Book Review of Short-Term Mission by Brian M. Howell

Short-Term Mission: An Ethnography of Christian Travel Narrative and Experience
by Brian M. Howell
ISBN 978-0-8308-3973
IVP Academic
Reviewed by Clint Walker

Short-term missions is a fairly recent phenomenon in the history of the church. A number of factors play into the development of this phenomenon, most notably, the proliferation and relative affordability of persons in more affluent countries to travel to more and more distant and culturally diverse places. At the beginning of the modern missions movement, people left to the mission field, and they were lucky to return to their sending churches once or twice in a lifetime. Today, people can fly across the world in less than 24 hours.

Brian Howell is an anthropologist by trade, and has put his knowledge to work studying short-term mission trips, their effects, and the narratives that they create among those that participate. He concludes that short-term missions are "not exactly tourism, pilgrimage, or mission, but a hybrid of all three" (p.229). Through his study, he uncovers narratives that emerge from these short term mission trips. While a few narratives that come out of these experiences are healthy, there are many others that are not.

The book exposes the narratives that are often created by short-term missions, and seeks to find ways to modify or tweak the short-term mission, training, and debriefing so that people can have an experience that is meaningful, and brings HEALTHY transformation for participants and is also a positive experience for those served.

When this book was released several years ago, it created quite a splash in Christian evangelical circles. Half a decade later, this text needs to be considered and reconsidered by churches and missions organizations, and integrated not only into how we do short term missions, but how we engage our local communities.