Author Brian Howell says we should start with a robust reconciliation theology.
[ posted 2/7/2013 8:22AM ]
It's a relatively common sight at the airport: the conclusion of a short-term mission trip. A dozen suburban teenagers wearing matching yellow T-shirts talk about two weeks of manual labor at an orphanage and share iPhone photos of their trip to the jungle. Wheaton College anthropologist Brian M. Howell has puzzled over this phenomenon. Is it about service, tourism, personal pilgrimage, or something else completely? Are short-term missions even missions at all? Freelance writer Jeff Haanen spoke with Howell, author of Short-term Mission: An Ethnography of Christian Travel Narrative and Experience (IVP Academic), about how Christians justify short-term mission trips, the problem with these stories, and how churches can do short-term missions better.
As an anthropologist, why write a book on short-term missions?
When I started teaching in the 1990s, I asked students about their
cross-cultural experiences. Some hadn't done anything, or some maybe had
taken a cruise. But when I came to Wheaton College and asked the same
questions, I would get stories about northern Ghana, Mongolia, the Czech
Republic—places people don't normally go on vacation. Short-term
missions had exploded, and all these students had gone on short-term
mission trips.
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