Practical Ministries Class – Lesson #8

“Prison Ministry”

Introduction: Today we want to take a look at “Prison Ministry” and if we have time we may want to go back and finish up a lesson or two that we did not complete earlier in this series.

There are two kinds of people behind bars: those who are guilty and those who are not guilty. In all the times I visited in the Federal and State prison system, I never met even one person who said they were guilty. I did find one in a local/county jail who admitted that they were guilty. When you go into any prison situation, you are not there to evaluate the prisoner; you are not there to evaluate the legal system; you are not there to evaluate the prison system. You are there to share Jesus Christ with a person who is lost in sin, who resides behind prison bars. The only difference between the person who is incarcerated and many who are out on the street is that this individual was caught, tried, and found guilty of their crime in a court of law. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” – Romans 3:23 We have all sinned, we have all done wrong, we have all broken God’s laws and are thus guilty and deserving the death sentence, “For the wages of sin is death;…” –Romans 6:23a

It would be nice if you could just walk into a prison and start talking with those incarcerated there. YOU CAN’T DO THAT. You first have to get permission to visit from the warden or the jailer. You may have to be authorized by the incarcerated individual as well, for permission to visit with them.

What should you expect? If you are visiting in a local or county jail, you may be asked to sit in a little room with bulletproof glass between you and the incarcerated. You will talk to each other through the glass by means of a telephone. The little stools you sit on will probably be attached securely to the floor and your legs and other parts will get sore if you sit there very long. This means that you have got to really want to talk with the person on the other side of the glass, to be willing to sit there a long time.

If it is a Federal prison, you may need to get permission from the warden or jailer to get in there to visit. One of the things that I found helpful, was to call and talk to the Chaplain at the prison several weeks ahead of my visit. I told them who I was and what my position in the church was (preacher). I told him who I wanted to see, and how I found out about this individual. (usually some family member had asked me to visit them) I would make arrangements with the Chaplain to meet him in the front lobby area of the prison. He would escort me inside where the prisoner I wished to see would already be in a separate area reserved for visits. You might be asked what you are going to teach. What books or literature you may be using. If you take in anything into a Federal prison, it would be inspected thoroughly to be sure that you weren’t trying to smuggle in a gun, small knife, drugs, etc. in a hollowed out area in the Bible/books/literature. I was personally never frisked upon entering the prison, but I had been told of others who had been. It seems that I left my keys, coins, small pocketknife, and other things that might be used as weapons with one of the prison guards at one prison.

If the Chaplain is helping you, your visit will go very smoothly. Sometimes you get into a situation where the person you want to see might be in “lockdown” and no visitors will be permitted under any circumstances. At other times, you may actually make the visit and accomplish some good.

In the Federal prisons, there were security locks that you had to walk through. They were constructed of bulletproof glass. They had a hydraulically operated door on the front and back side. The front door opened, you stepped inside. The front door would close. Then the back door would open and you walked into the prison area. In one prison, you then made a right turn and a very large iron/steel gate had to be unlocked before you could enter the area where the prisoners were. I distinctly remember the very large brass key that the doorkeeper used to open that iron door that went from floor to ceiling. I remember the sounds of steel against steel as it opened on its hinges. I remember the sound that it made as it closed tightly behind me and the noise that I heard as that big brass key turned and locked the gate behind us. The chaplain took me to a room that was decent sized, but had rather sparse furniture. The man I met was 3-4 times my size. I don’t remember much about my conversation with him. He was lost in sin, a very violent criminal that had been convicted, and he would spend a very, very long time behind bars in that Federal prison. Somehow I remember finding out about the reason he was incarcerated. I wish I hadn’t because I became fearful of him and finally quit going to see him. I did make arrangements with another Church of Christ preacher, who had a good record in prison ministries, to go visit this fellow.

It seems that it helps immensely if you have the right disposition/attitude to be able to work with people who are incarcerated.

The ideal situation is if you can get a small group Bible study set up within the prison. Several church members from the outside can get clearance and will be allowed to go in and conduct a Bible study to a group at one time. It is NEVER wise to send a woman into an all-male prison population, even if there are a large number of men from the church with her. The same is true of visiting in a women’s prison….that no men from church should go to visit directly with them. Even written correspondence between men and women, where one is incarcerated and the other is not, should be discouraged if you are trying to set up a Bible study that way. The inmate might misconstrue it as romantic infatuation. (If you are already personal or family friends with the incarcerated, that is a different story. Also, if you visit someone in Juvenile Detention, a husband/wife team might be able to do some good, especially if the teen is known to your family, or your family is known to the teen)

Once you have cleared the hurdles and have begun a regular series of studies with a prisoner/prisoners, you may have one or more that wish to be baptized. Chances are that the Warden/jailer won’t think that the prisoner should be allowed to leave the premises to be baptized. Occasionally, they may co-operate and let several armed guards go with you and the prisoner to be baptized in a church building. More than likely, if any baptism is to take place, it will have to be in the prison facility. Since the warden/jailer doesn’t want a large volume of water sitting around where the inmates can drown each other, you may have to be creative. Did you know that there is a baptistery on wheels that can be wheeled in, filled with water, and wheeled out? Some prisons, especially in the south, have allowed these to be used. (There are also space saver baptisteries that are actually an oversized communion table on the outside. When the table-top is taken off, the waters of baptism are underneath)

Again let me stress that there are some of our Bible Colleges/Preacher Training Schools that offer special courses in dealing with Prison Ministry. If you feel that you are cut out for this sort of work, let’s talk about it more in detail. We will help you find information so you can get some additional training in Prison Ministry.

What does the Bible have to say about Prison Ministry?

  1. If we have time in class today, I would like for each of you to look up in your Bible concordance (in the back of your Bible, or in the large Strong’s Concordance, or Cruden’s Concordance, or Young’s Concordance) at how many times the words “in prison” or “prison” are used in the New Testament.
  1. Also, check to see whether in each instance the people talked about as being “in prison” were convicted felons, or if they were more “religious prisoners” or “political prisoners”….i.e. Christians who had been imprisoned for their beliefs.
  1. When Jesus said to go into all the world with the Gospel, yes, it even included the areas that are behind prison walls. These people need Jesus, too.