It is hard to believe, but my little girl has been married a month. The weekend of the wedding was fantastic. Family and friends came together to celebrate the joining of two people called by God to live as one.

The wedding day was almost surreal.

All I wanted to do was give the boy a hug – and I couldn’t. Between us stood a large, heavy steel door. We could only gaze at each other through a thick pane of security glass, eight inches high and eight inches wide.

Before getting the chance to serve with Prison Fellowship Ministries, I spent nine years as the senior pastor of a church in western Michigan. Over time, the congregation learned to walk hand-in-hand with returning citizens on their way to rejoining the community, but it didn’t happen until I as a pastor and we as a church started to take Jesus seriously.

Corrections is a science. There are people whose job it is to make charts and graphs of factors that contribute to criminal behavior, as well as the things that help people leave their criminal lifestyle behind for good. The goal is to help society better understand crime and how to fix it.

Recently, a mother wrote to Prison Fellowship asking for help. Her 25-year-old son Aaron (a pseudonym) is serving time in an Iowa prison for a non-violent offense, but because he has had a problem with anger in the past, he’s being held in disciplinary detention, better known to inmates as “the hole.”

Recently I visited ministries in Denver, Colorado, that care for the homeless. That city is struggling with the surging population of chronically homeless. It’s gotten so bad that the local government has had to outlaw camping within the city limits.

Why was the CEO of Prison Fellowship Ministries visiting homeless shelters in Denver?

Soon after I became CEO of Prison Fellowship Ministries, I met Mark Brenon. Mark is a pastor at Grace Community Church in Magnolia, Texas, and a recent graduate of the Colson Center’s Centurions program, a year-long opportunity for followers of Jesus to deepen their understanding of Christian worldview.

I want to personally thank the volunteers and donors that participated in our 2011 Angel Tree Christmas program.  Because of you, almost 400,000 prisoners’ children received a gift from their incarcerated parent and great hope through the Gospel.

That’s almost 400,000 children who feel closer to their absent mom or dad, closer to a local church, and closer to Jesus Christ!

As we walked across the open yard of Lino Lakes Correctional Facility in Minnesota, a cold wind whipped by, as one would expect north of the Twin Cities. The yard was isolated and drab, with brown grass showing through a skiff of early-winter snow.

In her mug shot, 24-year-old Karen* looks like a frail child, but she has five young children of her own.

This past week I was in a prison in South Florida.  Prison Fellowship’s staff took me there to meet the warden and his staff, and to visit a 50-man unit in the prison.  In this unit, the men are studying material from The Urban Ministries Institute (TUMI) in preparation to be leaders and pastors inside and outside the walls of America’s prisons. 

When one hears the title “warden” certain images come to mind.  The classic thought is derived from movies like The Shawshank Redemption or The Last Castle.  These men and women who lord over their little kingdoms must be tough and fearless – cold and controlling.

They could not have looked any more different. Doug was short, slight, white-haired, clean-shaven, and quite proper. John was tall, brawny, broad, dark haired, goateed, tattooed, rugged, and weather -worn. Doug was an upper-middle-class, Buick-driving suburbanite. John was a battle-hardened and road-weary motorcycle gang member.

Ed extended his hand to thank me for all Prison Fellowship had done for him.

He had been in prison for over 20 years and was incarcerated in a state far from his family. He saw his mom once a year when she flew to visit him.

Do you know how you sometimes plan to serve someone and you end up being served? A few weeks ago I was in southern California at a celebration of The Urban Ministry Initiative (TUMI), a joint partnership between Prison Fellowship and World Impact to train inmates to serve as pastors.