Re-Entry, book review

This week's read was, "Re-Entry, Making the Transition from Missions to Life at 'Home,'" by Peter Jordan.

    This was not my favorite read on the subject of re-entry. I've not read much else on this topic, but I don't think that I would necessarily enthusiastically recommend this to missionaries returning from the field. While it's not a very thick book and I understand their desire to keep things brief, much of it was far too simplistic for my taste. The author attempted to address people returning from both short term(summer mission trips) and longer term placements all at the same time. And while I can see that some explanation should be given to short-termers, there's really not much comparison between a person returning after two weeks and someone returning after a long term stay. Really, at that point in the book(the first half), I was ready to stop reading, but I pressed on, and I'm glad that I did.
    The second half of the book dealt almost entirely with long termers(those who actually lived overseas), and while I again felt that much of it was simplistic, I did actually pull some notes out. The second half dealt with four particular signs of reverse culture shock(feeling out of place, feeling lonely, reacting in odd ways, reacting to western materialism); readjusting to your home church; accountability; horror stories(that was a chapter dealing with hostility and apathy from the western church); families and re-entry; a return on God's investment(serving in your new environs). There were also a couple of self assessment tests included for pre-field departure and post-field departure that I thought were really good. I wrote both of them down in my journal and went through all of the questions.
    So I guess if I was asked to recommend this to a missionary returning from the field, I'd say to skip the first section and go straight to the second. Was it that helpful to me? No. But perhaps it would have been more helpful if I had read it last Fall, when preparing for departure from Ukraine.