Allison Mary Howell was born in the mining town of Manono in the Democratic Republic of Congo on 10th November, 1951 the third child of Richard and Margaret Howell who were serving there as missionaries. Allision spent her earliest years there before going to primary school in Zambia and to High School in Australia at Meriden, an Anglican School for Girls in Sydney. Tributes from schoolmates testify to her friendliness and sense of fun, her strong Christian faith, her athletic prowess, and her developing leadership abilities. She served as a competent Head Girl in 1969, her final year of High School.
From there she went on to obtain a BA Hons in Geography from the University of Sydney and an MA in Environmental Geography from the University of Toronto, Canada. These academic interests and expertise would prove invaluable in later years in developing courses at ACI in holistic mission and development. She initially taught and lectured in Geography. In 1978, she served as a Consultant to the UNICEF/WHO Joint Committee on Health Policy Study on “Water Supply and Sanitation as Components of Primary Health Care’. She also worked as a Consultant to the International Nepal Fellowship on the analysis of research on the rehabilitation of leprosy patients back into Hindu Society. In 1980 and 1981, Allison was a Lecturer at the International Training Institute Department of Foreign Affairs, Sydney, Australia.
During these years she was approached several times by SIM in Australia to consider serving as a missionary. It was at the third attempt that she came to the realisation that this was God’s calling on her life. In 1981, she was sent by SIM to Chiana in Northern Ghana, to witness to Christ among the Kasena and assist in the building up of the Bible Church of Africa, the young church emerging from SIM’s ministry. She served SIM for 25 years, from 1980 to 2006. Subsequently, though, she never lost touch with friends and colleagues in Chiana, both traditional, including the Kasena Chief, who was a personal friend, and Christian, her Bible Church of Africa friends, as well as in the Kasena communities in the South of Ghana. The tributes on the forevermissed website give an insight into the range of her spiritual and financial support to Chiana Christians and churches. She continued to have a role in SIM, sustaining friendships, also serving for a time on the International Board of Governors during their restructuring drive.
During her early years in Chiana, learning Kasem and immersing herself in the culture, she began to ask questions about gospel and culture engagement, how to present the good news to the Kasena in such a way as to answer their deepest spiritual and religious questions and aspirations. Wrestling with questions that no other missionary appeared to be asking, she realized she needed help. Being close to her elder brother, John, she shared her concerns with him. He, in the meantime, had become a good friend of Kwame Bediako during their time together at the London School of Theology (LST) in the 1970s and had kept in touch with him on Kwame’s return to Ghana.
John put Allison in touch with him and she made several visits to Accra to follow through with those questions. John also put her in touch with Professor Andrew Walls at the University of Aberdeen. With John and Kwame’s encouragement, she embarked on a PhD programme in Religious Studies under Andrew Walls, and, returning to Ghana in 1993, with Kwame Bediako as a second supervisor.
She maintained the contact with the Bediako’s and was gradually drawn in to share in the ministry of Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Centre (ACMC), particularly in relation to the importance of culture and language learning for sharing the gospel. In 1990, she published A Daily Guide for Culture and Language Learning (1990), which became a seminal and influential work for those engaged in cross-cultural mission. She participated in the curriculum development workshops of the Centre in the mid 1990s prior to the start of academic programmes in 1997. She also assisted Professor Andrew Walls in establishing the coursework for Aspects of World Christian History, which was later reconfigured as World Christian History as Mission History and in putting together the MTh/PhD reader for the course. In 1997, Allison joined Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Centre, initially seconded from SIM Ghana on a part-time basis. Her first ACMC assignment came that year, when she contributed to the annual PCG Mission Fields Conference by helping PCG Ministers develop cultural sensitivities in the areas to which they had been sent. She became a Senior Research Fellow in 1999, when her secondment became full-time. In 2006, Allison left SIM, to join Akrofi-Christaller Institute as a fill-time staff member, working on the same terms as the nationals. She was made the first Dean of Accredited Studies, laying the foundation for the successful operations of the Institute’s academic programmes.
