Some providential interactions in the last couple of weeks brought home again important things about the privilege of ministry in the California State Prisons near Fresno.
The first interaction demonstrated the part mature believing inmates play in evangelism and discipleship. After one recent chapel study, I was listening to two men who regularly attend and who help to coordinate most of what occurs in Protestant fellowship among the 800 inmates. Though the men have come from different backgrounds, they work well together, and their conversation had to do with their encouraging another man to take a turn at leading a lesson for an in-house gathering on another day. It was very heartening to hear the soundness of the brotherly counsel they had given, as they described their coaching of the third man on properly handling the Word.
I was reminded of how constant the work of gospel proclamation and of discipleship is in the unique society of prison life. If my role can be one of equipping brothers, their work will exponentially surpass what any outsider could accomplish. Very often men who attend the chapels report that their conversion or their first real establishment in the gospel by faith occurred inside the walls. Virtually their whole foundation for understanding has to be built in that isolation.
One of the two men I’ve just mentioned I’ve known now for about eight years, the other for one year. The other day I marveled again at the level of acquired knowledge in the first, when I shared with him how blessed I had been in participating in the Home Mission Board/Vital Churches retreat in April in Los Angeles. Dr. William VanDoodewaard, associate professor of church history at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, had shared with us about gospel preaching as it related to the amazing stir caused by a layman’s 1645 book The Marrow of Modern Divinity. As soon as I mentioned it, the brother inmate said, “Oh, the Marrow Controversy!” He began to describe the basic issue of it, historically and theologically! With a bit of a sigh of chagrin, this fellow reflected on a season of “caged Calvinism” in his own walk, when he was known and regarded in the community of faith for his caustic dealings. He is now looked to more for his rejoicing in the celebration of God’s sovereignty, goodness, freedom, initiative, kindness, and power in salvation.
The other man, who had come from a background of faith quite unfamiliar with Reformed and Presbyterian teaching, is supportive of the work I do and has been a great encouragement to me. He is very consistent and earnest in attendance and very watchful for the well-being of others in their walk. Though he has a busy work role under the state staff chaplain, though he is taking college classes, and though he is constantly called upon to prepare and to lead in Bible study among the men on the yard, he has signed up for the Metanoia Correspondence Course to further foster fellowship between the church outside and inside.
A second striking thought from recent interactions had to do with, on the one hand, knowing some men for years in this ministry, and, on the other hand, constantly meeting new men.
Just yesterday, I was blessed by an unusually strong attendance at one study. After some months of a pattern of seeing about 16 there each week, suddenly there were 22.
In that group was a man who wrote, unsolicited, to the Metanoia regional address on March 1, to say that he had been attending the Bible study for three years. He said, “Your breaking down of the Scriptures (along with the working of the Holy Spirit) has been invaluable to my growth and walking in newness of life and into a meaningful intimate relationship with my Lord.…My Lord has put it in my heart to inform you that your love, dedication, labor, patience and instruction in biblical truths has not and will never be in vain.…”
After a very long incarceration, this fellow anticipates release fairly soon. Will transition to life in the church outside be uncomplicated? Hardly. Many challenges emerge for men who have been away from regular society for so many years. But he can surely be a blessing to the body of Christ. I count it a very high blessing for my own faith to have had his fellowship for three years.
At the same study were at least three men whom I had never met, and another three whom I may have encountered but once. The passage we were studying was from Hebrews 12, which contains the words, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God.” I could look out upon the faces of these people and urge them with every ounce of my being to believe in, acknowledge, and hope in Jesus Christ, our worthy and trustworthy Savior.
New faces are constant in this work. That very week I met seven inmates whom I had never previously seen. While I consistently see 70 men each week across the six yard-chapels where I teach, over the course of these last 15 months I know I have studied at least once with more than 400 individuals. Because there are substantial reasons not to bring to you photographs or video interviews, I can’t have most of you meet them as I wish I could. But if you could hold in your hands even the attendance rosters and see handwritten name after name, soul after soul, perhaps you could gain a sense of the privilege. Opportunity, constant opportunity, abounds.
A third encouraging reality has to do with transfer. Transfer feels a lot like loss when someone with whom I have had fellowship must go to another facility. Last summer, on one particular yard, I lost to transfer virtually all the members of a study that had been going on for more than 10 years.
Transfer, though, also means mission. When I think of some of the men—gracious, eager, able, grounded men—with whom I had the fellowship, I think how other yards will be blessed by them and of how they will serve, on God’s assignment, for the advance of the gospel there.
In the four prisons to which I commute, there are, at last count, 15,575 persons incarcerated. Within an hour and a half’s drive of Fresno, there is a total of 36,958. Across all the institutions and camps, the state of California houses 118,044. When I think of the work of like-minded persons and churches, the reality of discipleship-then-transfer has a powerful statewide impact.
I think of Oak Hill Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Sonora, Calif., which sends volunteers into Jamestown’s Sierra Conservation Center (SCC) twice a week. The reason I even have a Bible study at Valley State Prison (VSP) in Chowchilla, Calif., is that some had transferred from SCC and asked the state staff chaplain if there was another pastor of Reformed conviction who could teach there. Many men have surely benefitted from the work of state staff chaplain Gary Findley, the Protestant chaplain at Wasco State Prison. Pastor Findley is a missionary out of Covenant United Reformed Church in Clovis, Calif. Grace Church of the Valley (GCV) in Kingsburg, Calif., which is a branch campus for the Master’s Seminary, sends four to six volunteers each week to area prisons, and a leader from GVC also sponsors Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) work in two of them. Two women, one from Fresno’s High View Bible Church and the other from GVC, both with significant experience in jail and prison ministry, are teaming up and just completing an application to teach regularly at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. I know a man from the Fresno Christian Reformed Church who has been volunteering, teaching in two prison yards every week for longer than I have been involved! And a Gospel Coalition Church, Abounding Grace of Visalia, has an elder who is full-time staff with Good News Jail and Prison Ministries, reaching men in the jails, some of whom will enter into the state’s long-term system.
Many lives are being touched on a weekly basis. The building blocks of fellowship and discipleship they receive serve the cause of the gospel wherever they go.
The RPCNA’s Pacific Coast Presbytery, which also sought Synod’s counsel, is considering how God’s call to membership in the visible church can be applied under the unique circumstances of long-term imprisonment. Please pray for us in that matter.
Tim McCracken is an RPCNA minister who is regional director of San Joaquin Valley, Calif., Metanoia Prison Ministries (PCA). Individuals and outreach groups from all RP churches can engage inmates through Metanoia’s Bible study correspondence ministry. Please inquire with Rev. McCracken (tmccracken@pcanet.org)about how to get involved. All ministers working through Mission to North America (MNA) raise their own funds.