If you are a Pastor or on the Leadership team of your Church and you're hearing God speak to your heart about a Prison Ministry, please don't hesitate to speak up about this. As you know, the Bible has plenty to say about how we need to care for prisoners so this can become an important part of your Church's Home Missions program.
The first step in the process is to recruit members into your Church's Prison Ministry Team. These folks will need to be very prayerful and dedicated to this concept. It should have a minimum of 3 active participants and 5 or 7 are better yet. Whatever program you get involved with will likely be a weekly thing (Tuesday evenings from 6 to 8 for example) so you'll want to have enough members to cover people going on vacations or getting sick, especially if members of your team are husband and wife. The very worst thing you can do is have to cancel a class session because you have no one to cover it. Chaplains get turned off very quickly to programs that become sporadic and inconsistent.
Here are some ideas that a Church ministry can do –
- This first idea is probably the one that's best if you are just getting started in prison work. Arrange with the prison Chaplain for 2 or 3 of you to just go inside with him or another established volunteer group and work with them for a while. You'll need to get to know that particular facility's ins and outs in terms of things to do and more importantly, things NOT to do. You need to experience some things first hand, like understanding the term 'Over-familiarity'. What happens and what to do if the alarm goes off and the yard is called down? What are the protocols for women going inside Men's facilities? What are some of the areas that you should never wander into? There are many more things like these that are important for you to learn and that is best done while you're working inside. Your Chaplain will let you know how long it might take for him to clear you to come in for more independent work.
- Once you've gained the confidence of the Chaplain, you'll want to investigate existing programs that your group might conduct inside. There are several good programs you can research on the internet. The one I have the most experience with is a good one to consider. The course is called T.U.M.I. (The Urban Ministry Institute). It's a 4 year, Seminary level Christian Leadership program that is very intense. It's sponsored by Prison Fellowship across the nation, but your church could sponsor the program, either through PF or on your own. The course is written by Dr. Don Davis and published by World Impact. For more details about this program, go to the Projects tab here on our website. If you would like more contact information about either of these organization, call or email me as shown in our Contact Us tab.
- Another course that's fairly new and on a much smaller scale is one we've put together called the Christian Anger Management Project (C.A.M.P.). We've conducted it here in Folsom prison a few times and its scale is set up for 60 classroom hours. We conducted it every Saturday morning from 9 to 11:30 for 30 weeks. Between classes, the students were expected to complete the homework assignment in preparation for the following week. We are always open to supplying everything a group might need to conduct this class elsewhere. All you'll need to supply is the Facilitators. We have a Facilitator's package that we send to prospective volunteers that express an interest in this curriculum. Contact us if you're feeling led to do this very important work.
- Here's an idea that requires very little, if ever, working on the inside of a Correctional Facility. Nearly all Chaplains that I've spoken to have very tight budgetary restraints. Over the years a few of us would occasionally buy things for the Protestant ministry at Folsom Prison. Everything from guitar strings or microphones for the worship team in Greystone Chapel, to paying for special celebration events around holidays like Easter or Christmas. But a big one we would chip in for every year was the greeting card ministry. Under the direction of Chaplain Rogowski, an inmate would manage the distribution of greeting cards for Mother's Day, Christmas, Easter Birthdays. Each inmate in the facility would be given a 5 or 6 card packet to send to their loved ones. There's a company that sells these cards to us at great discount. Every August we order about 15,000 cards at a cost of around $1200. The inmates really appreciate this ministry. So, a couple of years ago a few of us got together and set up a Non-profit (501c3) to collect donations from people and pay for things like this whenever the Chaplain requested them. The ministry is called Folsom Protestant Ministry. Our website is FPMinistry.org . For more information about this program, contact us either on our website, the FPM website or give me a call. I'd be happy to coach you through the process.