Page 10 - Empowering Missional Artists - Jim Mills.pdf

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what has been communicated. One can then understand the resignation that has overtaken

some communicators.

According to the man who inaugurated the school of deconstruction, Jacque Derrida, the

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word is ultimately impossible to define , as it is immediately subject itself to being deconstructed.
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Ultimately, “Derrida could not prove his foundational principle, he could only claim it” (Carrigan
1996) and at the end of the day his philosophy was faith based. That is, he believed therefore he

claimed. All communication is faith based, whether the faith is based on truth or otherwise. The

notion of deconstruction in reality proceeds from a fatalistic ideological faith that objective truth

does not exist. Deconstructionism presupposes that there is no ultimate authority in the

universe. Deconstruction, then, is simply a form of literary or communication sabotage.

At this point, a reasonable question is, what does communication and deconstruction have

to do with this essay on empowering missional artists as leaders and voices for society? A great

deal actually! First, postmodernism, the ideology behind deconstruction is the prevalent

philosophical cultural climate of contemporary western society. Understanding this has a great

deal to do with leadership in our day. Postmodern thinking essentially rejects all modern

constructs of leadership and authority, except interestingly enough, the role of the arts. The

sciences, the government, and the church possess very little, if any, influence as the

postmodernists have placed a question mark over all authority systems. The postmodernists are

listening with their eyes and searching for transcendence through their senses. Wrong or right –

this is the way it is. This is reason enough to wake up and empower mainstream artist into the

wilderness of our dying western cultures with God’s redemptive reality and truth.

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Secondly, effective communication which yields change in the 21 more specifically in the
last 25 years, involves a broad use of the arts. Orality has taken somewhat of a back seat in

communicating in our postmodern world. Though rational oral discourse is an art form in its own

right, it is less trusted today than ever before in history, though in the church cultural setting it

remains the art form of choice. Still churches around the world are “experimenting with diverse