Tom Maxwell, a long-time Prison Fellowship volunteer, points to the partially constructed gazebo on the grounds of the community hospital in Boonville, Missouri, as work-release prisoners from the nearby Boonville Correctional Center move nimbly across the gazebo’s roof, adding tar paper and shingles.
“We wanted to build something, so the guys could come back and say, ‘I did that!’”
Fifteen years running, Tom has worked with local churches and officials from the Missouri Department of Corrections to orchestrate a Community Service Project (CSP). For five days each September, Tom heads to the prison in the church van, picks up ten prisoners , and drives them to a local church for breakfast and a Bible study. During the day, the carefully screened and supervised prisoners work on projects benefiting the community. They work shoulder-to-shoulder with men from Tom’s place of worship—Nelson Memorial United Methodist Church. And for the last four years, they have also been joined by baseball players from Central Methodist University. With all those hands, they get a lot done. The following Sunday, their efforts are honored at a special service at Nelson Memorial. Prisoners’ family members travel long distances to attend the service and share a fried-chicken supper in the church’s fellowship hall.Tom Maxwell, a long-time Prison Fellowship volunteer, points to the partially constructed gazebo on the grounds of the community hospital in Boonville, Missouri. As he explains the project, he raises his voice above the volume of thudding hammers. Behind him, work-release prisoners from the nearby Boonville Correctional Center move nimbly across the gazebo’s roof, adding tar paper and shingles. Others, laughing and joking with their supervisors, haul cement for a handicap-accessible ramp.
A Labor of Love
The Community Service Project takes hundreds of man-hours to orchestrate. But Tom, a former naval aviator, has always liked a challenge.
The first year of the CSP, two work-release prisoners walked off the project. They were apprehended within a matter of hours, harming no one, but Tom was deflated. Facing the warden in his office, Tom said, “Well, I guess that’s the end of the project.”Tom’s journey with Prison Fellowship began many years ago, when he read Chuck Colson’s Born Again. Impressed with the mission, he became a certified PF volunteer. When he and his wife, Betty, returned to their native Boonville in 1992, Tom began to lead in-prison Bible studies and seminars. As he cultivated trust with prisoners and prison officials, he approached the warden about starting the Community Service Project, a program he first read about in PF volunteer training materials. The warden gave his support, and the Boonville CSP began as a pilot in 1995.
“No,” the warden startled him by saying. “This is too important. We’ll try it again.”
And so, with careful revisions to security procedures and participant screening, the CSP has gone on for another 14 years. There has never been another problem with security.
Tom is grateful for the warden’s faith and perseverance. But just what was so important about the CSP?
Restorative Justice in Action
Through the CSP, prisoners have an opportunity to make a positive difference in their community—many for the first time in their lives. Tom states the case simply: “This is restorative justice in action.”
“This is the one good thing I’ve done that people can see,” reflects Antoine Petty, a prisoner participating in the program for the first time.
While prisoners have the dignifying experience of giving back to the community they have harmed, the community gets a chance to see the humanity and work ethic of prisoners in action.
But by the time he delivered the morning devotional to the prisoners on the fifth and final work day, he had absorbed Tom’s enthusiasm.Allen Waldo is the CEO of Cooper County Memorial Hospital, where the prisoner erected the gazebo and worked on landscaping. He admits that, initially, he frowned on the prospect of prisoners walking freely on the hospital grounds.
“It’s a win-win situation!” he beams.
Freddie Cabrera and Tony Layne, baseball players from Central Methodist University, likewise found the CSP to be an eye-opening experience.
“It was a little awkward at first,” says Tony, who had certain ideas about what prisoners were like. But after working alongside them, he believes that “they’re really good guys who work hard.”
But the main importance of the CSP seems to be the impact it makes on the prisoners themselves.
A Seed Is All You Need
Rebecca Ehlers, the deputy warden for offender management at Boonville Correctional Center, explains while attending the fried-chicken dinner on Sunday: “These guys will never be the same after the experience they’ve had here . . . Maybe it only plants a seed, but a seed is all you need.”
Evidence of those seeds could be glimpsed at the Sunday dedication service. Prisoners worked hard to restrain their emotion as church members lined up to shake their hands. As though attending a college graduation, prisoners’ families snapped dozens of pictures, memorializing a rare moment of accomplishment.
Justin Collins, addressing the congregation on behalf of the prisoners, said, “Thank you for not treating us like outcasts! Not once did you treat us like prisoners.”Several prisoners expressed how important it was to them to be treated like citizens instead of offenders—if only for a week.
The volunteers associated with the CSP make a concerted effort to view and treat the prisoners with the attitude of Jesus Christ. In an atmosphere of appropriate security, they welcome them, thank them, and feed them home-cooked meals.
Charles Tholl is an ex-prisoner who participated in an earlier CSP. He drove two hours to attend the Sunday dedication service.
“Before this,” he says, explaining his own reaction to the program, “I didn’t know people like this existed. It gave me hope.”
As the CSP continues each year, it builds more than gazebos. It builds a legacy of hope in the lives of prisoners.