The Founder's Vision
For
reasons fully unknown to me, I have always felt a call to serve the poor. Part
of it I suspect is having twelve years of Christian education, another part is
having good parents to instill in me Christian values, and lastly, it is God’s
particular grace to me of where I often most readily encounter the face of the
suffering Christ.
Had
you asked me several years, I would have never dreamed of God asking me to start
a ministry. But this is exactly what has happened. Good
Shepherd Ministries arose out of the need of men in crisis. A little
background is needed for this statement to put it in the proper context.
Experts
state that anyone who is behind bars is in crisis. After coming across some the
of the statistics on the men I came to understand why this statement is so true.
The majority of them, (90%) never had a positive male role model in life. The
majority of them have been abused, are from low-income families and are from
divorced parents. Fifty percent of them have a 6th grade reading level. Over 80%
of the men will lose contact with their family support system within five years.
Of those men who came in married, 85% of them will leave divorced. And of those
few still married, 50% of them will be divorced in one year. The cost of getting
rehabilitation is far more expensive than most of us realize.
The
national average for people returning to prison is around 75-85%, depending on
your source. That means those who have degrees in this field are having a 75%
failure rate! Now if you or I had a financial manager with that dismal rate, we
would probably no longer keep him as our financial advisor and he would soon be
out of a career. Yet, this “growth industry” continues business as usual
(The state of Ohio, in its recent new budget, discontinued most rehabilitation
services in order to fund building more prisons for the expected 30% inmate
population growth in the next 5 years.). And we, as taxpayers, continue footing
the bill at $27,000 a year per inmate- probably as much we could send someone to
Harvard!
I
received a letter from a resident reflecting some of this. In it, he states,
“I would really like to know where the rehabilitation comes in. This place is
a breeding ground for hate. Everyday when I should be able to be a better person
than yesterday, I just feel hate growing in me. I really don’t like that. When
the day comes that I am able to walk out of these fences as a free man, I know I
will be a worse person that I was when I came in. I am starting to believe that
is what they want. ‘Job security’ they call it.”
Good
Shepherd Ministries is a response to this tragic situation as we “ hear the
cry of the poor.” (Ps. 109:19) As a Christian ministry, we are committed to
restoring men recently released from incarceration by demonstrating His
unconditional love and mercy in a safe, stable and spiritual home environment so
they can successfully re-enter society, after having first paid their just debt
to it.
The farther I go in this work, the more I am realizing this venture with
the Holy Spirit is also about helping, the children of these men. These children
have a six times greater rate of going to prison than the average kid. And
eighty percent of juveniles who stay in a detention center 18 months or longer
end up in prison. As Good Shepherd
Ministries help men restore their own physical, emotional, financial and
spiritual lives with God’s help, then he will be able to be fully present to
his children’s (and wife’s) needs. Another man wrote me recently of how his
recovery from drugs is affecting his daughter. “God has revealed Himself to me
a little bit each day of something better He as in store for my life. I now
chose to give hope and encouragement to those around me. Today, I am a father to
my 15 year old daughter, even while behind the walls. I never would have
believed it, but I am a strong force in her life, providing life, love, praise,
direction and hope in her sometimes upside down world.
As
a Christian, I can not help but observe two things. One, after having lived in 7
different parishes over the course of my life, I can not recall any of them
having a ministry specifically for it’s parishioners in prison, despite having
a ministry for just about any other group of its people. And two, I observe the
close parallel between the ministry of Luke and the mission of Good Shepherd
Ministries. Scripture scholars tell us his gospel is particularly sensitive to
social justice issues and to Jesus’ healing ministry. While we can’t have
the fortunate opportunity to travel side by side in person with Jesus like Luke,
we can imitate him and the Master in our lives, by living out the gospel values,
as expressed in the beatitudes. We may not be able to personally fulfill the
mandate of Jesus to “visit those in prison,” but we can “remember those in
prison as if [we] were their fellow prisoners” (Hebrews 13:3) by giving a show
of support to those on the front lines.