On Dec. 2, 2014, the world comes together to give. Join Prison Fellowship as we participate on #GivingTuesday to support our mission to change the lives of prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families through Jesus Christ. We ask our friends, donor, fans, and followers to remember the prisoners on the first Tuesday in December.
If you haven’t looked at a calendar recently (or, in the case of much of the country, looked out the window or walked to your car in sub-freezing temperatures), winter is fast approaching, and Christmas is just around the corner. And here at Prison Fellowship, that means the Angel Tree Christmas program is well underway, helping to provide gifts—and hope—to children on behalf of their incarcerated parents.
In the conversation about building safer communities, it’s easy to get caught up in the big topics: record-breaking incarceration rates, headline-grabbing crime trends, and large pieces of criminal justice legislation.
But it’s often the littlest ones among us who are hurt the most by crime.
Don’t look now, but the holiday season is right around the corner. Thanksgiving is only two weeks away, immediately followed by the retail-driven Black Friday and Cyber Monday, encouraging people to go out and start making their Christmas purchases.
And then there is Giving Tuesday.
Thanks to our generous partners, My’lon and Montrese know that they’re loved, and that they have a friend in Jesus, who will never leave them.
A version of the following article appeared in the July issue of Pentecostal Evangel, an Assemblies of God publication.
A version of the following post originally aired as a BreakPoint commentary.
It was back in 1997, when I was practically a kid writer here at BreakPoint, that I first heard about Prison Fellowship’s amazing Angel Tree program.
I was moved by how much Chuck Colson and the Prison Fellowship staff poured themselves into making sure that thousands and thousands of prisoners’ children received gifts at Christmas time.
Parenting is one of the hardest jobs around. It takes all your strength, all your patience, and all your creativity.
But imagine how much harder it gets when the children’s father goes to prison. How does a mom explain his absence to her kids?
On a recent broadcast of the Missions Radio program, Prison Fellowship President and CEO Jim Liske discusses the work of Prison Fellowship with host Ken Mitchell. During the hour-long program, Liske talks about the church within the prison walls, the importance of ministry to the families of prisoners, and churches creating “communities of restoration” for prisoners when they return to society.
When Israel was almost overcome by surrounding nations, Gideon and his 300 men encircled the enemy camp with torches hidden inside of earthenware jars. On a signal, they broke their jars, began to yell, and let their torches shine forth. The enemy army, convinced they were about to be attacked by a superior force, fled in confusion (Judges 7).
This past winter, Russell connected with another group of people who needed his help: the 2.7 million children in America with an incarcerated parent.
Rocio remembers it like it was yesterday. “One day there was a knock on our door,” she says. When she answered, a volunteer from a local church told her that he had been sent on behalf of her husband and Angel Tree. “He told me he had gifts for our kids from their daddy,” Rocio recalls.
These prisoners are wonderful examples of redeemed individuals working to restore themselves to their communities through morally rehabilitative in-prison programming.
Preschoolers AJ and Butchie witnessed a harrowing scene in the courtroom; if it had ended there, these two little boys would have faced a future without hope or promise. But Angel Tree supporters helped rescue them and turn their hearts to their parents.