Itunes University - "Preparing Post-Modern Missionaries for Pre-Modern Places"

“Preparing Post-Modern Missionaries for Pre-Modern Places” – Jeff Holland
Itunes University – Abilene Christian University – 2007 Lectureship
Reviewed by Kevin Book-Satterlee

With the 19th Century rise of the Protestant missions movement missionaries from the West have come in with a modernist worldview, taking for granted the scientific method and the concrete. Now, however younger Western missionaries are beginning to enter with a radically altered worldview rooted in post-modernity. It is a reality, and those training this next generation of Western missionaries must straddle two different world-views while coming from a third.

Holland begins his lecture by de-bunking the idea that majority world fields are in fact “pre-modern”, since they do not stem from the West. However, for the general understanding of the differing worldview the term serves its purpose.

The majority of the lecture is a primer on the differences between post-modernity and modernity and the differences exhibited in missionaries from the two worldviews. Holland is clear to note that this shift is not just one of generational differences, but rather one of differing worldviews. That said, he clarifies that on the hump of transitioning from modernity to post-modernity, no person is fully modernist or fully post-modern. This is an important aspect to Holland’s lecture as his thesis is not really in preparing post-modern missionaries, but rather that modernists and post-moderns need to find a ground to work together.

Most fascinating about this lecture is the fact that the very cross-cultural tools one learns before entering into the mission field must be applied “at home” or within the “same culture” as the worldview is shifting. Holland suggests beginning with humility and contextualizing for one another AND the field of service. He says modernists and post-moderns must put the field before their personal agendas.

Because of the Enlightenment, no modernist or post-modern can really move to a pre-modern worldview. Likewise, the modernist again will have greater difficulty adapting to the post-modern because post-modernity has only just recently emerged from modernity. That said, the difficulty of adaptation falls then on the very people who will be straddling the pre-modern and post-modern worldviews.

This lecture is a great resource for missionaries and those training missionaries. On the field, post-modern partners are joining with modernists who have a great deal of experience in the pre-modern culture. They need to work together. “The post-modern missionary,” states Holland, “is not an oxymoron, it is a reality.” He suggests using Paul’s missionary methods in this tri-polarization – to become a modernist with the modernists, post-modern with post-moderns, and pre-modern with the pre-moderns. Adaptability is the crucial need for all involved in missions today.