Volunteering
If God is speaking to your heart about volunteering into a Christian ministry inside a prison, there are many ways you can do that work, and some include not having to go inside the prison at all. This page is intended to give you some ideas about how you can do prison work in 3 main ways:
- The first is to show you some things you can do without going inside a facility.
- The second is some things you can do if you are ready to go inside and actually mingle with staff and inmates.
- And finally, some things you can do as a church — as a group of people, perhaps in some kind of combination of the first two.
For further information on these ideas, learn more by using the buttons below associated with your interests. But before you go further, beyond this page, take some time to pray about this and ask God for direction and counsel.
Once you've looked this all over and you decide to investigate further, your first step will be to make contact with the Protestant Chaplain inside the facility that's close to your home. Go to the Department of Corrections website for that prison and you should be able to locate the contact information for the Chaplain. Tell him/her what you are interested in doing and ask him directly how you might be able to help him with his ministry. IMPORTANT – if your first contact with the Chaplain doesn't seem encouraging, don't give up! These guys get calls all the time like yours — people with good intentions, but they quickly loose interest so he won't let you waste his time. Be tenacious! If he refers you to existing groups that already work with him, make contact with them and join one of them.
God bless you for considering all of this. Once you get involved in this work you'll wish you had pursued it a long time ago. It can be incredibly rewarding.