The "Idaho 10" -- the volunteers from two Southern Baptist churches who took off on an independent rescue mission to Haiti with no training or legal preparation -- now face serious charges in Haiti for heading to the border with a bus load of children and no documentation.

Blunder or bluff, their actions and the subsequent kidnapping charges, have become an international incident some say might prompt people to hold back donating to Haiti in protest.

Reporters have spoken with many of their parents, some hungry and homeless, who turned their children over for vague promises of a better life. A trial may reveal whether the parents had informed consent to allow their children to go with the Idaho 10, if they clearly understood what the mission group planned or knew whether the group could deliver on its promises.

Remember that the Idaho 10 flew in under the banner of faith. The web site for East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho, one of two churches which recruited volunteers for the mission, promoted the trip with a link, since removed, to the New Life Children's Refuge. It speaks of gathering children not only from an orphanage but also from the streets and hospitals.

Roger Oldham, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention, says that while the denomination, legendary for aid and relief around the world from the Tsunami to Katrina to Haiti, requires its mission volunteers to have cross-cultural training before heading out, they have "heartfelt concern" for the "detainees" -- the Idaho 10.

Oldham carefully distinguished between volunteers acting independently and those who participate in thousands of mission trips and volunteer projects through the SBC's two aid and relief arms, the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board.

Both agencies. he said...

... have a long and storied history of rendering aid in times of crisis and requiring that all their volunteers have training and orientation to the culture and laws of the places where they serve.

We cannot discourage volunteers from acting on their own but we heavily emphasize --and this unfortunate incident raises heightened awareness -- that they need to have proper preparation.

That said. Oldham said people are still..

... very distressed to hear news of the charges. Southern Baptists are down-to-earth, ordinary hard working people who serve as volunteers on missions around the world. They have a heartfelt sense of grief for the 10 detainees as well as prayerful concern that an amicable resolution be found.

They also find it offensive that the Idaho volunteers' motives, not only their actions, have been so widely and unfairly condemned, Oldham said.

Whether their actions were wrong is a legal question. But it is separate -- and wrong, says Oldham -- to condemn their motives.

Apart from the legal questions, do the "Idaho 10" have a faith-based defense -- they were modeling God's love through service to others -- that makes them innocent in the court of your opinion? Are you so outraged that any U.S. citizen could be treated this way that you will hold back donating aid to Haiti?