Since founding Prison Fellowship 35 years ago, Chuck has visited hundreds of prisons. But his recent return to Maxwell struck him with particular force. As he walked the grounds where he was once incarcerated, he remembered the loneliness that prisoners experience. This Easter weekend, however, he was able to counter that hopelessness by presenting the life-changing message of hope found only in the resurrected Savior!
God can spark an enduring vision using a single moment in time. Prison Fellowship® founder Chuck Colson vividly remembers a charged confrontation in a prison dayroom that helped to ignite the prison ministry movement.
During his incarceration at Maxwell Federal Prison Camp, Chuck sat in the dayroom writing a letter. Other inmates joked, played cards, or watched television.
In the loud, smoke-filled room a prisoner called out, “Colson!
Everyone went quiet.
“Colson!” the prisoner said again. A tall, strongly built inmate, he loomed over President Nixon’s former “hatchet man.”
“What are you going to do for guys like us when you get out?” the prisoner demanded.
Chuck promised he would never forget the men at Maxwell.
“Bull!” the prisoner responded. “Big shots like you get out and forget little guys like us.”
Thirty-seven years later, Chuck recounts that story to inmates overflowing the prison chapel back at Maxwell. It is Good Friday 2011, and Chuck has embarked on his annual trip to present the Gospel in prisons during Easter weekend.
Since founding Prison Fellowship, Chuck has visited hundreds of prison, but this return to Maxwell strikes him with particular force. As he walks the grounds where officers once referred to him as 22326, he remembers the loneliness, debasement, and spiritual atrophy that prisoners experience.
Understanding their feelings, he presents the Gospel to the Maxwell inmates with deep fervor. He paces down the chapel’s center aisle with his sport coat off and his shirtsleeves rolled up.
“In prison, you begin to feel that you’re not worth anything, but that’s not true,” Chuck tells the inmates. The air hums with their answering amens.
“You guys are in a wonderful position,” he continues, “because you’ve been broken, and that’s when you come face to face with Jesus Christ.”
As the service draws to a close, Chaplain Carlton Fisher invites all the inmates and volunteers to form a large circle. Hundreds of hands—black, brown, and white, male and female, prisoner and free—clasp to form an unbroken ring. Here in prison, it is a rare portrait of shalom, the peace and wholeness that comes with the righteousness of God.
Voices swell into a chorus of “Amazing Grace.” As the familiar refrain rolls over him, just as it has in prisons from Indiana to Kenya, Chuck feels humbled by the grace and power of God.
God has taken Chuck’s prison experience—one of the most broken times in his life—and turned it into a vehicle to minister to countless prisoners around the world. In human terms, it should have been impossible to turn such defeat into victory. But then again, this is Easter, the weekend Christians have always gathered to celebrate Christ’s triumph over impossible odds.
Peace in an Unlikely Place
On Saturday, Chuck boards a bus—along with a few dozen Prison Fellowship staff and volunteers—to drive to William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility. The prison lies quietly under a blue sky, but the guard towers, fences, and razor wire remind visitors of the potential for violence. Donaldson is a maximum-security facility. Even the prison’s name memorializes a correctional officer slain in the line of duty. It is a hard place to do time, and one of the last corners on earth you would look to find peace.
At Donaldson, inmates congregate in the gymnasium for a celebratory service. They give a standing ovation to Chuck, although the afternoon’s warmest reception goes to Mary Kay Beard, the ex-prisoner whose Angel Tree® program has touched so many of their children at Christmastime.
But Saturday’s most poignant moments come on death row. Warden Wetzel, a kind, humane official, escorts Chuck and several Prison Fellowship supporters to death row, where Chuck shares his testimony and the Gospel. Several inmates listen raptly. At the end, one inmate takes a moment to thank Chuck for coming back behind prison walls to share hope with them.
This particular man, condemned to death for murder, has spent 17 years awaiting the day of his own execution. Yet his expression is untroubled as he explains that, because of his sentence, his own son is staying out of trouble, focusing on his studies, and attending church regularly. Because his punishment had brought hope into his son’s life, this prisoner has unselfishly accepted his sentence. It is a sobering moment. This man and his transformation epitomize the power of the Gospel and the critical need for prison ministry.
A Vision for the Future
The Sunday service at Bibb County Correctional Facility is an unforgettable, jubilant experience of worship. So many inmates want to attend that they all cannot fit into the newly constructed chapel.
The service is designed and led by 59 men, the participants in Bibb’s transformational ministry unit, run by Prison Fellowship field director Deborah Daniels. Wearing special nametags that identified them as members of the program, they lead the congregation in rousing, Motown-style Gospel songs, and they offer testimonies like this one from an inmate named Robert:
“I’ve been in 15 prisons. I have prayed that God would deliver me from my self-destructive ways, that he would send someone who could feel my pain and see my worth. My prayers were answered by Prison Fellowship’s transformational ministry program.”
It encourages Chuck to see how prisoners benefit from what God offers them through Prison Fellowship volunteers, staff, and programs. But it is doubly inspiring to see what these same men now have to offer to their fellow inmates, and to the society that has written them off.
The inmates of the transformational ministry unit have a name for themselves: “God’s Gang for Change.” They have also drafted a mission statement, which says, in part: We will console the weak in their weakness. We will give hope to the hopeless, faith to the faithless, and dreams to those who have no vision. We will provide leadership to the lost and Jesus to the unsaved.
Members of God’s Gang for Change have a strong sense of community, evident in the easy smiles and embraces they share. They also feel a strong sense of responsibility toward those inmates who have not yet found life in Christ.
When asked what he wants to do when he gets out of prison, an inmate named Jonathan says what he wants most is to come back to prison as a Prison Fellowship volunteer, so that he can show others that it is possible to live a changed life.
Once counted worthless, these prisoners have become ministers of the Gospel behind bars. And just as God once brought Chuck out of prison, only to bring him back with a message of hope, He now prepares these men to return to their broken communities as messengers of God’s peace, reconciliation, and redemption.
In a token of fellowship, the inmates make Chuck an honorary member of God’s Gang for Change. They present him with a copy of their mission statement. As Chuck stands among them to receive the honor, he is lost in a sea of white, prison-issue uniforms. Stamped with the name of the Alabama Department of Corrections, these uniforms are ever-present reminders of the inmates’ fall from grace. But as the service closes and light from a huge chapel window makes the prison whites shine, it seems like more of a reminder that grace has found them again.