How much responsibility do Christian communities bear for the gang-related deaths of David and Natalie Lloyd?

May 25, 2024

In a tragic story out of Haiti, three Christian missionaries were ambushed, shot, and killed by gangs sometime late Thursday night.

The victims included Natalie Lloyd (daughter of Missouri State Representative Ben Baker) and her husband Davy Lloyd (son of the missionaries who founded the group Missions in Haiti). The third victim was Jude Montis, the Haitian director of the non-profit.

Natalie and Davy were 21 and 23, respectively.

(Follow above article link to view PDFs that accompany this article.)

It is devastating to hear about the murders of people who were obviously innocent victims. They didn’t deserve this. They went to Haiti to bring peace. They ran a school, along with two churches, and had good rapport with local gang members… until they got caught in the crossfire of rival gangs.

But none of this had to happen.

Haiti is currently one of the most dangerous hotspots in the world. Since July of 2023, the U.S. State Department has warned Americans against traveling there; non-emergency government employees and their family members have literally been ordered to leave. This is how our government summarizes the dangers:

Violent crime, often involving the use of firearms, such as  armed robbery, carjackings, and kidnappings for ransom that include U.S. citizens are common. Mob killings against presumed criminals have been on the rise since late April. Travelers are sometimes followed and violently attacked and robbed shortly after leaving the Port-au-Prince international airport. Robbers and carjackers also attack private vehicles stuck in heavy traffic congestion and often target lone drivers, particularly women. As a result, the U.S. Embassy requires its personnel to use official transportation to and from the airport. 

The State Department adds that it probably can’t help U.S. citizens in trouble, and local police are extremely ineffective. How much more of a warning do people need? If you don’t have a damn good reason to be there, you shouldn’t be there.

It’s not even safe for missionaries. In 2021, 17 members of Christian Aid Ministries were kidnapped and held for ransom. After some of them were released in exchange for cash, a dozen others escaped on their own.

As recently as two weeks ago, different Christian missionaries in Haiti were begging to come home to the U.S. because “we’re in a bad area” and “the gunfire never stops.” (That’s when the airport was still shut down.)

And yet these missionaries were just waltzing into Haiti like the past never happened, remaining stubborn even as things got worse.

The Port-au-Prince airport reopened this week after being closed for months, giving the couple a fresh opportunity to flee. They still stayed.

Mr. Lloyd said he told his son he could fly home for a break on Wednesday after the airport reopened, but he declined the offer.

“He just had a heart for the Haitian people,” he said.

No doubt he loved the people he was serving. It doesn’t make his decision to stay any less irresponsible given the circumstances.

That doesn’t mean they deserved to be killed. But it does mean they chose to enter a dangerous situation knowing the potential consequences. This wasn’t unexpected. This wasn’t an accident. This certainly wasn’t “unimaginable,” as a White House spokesperson described it. These weren’t people in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was the inevitable consequence of joining the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party. They assumed the gangs wouldn’t target them; it turned out the gangs didn’t give a damn who they were because of course they didn’t.

It’s all the more tragic because it’s not even the first time a missionary has been killed for barging into a place where he shouldn’t be.

In 2018, a Christian missionary named John Allen Chau attempted to reach the isolated tribe that inhabits North Sentinel Island off the eastern coast of India. He was, predictably, shot with arrows and killed by the historically unreachable people. Chau’s name became a stand-in for faith-based hubris and irresponsibility; after all, he was so focused on evangelizing at any cost that he neglected to think about what diseases he might bring to the island, or why they might prefer to remain in isolation, or why he thought throwing some fish at them or showing them a Bible would suddenly cause them to change their way of life.

For decades, the Indian government has protected the island from outside contact. People are not supposed to travel within three miles of the island; Chau got around the patrol officers by pretending to fish. He ignored authorities and paid for it with his life.

Did he deserve to die? No.

Should anyone have been surprised by his death? Also no.

The same can be said of the Lloyds, who knowingly stepped into a minefield despite countless experts warning them against it. They were so blinded by their faith that they ignored every warning. (According to Baker, the two became full-time missionaries in Haiti in early 2023, long after the nation was experiencing chaos, but they didn’t leave even when the travel advisories went into effect. Davy had grown up in Haiti and, after graduating from a Bible college in the U.S., wanted to return there despite the turmoil. After the two married in June of 2022, they moved to Haiti to continue their work.)

Will anyone in their Christian circles take any responsibility for encouraging them to take such a pointless, avoidable risk?

Why are missionaries even necessary in a nation that’s roughly 94% Christian already?

How many missionaries have to be sacrificed in perilous regions before churches decide the health and safety of its members matter more than saving people whose needs go well beyond the Bible? Unless those bibles were covered in Kevlar and contained food on the inside Shawshank-style, they were not helping anybody.

When will missionaries recognize that faith is not going to protect them from the threats staring them in the face?

The people of Haiti need a lot of help. They need safety and security and a respite from gang violence. You know what they don’t need? More religion.

Three Christians died because no one in their life circles had the decency to talk them out of a very foolish idea. Sure, they were adults capable of making their own decisions, but I would guess they were aways told the opposite—that they were selfless, courageous, and doing something of immense value. Because of that unwarranted praise, their lives were needlessly cut short.

The Lloyds deserved so much better than that.