Normalizing Prison Ministry at Church

by

by Pastor Ricky Smith

God is moving behind bars. Churches are seeing the reward of joining Him.

Ricky Smith is the prison team director at Rock City Church in Hilliard, Ohio. This year’s Restore 2025, Prison Fellowship's conference for church leaders with a heart for restoration, will be hosted by Rock City Church. And the church is a leader in prison ministry, working in 21 prisons and other correctional facilities throughout the Columbus metro area. Ricky has been serving those impacted by incarceration since volunteering with his parents as a young adult.

When I first moved to this city, I got plugged into a local church, and they didn’t have a prison team. I actually thought that was a little weird since every church I attended as a kid into my teen years had an active prison ministry. My parents both served on our church’s prison team for about 25 years, so as I was growing up, I just thought that was normal.

People sometimes feel like they need to have some special calling, but on certain things Jesus said, “Hey, you follow Me. This is what I do, and I want you to do it too.” Matthew 25 points to this as Jesus tells us, “I was in prison and you came to visit Me … whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of Mine, you did for Me.”

Normalizing prison ministry is something that I’m constantly trying to figure out in my current role as prison team director at Rock City Church. When something is so isolated and kept out of the public eye, it does make it really difficult to normalize.

IT'S FRUITFUL BECAUSE GOD IS ALREADY AT WORK

I have found Prison Fellowship® Angel Tree to be a really good way to engage families or potential volunteers who don’t actively serve on our prison team. It gives us an opportunity to share what prison ministry looks like and meet some of the families we serve.

At the end of the day, people who are in prison are just people. They’re people who have made mistakes. But they are the people Jesus would be hanging out with. Most of them don’t try to pretend like they’ve got it all together. They know they’ve made mistakes. I think there’s a beauty in that vulnerability and humility that Jesus can really work with. When you get to a place where you recognize the need for a savior, it really makes for fertile soil.

It can be challenging and intimidating working in prisons at times. But you’ll realize this is a very underserved population. In a lot of the facilities where we serve, we’re the only Christian organization that goes in and does anything. It is so fruitful and rewarding when you’re in there serving with people who are desperate for something from the Holy Spirit.

Inside prisons we host church services, small groups, and some different things. We have done some Hope Events with Prison Fellowship and have also just helped launch a Prison Fellowship Grow™. We felt like Grow made the most sense for when we were looking for ways to go deeper.

WITNESSING CHANGED LIVES BEHIND BARS

Prison Fellowship Grow is in a facility that we’ve been serving in for 2 1/2 years. I’ve seen a big shift in the culture already, but at times, it can be very heavy and very dark. I anticipate having a program like Grow is going to really help shift the culture of the entire prison. The Grow curriculum addresses some of those criminogenic behaviors and toxic thought processes that we encounter while helping to reduce recidivism rates for the guys who are getting out. That was really appealing to us.

Very consistently, when people come to volunteer with us for the first time, they see the vulnerability of the people who are incarcerated. Going in, some of our volunteers are thinking they will meet these really cold, rough people inside who are unwilling to show any sort of emotion. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I would almost compare it to the Church on the outside. You have people who are new to the faith or don’t know Jesus at all. You have others who are some of the most passionate, worshipful children of God, and it’s really cool to be able to watch them engage in worship in spite of their circumstances. You’ve got people struggling with addiction. And you’ve also got people who have overcome some really amazing things.

Prison ministry is so fruitful. I guarantee that the value you receive from it, that your church receives from it, will far outweigh the challenges you face.