I re-listened to one of my first podcast episodes yesterday. Some of my colleagues were looking for some podcast episodes they could share with people who may be discerning a call to missionary service. I decided to plug myself and suggest an interview I did with my friend Emily Everett who was serving in Brazil at the time. We talked about what that word missionary means to us and our wrestling with the baggage of that term.

Also, a few weeks ago my sister asked me what exactly a missionary does in the American Upper Midwest. (If you haven’t heard about my new role, check out my most recent newsletter here.)

So I figure maybe the best way to get this blog back up and running is to get back to some basics: what I mean by postmodern, what I think a missionary should be in a postmodern world, and why I think the US needs missionaries too.

This post will tackle what I mean by postmodern and if it’s still something I’m about.

My website is called “Postmodern Missionary”. It’s something I came up with before I moved to Sierra Leone in 2017 and I still like it. It represents the posture with which I strive to approach missionary service. We could talk a lot about postmodernity, but for me it has meant primarily five things.

1.Postmodernism is anti-colonial.

I used to say post-colonial, but the more I learn the more I see that colonialism is still alive and influencing us today.

Colonialism has a dangerous foundational worldview that says there are some races and some cultures that are fundamentally inferior to others. And conversely there are some races and some cultures that are fundamentally superior to others. (Those sentences sound the same, but I think there’s an important nuance there.) Colonialism leads to the opposite of mutuality. It removes peoples’ agency and rationalizes a power-over mentality and behavior. It hurts people and it hurts the Body of Christ.

Anti-colonialism seeks mutuality, equality, freedom, and respect. It seeks the fulfillment of Mary’s song (the magnificat) where the thoughts of the proud are scattered and the humble are exalted. It is the foundational characteristic of postmodernism for me.

2. Postmodernism knows that everybody and everything has a context.

There is no such thing as an unbiased object. We used to think that certain cultures were the gold-standard. So much so that some used to consider themselves culture-less because they thought that their way of being was just the way the ideal person would be. Anything different was therefore culture. My people are now learning that nobody sees the world objectively (even Enneagram 5’s #sorrynotsorry #isaidwhatisaid). Some people knew this all along.

A postmodern missionary is going to seek to unpack their own biases and see clearly the good and the bad of their own culture. They will also come into missionary service ready to value and lift up the good in other cultures before they criticize what they don’t yet understand.

3. Postmodernism has the posture of a humble learner.

Humility must follow a recognition of contextuality. All cultures are valuable and all cultures have much to teach others. We all bring something to the table and we all have blindspot, sometimes BIG blindspots. Come ready to listen. Listen to understand. Ask questions, celebrate wisdom, and be transformed.

4. Postmodernism assumes that God is already active wherever we go.

We don’t bring God places. God is everywhere declaring God’s glory and imparting wisdom. I like to say that God incarnates in every culture and at the same time transcends culture itself. In every place, in every age, in every culture, God is moving all creation toward redemption. Nobody owns Jesus and we don’t get to say where he is and is not.

5. Postmodernism recognizes indigenous authority.

It is very colonial to go to another place and put yourself as the authority over those who are already there. Don’t go where you’re not invited (which means you gotta have a relationship first), respect what is already there, and allow yourself to be led.

So those are my five. What do you think of them? Are there any you would add?

Also, just to make it plain, I say all of this with full recognition that I’m not there yet. I’ve got a lot of decolonizing still to do. But I’m pressing on toward the goal guided by these values.

Still Postmodern?