Mission leaders, the people they mobilize and teams on the field need both early and ongoing conversations around race, cultural differences and conflict in order to cultivate a healthy dynamic for all, especially for African American missionaries, said speakers on the first day of the online National African American Missions Conference.

At first, the words were faint, harmlessly percolating in my mind, but a question soon formed and draped over my shoulders like a yoke, “Did I prepare him for this?”.  Foot on brake, not yet ready to drive away, I gazed with yearning through my car window at the back of my oldest boy while his huge frame eagerly pranced through the quad to the entrance of his college dormitory.