in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod Joshua, any take on that Often than we realize, especially in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
Speaker 2:Joshua, any take on that? Yeah, I'm just sort of going into existential reflective mode. I should talk because I'm thinking about. You know, my children are a bit younger than yours but already, like you, kind of start to see the um reflections of your own flaws, you know, sometimes coming coming out. And you know, god, you know, have mercy on us, forgive us and help us for these things. But but to think about it's quite sobering, to think about um, you know, not only that coming down from the generations to you, but that the legacy you're also potentially leaving hereafter.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I think that's something that I've taken, it's definitely something that I've taken. Only more seriously, the older I get, I've said to people before that when I first became a pastor and I was, I don't know, in my early mid-tw20s or something, and I would kind of think in like minutes and hours and days, really, you know, and then the longer I'm in the ministry, I kind of start to think in like months, years, decades, generations. Maybe, you know, is actually an important sort of way of just seeing the world, of seeing life. That is just much harder to grasp when you're younger. But um, not that I'm an old old guy, but I'm sort of starting to grow into that more, that's for sure well, and luther spent a lot of time here.
Speaker 1:Like luther was very, very some may call him like hyper spiritual in how he spoke about ephesians. You know that we do not fight against flesh and blood, the spiritual warfare that's taking place and the armies of God that go to fight for us and that have fought for those that have gone before us as well. But while we have breath in our lungs, I think of the story of Daniel in the lion's den. This is where kind of our imagination comes alive and this is all mystery. So we can only say so much here. But how God's angel it actually says in Daniel 6, god's angel steps down and actively shuts the mouth of the lions. And we can say that now Christ is our advocate, the Holy Spirit is our comforter and shuts the mouth of the liar Satan when he leads us to despair over our own sin.
Speaker 1:And if anything good comes through us this is why I love passive faith If anything good comes to us and through us to our kids and their kids, it's going to be by the power of the one who shuts the mouths of lions, who is our advocate, the one who has conquered it all for us, even death itself through his bodily resurrection. Like that, future hope is what gives me an appropriate understanding of where I find myself right now, with gratitude looking back for those that have brought the faith, brought the faith to me, this holistic past, present, future kind of reality. The older I get, the more I spend thinking about space and time. This is a shout out to Jack Preuss, the late great Jack Preuss, j-a-o. I think he's a third now and my buddy's the fourth. The Preusses are a big deal in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod story, but about a year before he died he goes.
Speaker 1:I'm just thinking a lot about time, tim, mm-hmm, you know, yeah and uh. And now he rests in paradise with the Lord, in anticipation of that great and glorious day when he's bodily, bodily raised. Anything more to say in terms of space and time and generations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, just on the on the theme of spiritual um, spiritual reality and spiritual warfare and all of that, I think this is this is another part of my interest, why I'm interested in this, this, these kinds of topic, particularly in terms of engagement in australia and in the western world generally, um contact points for the gospel, all that's all that sort of thing, because I think, um, yeah, it's interesting in the western world that we, we have this sort of secularizing um trend and we have these, um, we have had these high profile sort of more scientifically minded people that have done a lot of work to debunk the faith, and all this is sort of there and very real. But I think sometimes we pay a little, we don't realize just how complex the modern Western world is. And then after the Enlightenment, there's just been this explosion of kind of different spiritual paths that people have gone down, and that kind of like materialist, completely atheistic, secular sort of view of the world is just one of them really, and it's a loud one sometimes and it's a powerful one, particularly through our university system and all that. But in my sense of things, and also from more, from different reading I've done of cultural analysis, um, it's. It's much more complex than that and in my experience, just meeting people day to day, there's far more interest in in the realm of of spiritual um, than you'd be led to believe by sometimes the best-selling books on the shelf.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think Christians, as you say, need to sort of recover the dimension of this dimension of our Christian faith and the victory that we have in Christ in this realm as well, and to use this as a way of offering a space for people to talk about these things, because there's non-Christians who have interest in these things. They also don't really know what to say because there's this sort of more strong, militant voice that's sort of trying to cancel or flatten all this out. And so, yeah, and the fact that Indigenous spirituality is one thing that can actually raise those conversations in Australian culture, because people will respect that at a certain level and, you know, maybe there's an avenue there for talking about the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, yes, All right. Last, maybe talking point here, josh. This has been so much fun, bro, bro, what words of wisdom would you give to us? Because we live in the United States of America in a very multicultural, cross-cultural way, more so than I think.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest issues and before we started to record it, we were talking about some of the divisions in the LCMS and, again, being kind of a pastor and commentator on what's going on. Now, for some time it feels like the wrestle. It's not the battle over the Bible, it's not higher critical things, it's the wrestle over how to connect God's story, lutheran doctrine and when you talk Lutheran doctrine it's having the right words said in the right way. It can almost become like formulaic, you know, in how we articulate the faith in a way that remains contextually and even theologically to a degree hospitable for people who come from other cultures and even other religions and their stories that they bring to our story. We're just really really struggling right now on that and because the American landscape has just so radically shifted, joshua, that's one of the reasons this podcast exists.
