Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2013 | Page 31

Marissa Shults ’13 served in Zambia with Student Ministry Partners (SMP), one of
seven ministries of Wheaton’s Office of Christian Outreach.

Before,
During,
After
Your Trip

&

Dr. Howell’s book is emphatically not intended to be a how-to
manual—which might frustrate pragmatic-minded evangelicals.
“I’m not telling churches what to do,” he says. “I’m offering
new ways to think about what they are doing.” But he does list
some quick interventions based on his research.

Before the trip:
• Spend as much time studying the history, economics, politics, and

Restructuring your STM
Dr. Howell’s main goal is to help STM leaders better accomplish their own
desired reforms by understanding how structure and narrative inhibit the
changes they seek to make. So he offers two suggestions:
• Read the existing research. STM research may be scant, but it does exist.
Empirical research from Robert Priest at Trinity Evangelical Divinity
School (TEDS), preparation and activity guides from Ulrike Sallandt in
Peru, and quantitative studies of STM participants from Kurt Ver Beek at
Calvin College should all be helpful.
• Develop a theology of short-term mission. The command in Matthew
28 to “go and make disciples of all nations” undergirds most missionary
activity but is a poor fit for most STMs. Instead, Dr. Howell recommends
Micah 6:8’s command to “act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly
with your God” because it helps focus STMs on the missio Dei. “Our
guiding narrative should be one of humility and fellowship even more
than service and sacrifice,” he says.
“Until the agendas of STM are structurally reoriented around the missio
Dei, with education and community as the primary goals, or at least equally
missional as the activities and projects of visiting groups, then the narratives
of these trips will continue to be created primarily by the cultural context
and historical trajectory from which travelers come,” he writes.
As an anthropologist, Dr. Howell wants people to travel and experience
what God is doing in other parts of the world. For him, the question has
always been not should STM teams travel, but how should they travel.
“The opportunity to learn directly from Christians in other countries is
a new resource that should be nourished, not extinguished,” he said. “By
recognizing the cultural dynamics of STMs and then reshaping them
through an understanding of how culture changes, these travels may begin
to have more lasting and substantive effects on everyone involved.”

spiritual context of the community as fundraising and preparing for
the activities. “It is worth the sacrifice in efficiency to develop a
more robust ability to see and understand the context in which the
team works.”
• Invite people from the country or community to which the team
is traveling to address the group. “Such a visit would open up ways
of speaking about what is happening in the country (politically,
spiritually, economically) in ways that are both personal and relevant.”

During the trip:
• Spend more time talking to community leaders about the

problems, solutions, and initiatives already at work. “Many STMs
spend the vast majority of their time with children, but that’s such
an asymmetrical relationship. Children are less likely to point out
the ways a traveler is misunderstanding a situation.”
• Present visits to a museum, monument, or natural site as part
of the mission, rather than just tourism. “All aspects of learning and
exposure that lead to the healing and creation of community
honor God and his purposes in the world.”

After the trip:
• Plan mandatory follow-up meetings to review what people have

learned, how it has affected them, and what changes they
have made or should make in their thinking or behavior. This is
where narratives can be shaped so that takeaway impressions
a ɔ