Each year, Prison Fellowship recognizes volunteers and employees who have made a difference in the lives of prisoners and their families by presenting them with the Shining Star Award. In the coming weeks, the blog will highlight some of the 2012 Shining Star recipients and their work.
Gary Lane (center) with Prison Fellowship President Garland Hunt (left) and Prison Fellowship Ministries CEO Jim Liske (right).
For 13 years, Gary Lane has been a weekly volunteer at the Carol S. Vance Unit near Houston, home to Prison Fellowship’s InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI), a faith-based reentry program for prisoners that begins 18-24 months before their release date and continues for a year once they are released. Clocking in over 4,000 volunteer hours, Gary conducts Search for Significance and Heart of the Problem classes each week and leads seminars at many other state facilities. And all of this is after an 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift at his job.
“Gary’s email is ‘Holy Smoke,’ says IFI Texas Program Manager Ron Zifer. “Though I don’t know exactly what that signifies, I would say that Gary’s on fire for the Lord and when the smoke clears, he is standing tall, reaching out to the men to guide them. At the IFI Vance and Darrington units, when men see him coming in the parking lot, they flock to greet him.”
As a former inmate, Gary understands prisoners as he teaches inside prisons and serves as a mentor. Ron says that men can see Christ through Gary as he shares his personal testimony. Gary can see through attitudes of denial and calls men to personal accountability in an unoffensive yet firm way.
Gary also operates a Christian halfway house called Fertile Ground Transitional House for recently released male inmates. “He is well-respected in the community, a man of integrity with a heart for the hopeless,” says Ron.