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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. |
