Turning Point: How God Opened My Eyes to Incarceration’s Impact

by

by Pastor Kent Munsey

Pastor Kent Munsey shares how his church serves those in his city who are impacted by incarceration.

second chances

Kent Munsey is senior pastor of City Church Chicago, which ministers to local families through Angel Tree® Christmas, partners with Prison Fellowship® to host Hope Events at nearby facilities, and regularly serves the men and women inside Cook County Jail. In April 2024, City Church Chicago also hosted a Second Chance® Sunday to raise awareness of the challenges faced by people with a criminal record.

We’re all going to stand before Jesus someday, and I think that’s really the motivator for us. Jesus will say, “I was hungry, but you didn’t feed Me. I was thirsty, but you didn’t give Me something to drink. I was in prison, but you didn’t come to Me.” We all know that passage of Scripture, but sometimes these underserved communities seem so distant.

Around 2015, I held a prayer moment for those who have a family member in prison. I thought maybe there would be a few people in our church who knew someone or who had a family member who was incarcerated. But when I saw how many people responded to the invitation for prayer, I was overwhelmed.

JESUS IS RIGHT HERE

I had given myself permission, as a pastor, to assume that people impacted by incarceration are “them,” a group outside of my community, but that’s not the case. We realized we didn’t have to look very far—that within our own church the opportunity to serve Jesus is right here. That’s when we began our journey of trying to figure out how we can serve our families and our community by serving those they love who are incarcerated.

We began by looking for opportunities to create relationships and serve, locally, those in prison. But coming up on roadblock after roadblock, I was blown away by how challenging and difficult the process is. It can be incredibly overwhelming when you’re simply trying to go out and serve. What Prison Fellowship has done is make it so easy for us to be able to minister. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Prison Fellowship helps create clear paths for us to be able to serve. We gave up trying to build the ministry or create the platforms, because we just don’t have the time, and we don’t have the systems.

A MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION

Our heart and our passion is around serving and loving people to new life in Christ. I believe every single Christian is called to the ministry of reconciliation. And for me, I don’t know of a more clear and practical opportunity for us to be involved in the ministry of reconciliation than to serve those who have been incarcerated and imprisoned.

My hope on Second Chance Sunday is for people to see that we are all sinners in need of a Savior. We are all broken, and we need our Savior to make us whole. This can be a day that our church frees themselves from a “them and us” mentality. We have all been imprisoned in our own shame, in our own hurt, and in our own trauma. And the adversary wants to hold captive our mindsets, attitudes, and perspectives. My hope is that we would see our own need for freedom, and wouldn’t hear stories of second chances, assuming they only apply to this “other” group.

I hope people see the opportunity we all have to thank God for His grace and for our second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth chances. There’s more opportunity than we know around us. My hope is that our church would see new opportunities to be a part of the work that Prison Fellowship is doing, but also to view it differently. The work that needs to be done with those who are incarcerated is the same work that we have to do on a regular basis with ourselves.