An Alabama church secretly sent kids to evangelize in a homeless encampment

Parents were told their kids would volunteer at a food bank during an out-of-state summer camp. Instead, they were sent to evangelize in a tent city.

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It’s easy to see why kids in Alabama might have been excited about attending a church youth group summer camp taking place in Midfield, Texas.

Leatherwood Baptist Church in Anniston promoted the “Youth Camp,” taking place from June 4-7, on their social media, saying the kids would mix worship services and Bible study with going to the beach, playing games, and doing service projects. It would cost $250 and scholarships were available to students who needed them.

A week before the flight took off, the church began promoting the same event as a “Mission Trip.” Perhaps it was a distinction without a difference, but it wasn’t exactly screaming canoes and summer camp anymore.

Because it seemed to be such a shift from what was originally promoted, one mother, Courtney Wingo, specifically asked Youth Ministries Director Mike Webb if kids would be evangelizing to the homeless because she feared that’s where this was going.

She told MinistryWatch that she remembers specifically asking if her daughter would be under bridges handing out tracts to homeless people. Wingo is familiar with Houston and that it is considered one of the most dangerous cities in America for violent crime.

Wingo said Webb assured her the service project involved time serving at an area food bank. Satisfied, Wingo gave the church the remaining balance for the trip.

The first day of the camp came and went, and everything looked fine—and in line with the itinerary. But things took a strange turn after that.

The plan was to have the kids go work at a local food bank, which is a perfectly commendable (and safe) service project. But right after that, the children were driven to a local Tent City, where unhoused people set up encampments underneath a bridge. The kids, who may have been as young as nine, were told to evangelize to the people there, as if Jesus would solve their myriad problems. The group returned the next day to do even more of it—this time, with food in hand as a kind of bribe. (There’s a safe way to feed the hungry. This wasn’t it.)

The kids were never trained as evangelists. They were not taught what safety measures to take. They weren’t warned about the possible dangers involved with going into that particular kind of space—including the possibilities of violence, drugs, needles, and other health hazards.

They were just brainwashed into thinking that spreading the Gospel overrode any of those concerns.

A picture of the youth group going to a Houston tent city (via Facebook)

In a Facebook post on the final day of camp, the church posted the above picture and said “3 residents of tent city made the decision to follow Jesus.” It’s unclear how many of them just said it because they felt pressure. But more importantly, there was no mention of what precautions the church took before entering a space that they were never invited into.

The picture is disturbing for so many reasons. It just reeks of the kind of white savior complex that has hounded many Christian ministries, where groups of well-meaning but extremely naïve teenagers think their brief foray into Africa will fix everything. In this case, though, it’s the adults who made them go there. It’s the haves vs. the have-nots. And the “haves” in this case have absolutely no clue what to do other than assail their targets with the most useless item in their arsenal: Bible stories.

When Webb, the church’s Youth Ministries Director, spoke about the trip on June 8, after they returned, he practically admitted everything they did regarding Tent City was made up on the spot with no regard for anyone’s safety. He literally found that place after doing an on-the-spot Google search for where the youth group could find homeless people in that part of Texas—and he knew parents would be upset about it.

… When we went to Tent City, I'm not gonna lie, when we first pulled up, we went to the food bank. When we left, I knew that we needed to go serve the homeless, not just in the food bank where it was safe. We needed to get out of our comfort zone and go… As we were leaving, I Googled "Where can I find the homeless population in Houston?" First thing pops up? Tent City. So that's where we're going.

We drive over there in the vans. We pull in.

Ain't no way I'm getting these kids out of this van. I will be fired. Mamas will be beatin’ down my door. We're not getting out.

We pulled to the end. We circled the cul-de-sac. We're pulling back out.

Guys…?

I even… I even tried to justify it.

Guys, I just want you to see what's here. I want you to see how people live. I need you to understand how fortunate you are. This is what it is, guys. All right, let's head back to the ranch…

…

[After decided to return]

But let me just tell you: We get out, we walk through, and we didn't have anything, because we didn't know what we were doing. That was another piece of it: I didn't want to walk in there with 75 people, into a homeless village, and we ain't got anything to give. Like, we're just invading your space, you know what I mean?

But we had that older couple that walked with us, and we began talking, and I said, "Guys, we're coming back tomorrow. We're going to put together some food. We're going to put together some sandwiches. We're going to come back. We're going to feed, and we're going to open doors."

And everybody was, you know, hearing this message, and we started promoting it amongst the people. We started telling them that was kind of our… our initial welcome.

Hey, we're going to be back here tomorrow…

He took 75 kids, split them up into groups of three or four, and had them run rampant around the tent city looking for new converts. Only three adults were supervising them, according to one account. (Five other adults stayed back to give out food.) In the sermon, Webb admitted that one of the homeless people he spoke to was “high as a cat, right back on that meth,” which just raises more questions about why he thought it would be okay for kids to preach at these people.

Even if you think the cause of helping the homeless is justified, to take that many children to a space where safety couldn’t be guaranteed and precautions were fully ignored was gross incompetence on the part of the church. They’re lucky nothing bad happened to the kids.

But despite what Webb implied, not everyone was okay with what he did.

That included Courtney Wingo’s child. As she explained to MinistryWatch, her daughter was so excited about the summer camp, she used her own birthday money to pay the $250 balance. But when the Tent City fiasco happened, the daughter called her mom up because she knew something sketchy was happening.

Later that day, back at the ranch where the group was staying, Kamryn called her mom and reported what had happened. She said she was not given the choice to remain in the van with any of the leaders.

Kamryn was not given any evangelism training, Wingo said, nor were any safety instructions provided, other than “stay close.”

On June 6, many from the group returned to the tent city, but this time students were given the option to stay at the lodge. Kamryn chose to stay behind.

Webb admitted he pressured at least a few of the students to return to the homeless camp.

When Courtney later confronted the church’s Senior Pastor Phil Winningham about how irresponsible that was, the church refunded her daughter’s $250, but they still haven’t apologized for anything they did.

Courtney later wrote a formal letter to the church expressing her disappointment and frustration:

“[Kamryn] was completely unprepared — emotionally, physically, and spiritually — for what she encountered in the tent city,” Wingo wrote. “She feels hurt, misled, and betrayed. That is not the spiritual or emotional impact I was expecting from what was advertised as a church-sponsored youth event.

“This is not about whether ministry to the homeless is right or wrong — it is about the ethical, legal, and moral obligation to protect minors, communicate transparently with parents, and respect clearly stated boundaries. It is completely unacceptable for a youth pastor to disregard a parent’s explicit instructions and expose children to high-risk environments without consent,” Wingo wrote.

Ignoring consent, of course, is something conservative churches know about all too well.

In a Reddit post Courtney made last week, she wrote that she got directly in Webb’s face after that sermon for putting her daughter in a dangerous situation.

“Yes, yes I did,” he allegedly told her, adding that he did it because “God led me."

Courtney said she and her daughter no longer go to Leatherwood: “A little too cult-like for me and mine!” (She did not respond to my request for comment.)

The church is apparently planning another youth trip to Honduras, but they have since removed all that information from their social media.

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