During these years, she coordinated gospel and culture workshops, and transcribed and compiled the workshop proceedings; she directed the Kasem track of the Bible commentary workshops and saw it through to a successful completion some 20 years later with the publication of the Kasem commentary on John’s Gospel in December 2021. She contributed many articles to the Journal of African Christian Though through the years. Her PhD thesis, published in 1997 as The Religious Itinerary of a Ghanaian People: The Kasena and the Christian Gospel, became a key text for ACI Meh/PhD and MA programmes.
After understudying Prof Walls for some years, Allison assumed his courses, and also helped to consolidate the research methods course that had been initiated by Kwame Bediako. Later she developed and taught the elective in Holistic Mission and Development and later designed an MA Option on that theme, drawing on her earlier degree studies and interests. In December 2013, she became Associate Professor and Dean of Research.
Thus, her involvement with ACI developed in stages; she began with six-monthly periods of stay from 1997 on secondment from SIM, was seconded fully from SIM in 1999 and joined the faculty full time on 1st January, 2006. She retired at the end of December, 2017 but continued to supervise MTh and PhD students. She moved back to Australia in February, 2019, but continued as adjunct faculty till her passing on 14th November, 2023. Despite increasing ill health, she continued to supervise PhD students to the end, with the final two graduating in December 2023.
For several years, she lived in the ACI Guest House, during which time, being the only faculty member situated on site, she had an important role in the social life of ACI, hosting educational film shows for students in residence at weekends, organizing occasional trips to places of interest, and being a kind of voluntary ‘House Mother’ to them. She eventually moved down to Accra in June 2010, first to Comet Estate in Kwabenya, and two years later, to he own house in Kuottam Estates, Palm Valley, Oyarifa. While recovering from illness in 2016, she also developed her interest in the study of birds in the area. For three consecutive years, she gifted the residents with colourful calendars she created from photographs she had taken of the different species of birds she had observed, thus raising awareness of local wildlife. She endeared herself to the other residents in her community and left a lasting legacy by recreating an abandoned area behind the estates into an environmentally friendly, pleasant parkland named ‘Allison’s Greens’, where residents and others could go and relax in beautiful and serene surroundings.
While her years with SIM in Chiana and in wider SIM roles made a substantial contribution to Christian Mission in Ghana and elsewhere, her service at ACI was perhaps the pinnacle of her achievements. Her extensive legacy will be her contribution to the enhancement of the vision and mission of ACI; her contribution to the upholding of academic standards of excellence; her books and other publications; her diverse and positive impact on students and faculty; her advocacy in fundraising, both for scholarships and bursaries that enhanced student numbers in financially straitened years, as well as for the second phase of the new library development. The substantial amount she was able to raise for this kick-started the final phase that has now been completed.
Allison loved to teach. More than teaching, though, she loved her students and expressed her desire for their success concretely in the sacrifices she made for them. She often sought out relevant books and resources, purchasing them sometimes at her own personal cost to place in the Institute’s reference library or to gift the students themselves. Her generosity of spirit, mentorship and availability were not lost on her students. Thus, three of her former PhD students and younger colleagues edited and published a Festschrift in her honour. Joining the launch event in Legon, Accra, online on 31st May, 2022, Allison expressed her deep joy at what she considered the honour of a lifetime.
Last but by no means least, was her unusual and commendable example of a Western Missionary willing to submit to African leadership and to identify with, and serve, an African-inspired vision on African terms. In this, she stands as a prophetic embodiment of the future role of a Western Missionary in the new missionary dispensation in which we find ourselves, in what Andrew Walls has called ‘the old age’ of the missionary movement from the West, as Western Mission agencies decline, and Non-Western Missionary initiatives become increasingly dominant. Allison read the signs of the times and was willing to cast her lot in with a wholly indigenous mission, research and training venture, bringing her gifts and her funding contacts to bear towards the enhancement of this indigenous institution. The world church would benefit greatly if others were to follow her example.
Finally, on a personal level, her patient endurance and tenacity through the final years of ill health, in which she never lost her feisty spirit, friendliness and zeal for ministry, with the joy of living each day as a gift, will continue to be an inspiration to all who knew her.
‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints’ (Psalm 116:15. By faith we must acknowledge, though with much sorrow for our loss, that in the sight of God, she has completed her work on earth, but her varied and important legacy will live on.