Speaker 1:I mean, almost in a generation you've gone from people having some sort of a way of the story from creation to recreation, to say I don't even have a context for the Jesus story and it leaves a lot of older Lutherans in particular just scratching their head. And what's going to be our posture moving forward? Are we going to well, we got to, you know, we just got to return right. Or are we going to say here's the reality? People have been storied in a number of different ways. How do we remain open, hospitable, kind, but also truth-filled in connecting the greatest story of all time to their stories? That may not be, may not and I would end it with this may not be wrong per se, but may just be incomplete, in need of the one true God to complete that story. Anything more to say about cultural, contextual hospitality today? Joshua?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're big, big questions. The same context is true in Australia, if not more so, in terms of how much things have changed, how quickly they've changed for the Christian church. And I mean, the first thing I'd just say is that I think I have noticed the sorts of tensions that you're talking about in terms of how different people might want to approach this new reality that we're living in, and it's quite fascinating how this has become one of the new kind of flashpoints in church life. And the simple thing I'd say is just that I think at this moment there's a huge need to be gracious and generous towards each other in the church on this, because when I think about, for example, the gospel going to the indigenous people in Australia and some of those anecdotes I shared earlier about how they were working out which rituals you could do and how you could do them and all that, this actually took a long time. It took a long time to work this out, and it's good to remember, in these little kind of tensions that we have about approach, that we actually all want the same goal we want people to be saved, we want people to come to faith in Christ, we want the church to flourish. We have some. There are some disagreements about how we should get there right and the sorts of approaches that we should take, but we want the same goal. We need to be patient with each other in getting there, I think, and I think one of the things I've learned from this project, in looking at this artifact in Australia, though, is that I mean Australia, as I said, is a more secular place than the United States.
Speaker 2:Maybe the United States is moving that direction as well, but in Australia, you know, we have there's less public conversations of spiritual things, of the faith, and so Christians can sometimes become reluctant to speak, reluctant to have those conversations. One of the things this mural showed me is to be confident. Okay, that people, actually there is a space, even in our society, for a very interesting conversation about how this fits together the sort of transcendent Christian elements of Martin Luther King Jr, race relations, indigenous spirituality. It's sitting out there in the open in Sydney. Okay, be confident, christian people, you can engage. You can talk about these things in Sydney. Okay, be confident, christian people, you can engage, you can talk about these things, but be thoughtful as well.
Speaker 2:You need to have real, you need to have really thought about these things. You need to have something to say, you need to engage at a deep level or at least somebody does but also you do need to be sensitive to what's going on. You know there's a I don't think we can speak in the same way that we could in a previous generation. The reality is, the context has changed. We do need to take account of that, in the same way that when missionaries go to a far off place, in wherever they needed to listen, they need to learn. They need to learn how to speak there. That's kind of the space that we're at we're in now, need to learn how to speak there. That's kind of the space that we're in now, and I'm really struck by you're absolutely right just by how radical and quick things are changing all around us.
Speaker 2:There was one book I was looking at in my homiletics research and it's in its third reprint now, maybe written in the 90s, reprinted for the third time in 2016, I think and it said in the preface to the new edition the number one change is the context of preaching Just how much has changed. And this is only from the 90s. You know 20 years and he's just saying it's just. It's hard to even know where to begin to describe all of this. And so, in that it's going to be challenging, it's going to be messy, be patient with each other. Keep our eyes on that final goal. Those are some thoughts.
