Member-only story
Why I’ll Never Go on a Mission Trip Again
Our well-intentioned attempts to serve Black and Brown people barely made an impact
I grew up in a mostly White church, where a mission trip was a rite of passage. To fund a trip, we’d raise money through car washes, bake sales, or bottle drives. We prayed. We wrote letters to relatives asking for money. We believed we were being called by God to travel to poor countries and bring the gospel to Black and Brown people.
My first mission was in the summer of 2001. I had just graduated high school, and I traveled to Haiti for a week with a group of teens from my church. One afternoon, our group set out to Neply, a small village neighboring Leogane. Both villages were separated by a rocky dirt road that characterized most of the roads in Haiti. We piled into the back of an old Isuzu truck, and as we jostled past the palm leaf thatched houses, the Haitian children came out to wave at us. Some wore no shoes. Other wore no pants, dusty penises peeking out from neon t-shirts.
Someone ripped into a bag of candy, throwing it behind the truck, leaving a trail of junk food in our wake. As we crept along, more children came out of their homes. We heard frantic howling as the kids fought over the small pieces of candy. I laughed, watching more kids scurry behind the truck, grabbing…
