Kevin Lokker ’11 is not our normal alumni profile, and some might wonder how he can be claimed as an outstanding Holland Christian alumni success story.
Sure, he attended HC from South Side preschool, through Pine Ridge, HCMS, and High School—just like his two older siblings—but he would not call himself a Christian during those years.
He developed a drug habit, starting with marajuana at age 15, and was almost arrested during school as a sophomore for selling and distributing drugs at HCHS. Instead he slipped home quickly and was arrested there, after disposing of his drug stash so the cops wouldn’t find it.
He never really connected much with staff or classmates at HC.
“I was kind of a punk kid, and didn’t get along with very many teachers, really,” he said matter of factly. “Arda Rooks was probably my favorite teacher—she was really encouraging in creative writing. I enjoyed her quite a bit. And the art teacher—she was really cool, really supportive. I really enjoyed the two of them.”
After graduation from HCHS, Kevin dropped out of college three times—twice from GRCC and once from Grace Bible College, his ADHD and dyslexia making it just too hard.
“I felt like if God was real, He had abandoned me,” Kevin said.
Then at 20, addicted to pain killers, Kevin overdosed. As he lay there wondering if he were going to die, the childhood memories of all that he had learned about Jesus came back to him, and he cried out. “Jesus, if you’re real, save my life and if you do, I’ll give you everything, I’ll give you all my life….”
“When I woke up the next morning, I was alive in two different ways,” he said. “I was alive physically and I was alive spiritually. And I started pursuing Him.”
A dramatic understatement, honestly.
Even though Kevin admits he had never really got along with his senior Bible teacher, Mr. Walcott, something he had said once during Bible class came back to him, that “By now we [students] should have read the entire Bible cover to cover—and I remember thinking to myself, I don’t think I had ever read even a chapter of the Bible.”
So for two years, Kevin went verse by verse through the whole Bible, a chapter a day. “I didn’t want any extra teaching,” Kevin said. “Just me and the Lord. Just me and His reading of the Bible. And I would journal every night with it.”
Through the drug recovery process, despite “jonesing and fiending quite a bit,” Kevin said that he instead was “pressing into the Lord and submitting to His authority.”
“I felt like I was going crazy—my whole world view changed 180. I was losing friends because I couldn’t stop talking about Jeus, and a lot of my friends didn’t want to hear about Him.”
One of his closest friends from Holland Christian was Jeremy Lawrence, who stuck with Kevin, and walked with him almost every night—”a big part in helping me out from all that.”
Meanwhile, while struggling through an identity crisis, and wondering who he was without his former identity, Kevin continued living at home and working a variety of jobs: a cook at James Street Inn, a cashier for Quality Car Wash, a custom live-edge table builder—all while waiting to see what the Lord would have him do.
Kevin says the first time he heard the Lord speak to him, God told him who his new identity was: “You are the spark before the fire.”
“So I knew from that I would have some role in evangelism, and I started thinking more of a missional lifestyle,” he said.
His grandparents were heavily involved with Beautiful Gate Lesotho, an orphanage high in the hills of Lesotho, in Africa, and Kevin planned a trip there with them. But when the trip was suddenly cancelled, after asking the Lord what He wanted Kevin to do with the money instead of the trip to Africa, he realized he was supposed to use the funds to go on vacation to Japan with his sister and brother-in-law. “I remember thinking, I don’t know is that just me hearing that, or is that the Lord actually speaking, so I prayed more about it, and kept on feeling like no, the Lord is calling me to go to Japan for vacation.”
Noticing how few churches there were in Japan, Kevin prayed about it, remarking to God how few followers He had there, while sitting in their Tokyo AirBnB— “some random person’s house.” But God said to Kevin, “There is a harvest to be picked here. Are you willing to do it?”
It may sound crazy perhaps to us West Michigan suburban Christians, but talk to Kevin about it, dressed in his flannel and stocking hat, and you’re utterly convinced it’s the most normal thing in the world how God spoke to him. He’s not dramatic, not naturally attention seeking. Just a matter-of-fact normal dude 100% committed to Christ.
So he answered God, “All right, let’s do it, Lord! I gave you all, and if this is what you’re calling me to, let’s do it.”
When Kevin returned home from his three week vacation in Japan, he instantly signed up with YWAM to go to Japan and began preparing to move. But it was early 2020, and then COVID hit, and Japan shut all its borders down for three years. So Kevin waited, living at home, working at Quality Gas Station, saving and raising funds to be able to go overseas.
As soon as Japan opened their borders, he quickly applied for his Visa and flew out to Tokyo. He lived on the YWAM base in Tokyo as a staff member for two years, and as a leader for a year, helping the group of 20-some fellow YWAM staff plan and do their work. Mornings they would worship together, and then afternoons they would head out to the streets of Tokyo to do street evangelism.
“It works everywhere,” he claims, casually mentioning that he was evangelizing on 8th Street downtown Holland just a few days ago. “You go up to people and start with a small question, and then ask a meaningful question. You talk about the weather—everyone loves talking about the weather…and then ask a follow up question.” He figures he has reached 200-250 people this way personally, and has met regularly with 10 or so in Japan that he helps disciple into Christianity by doing life together, following the example Jesus and His disciples lived.
“Discipleship as a part of evangelism is kinda missed here [in West Michigan],” he said, adding the statistic that “if you disciple 100 people every year, it would take 1000s of years to reach all of Tokyo. But if you do a tree effect—equipping people groups to reach their own people—you can reach all of Tokyo in 12 years…”
He adds other statistics about Christianity in Japan—how less than 1% of Japanese are Christian, but hold on tightly to their traditional Shinto and Buddhist religions, while the majority of Japanese have never even heard about Jesus. Different from the Western mindset of justice and guilt in Christianity, Asians relate better to the ideas of shame and honor—when we sin we shame the Lord, but He still honors us, and what a gift of grace that is. He adds that there is a discipleship movement starting in Japan, and that the country is slowly waking up to Christianity, with 27 new Christians baptized in Okinawa last June.
Instead of YWAM, Kevin currently works with Biglife, a “global movement of ordinary people serving an extraordinary God, committed to catalyzing Disciple-Making Movements around the world,” their website says. He likes that he can focus on the relationships he is building with potential Christians through intentional friendships and street evangelism—that he also takes to the parks or the river. He’s learning Japanese through a weekly tutor, as difficult as it is with its three different styles of characters, especially for someone with dyslexia.
Not exactly the set of gifts you would think would be prime for international evangelism, especially in a complicated Asian country? It reminds you a little of Moses, doesn’t it? and his conversation in Exodus of excuses to God in the burning bush.
“Trust me, I do a lot of excuses with God,” Kevin chuckled. “A chapter I’ve been reading a lot in the Bible is Exodus 4—I feel very similar to {Moses]: I have a stutter; I always think to myself, I’m kind of dumb, but then the Lord’s always like, ‘No, you’ve got this, dude.’ So also education wise was a big excuse I’d use. I’m not outgoing. I’m very reserved, but evangelism is very outgoing. So it took a lot of submitting to the Lordship of God to do these things. I would say, ‘You’re the Lord—if you want me to do these things, I’ve got to submit.'”
Kevin would be the first to say he’s really God’s success story—Who else would be both creative and capable enough to use a former drug addict and college drop out to reach His Japanese people on the crowded streets of Tokyo? It’s truly beautiful to see God at work, isn’t it?
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