Speaker 1:Joshua, wow, this has been so fun. I can't have an Australian Lutheran pastor on and not ask about Hillsong. What's your perspective on Hillsong? What's going on with that group right now? I mean they were writing, I know, I know there's been some struggles, legal stuff, all of that, but how is? How is Hillsong? Maybe this would be good. How has Hillsong shaped kind of Australian Christianity over the last generation or so?
Speaker 2:Right, that's the whole thing as well. Yeah, yeah, so it's. It's. It's funny, like you, coming over here, I had kind of forgotten just how significant a part of our export that has been to the, to the wider world. Um, yeah, I don't know what to make of it all. Right, like I mean, they, they kind of have had this global reach in terms of music and part of a you know more charismatic style of renewal in different places, and there's been some good things about that, there's been some problematic things about that.
Speaker 2:And then I mean, yeah, I'm unsettled might be the word about some of the stories that I read coming out of this um, in terms of just the way in which perhaps, um, well, but perhaps one lesson to draw from it, depending on what you make of all the kind of accusations and and lawsuits and everything that's going on, is that there's always a danger with immense power and and that, and that that's a very something to be very sobered by.
Speaker 2:That, when people grow, when they become, when they get um immense amounts of power and influence, that, um, whatever the, whatever the individual, whatever the specifics are in in, in this case with hillsong, um, it sounds like you know, they're some of those significant temptations have come in terms of financial things, in terms of how you deal with people and accusations of abuse and all of that. This is just a sobering lesson to just be aware of. And one of the challenges then for churches kind of outside of that initial Hillsong orbit is kind of like, okay, what do you make of what you might just think is a nice song or a helpful song, versus the whole kind of like box and dice that is the hillsong movement and um, yeah, I think there's there's reason to be cautious there, but to just keep thinking it through and and watching how it develops. But it's um, yeah, I, I don't know what to make of it, honestly, I don't either, man, I don't either.
Speaker 1:My response would be very similar, similar to yours watch out, watch out when you grow and you become leader, the guy.
Speaker 1:And I don't care, I don't care if it's a church of 100, 100,000 or the I will add on to the conversation of power. You better have a fantastic group of advisors who humble you, who lets you know um, you're not a big deal. Who challenge you and you listen to their, to their challenge, and, and I don't know, I don't know if that didn't exist over time it's messy things. I have a lot of empathy for that kind of group, Cause you can start out again and we're not. We're not charismatics or anything like that, but like, just as like evangelical heart to grow and expand so that more people would hear the gospel, to be sure.
Speaker 1:But Satan is so wily, isn't he? I mean, he works. He works on our shame, our insecurity, and then, the immediate moment, something good starts to happen. Joshua, Like he flips on the pride-o-meter Wow, look at these people coming to. Wow, Look at all the views of that song and the reach of that song or group of songs. Like it's just, Satan is so, so crafty. So there is caution on all fronts. Praise me to God. We're carried by the Holy Spirit who points us to the crucified and risen Jesus.
Speaker 1:So much fun, hey, Joshua, praying for you as you head back to Australia praying for the Australian Lutheran Church your mission there, word and sacrament going forth consistently. And praying for the Australian Lutheran Church your mission there, word and sacrament going forth consistently. And praying for your family. And what an honor that you've been able to kind of shape the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod story and be shaped by it at one of our greatest institutions. I'm an alma mater there, Concordia Seminary there in St Louis. If people want to stay in touch with you and your work, your writing, how can they do so, Joshua?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks so much for having me, tim. It's been great to chat and it is a wonderful community here at the seminary. I've been blessed to be here and, yeah, do keep our church back home in your prayers. Yeah, I've got. I have a YouTube channel. If you just Google my name, joshua Pfeiffer, it goes under the name of Kairos as well a time to build up and similar on Facebook. So probably, yeah, through one of those means is probably best.
Speaker 1:So much fun. This is the American Reformation Podcast. Sharing is caring, like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you're taking it in. If you're looking for us on YouTube, just look up Unite Leadership Collective and our subscribers there. It's growing, ooh, but watch out, yeah, I don't really care. At the same time as I say it's growing, I don't. Whatever the Lord wants to do, the Lord wants to do, and I will tell you this. I got a lot of advisors, my wife being the main one, who says Tim, you're going to die. You know, Jesus, praise, be, praise, be to God. It's a good day. Go make it a great day. Thanks, so much, ashwa. Thank you.