Post by guest blogger Derek Vance. Derek Vance is currently on his second Summer Project with Keynote. He is a senior at Brown University, where he studies Public Policy and Religion.
Myself and the other students participating in the Keynote Summer Project are looking forward to the unique opportunity we have been given to share the Gospel with people all over the country. We’ve recently learned that the majority of those people will be inmates at correctional facilities.
I already expected this to be the case because I spent last summer with Keynote, but many of my fellow students who are experiencing Keynote for the first time are feeling a little bit nervous about going behind bars and barbed-wire. Honestly, I’m nervous about going into prisons again, even after ministering in ten prisons last summer. After all, the people in prison are the scum of the earth, and we shouldn’t be wasting our time by sharing the Gospel with these social reprobates anyway. Right?…………..…..
WRONG!
OK OK, that is an extreme view, and I know that none of the students here this summer feel that people in prison are beyond deserving of God’s truth and grace, but it is easy to be nervous about going behind bars to minister to convicted felons, mostly because of our own assumptions about prisoners. We assume that every prisoner is a carbon copy of Hannibal Lecter, ready at any moment to jump from the shadows and attack innocent people with a homemade shank. We assume that prisons are full to the brim of hateful people with scorn oozing from their pores– people who do not want to hear a story about a God who wants to rescue them because He is so far removed from them and their situation that they would never receive His message. This is not the case.
Yes, there are unashamed sociopaths in prison, and there are prisoners with a disdain so high that they will never open their hearts to God’s word, but the majority of people behind bars are truly remorseful about whatever they did to land them there, and are willing at least to hear what we have to say. I’m willing to bet my last cent that that is true.
The truth of the matter is that we as Christians have a responsibility to share the gospel with those in prison. Luke’s Gospel tells us that we’ve been sent to proclaim liberty to the captives. For me, it took proclaiming true liberty to physical captives to learn the extent of the redemption that Christ freely offers.
Last summer, I had the opportunity to overhear a conversation between a fellow student and a man who was serving a life sentence. I heard him say that he would spend the rest of his life paying for the crime he committed- the crime of murdering his own children. He went on to say that at some point after going to prison, he accepted Christ as his Lord, and that even though he is rightly serving a life sentence for his crimes, he is blameless in the eyes of God because Christ paid the penalty that he deserved.
This man is a murderer, but God’s word tells us that anyone who has hatred in his heart is also a murderer. There were times before I began walking with Christ that I had hatred in my heart. In the eyes of God, I was a murderer, and my sin had separated me from God in the same way that this man’s sin had separated Him from God. Before I heard that man tell his story, I knew that was true, but I only knew it intellectually. I couldn’t understand the depth of this truth until I came face to face (or within earshot) with my brother in Christ who had been forgiven of the sin that society views as worse than all others, but that God views as equal with every other sin.
Galatians chapter 3 tells us that we are all prisoners of sin, and that the only true freedom comes from Jesus Christ. The last time I checked, people who are in prison count as part of “we all.” They may be serving life sentences, but we have the message that can free them from a death sentence.
For more information about prison ministry and opportunities to serve, be sure to check out Bill Glass Champions for Life.
Photo courtesy of timpearcelosgatos
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