Frontlines is a video series that brings you close to the work of Prison Fellowship through the lens of Prison Fellowship Ministries CEO Jim Liske’s encounters with the inmates and families. In the latest edition, Jim shares what it’s like to spend Easter “in the tomb” with the lost and the forgotten – a tradition begun by Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson many years ago.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. – Romans 12:1-2 (NIV)
In Romans, Paul writes to a group of people who are sharing in Christ’s sufferings.
One January weekend I spent two very full days with my daughter and her husband, renovating one of the bathrooms in their house in Michigan. They wanted to do a real overhaul of this particular room, with new plumbing, electrical wiring, and drywall work.
“The Lord’s justice will dwell in the desert, his righteousness live in the fertile field. The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.”
Frontlines is a video series that brings you close to the work of Prison Fellowship through the lens of Prison Fellowship Ministries CEO Jim Liske’s encounters with the inmates and families. In this inaugural video, Jim reflects on meeting with Jonathan, a 15-year-old boy longing for a different future.
Recently I received a letter from two women in their early 20s. They were inmates at Rikers Island in New York, and they had written on the front and back of the same sheet, because together, they were able to come up with just one envelope, one stamp, one pencil, and one piece of paper.
It’s a New Year, the time for making resolutions that we never intend to keep! That’s not quite true, of course. It’s good for us to work toward goals and dreams for the future, but let’s face it – it’s hard to keep our resolutions; if we’d all lost all the weight that’d we’d committed to every New Year, none of us would even exist anymore!
Saturday morning I was in an inner-city elementary school in Washington, D.C., where a friend of my daughter is a teacher. What I saw and heard there broke my heart. Ninety percent of those kids lived in the projects, and despite the earnest efforts of teachers, many of them are reading far below grade level.
Rushing through an airport to catch a recent flight, I was able to take advantage of a moving walkway that sped up my journey – and then another. I was about five steps onto the second one when I realized it wasn’t moving.
When fear and insecurity fill our hearts, we respond with selfish indifference to the needs of our neighbors. But when faith rules our lives, when we have wrestled with God and found Him true, we become secure in His ability to care for us, and we cease to doubt and fear.
On a recent trip I found myself in the ornate office of a state governor. This leader and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things – in fact, he didn’t even believe God existed, but he had invited me to come talk with him about the work of Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM).
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.
In her mug shot, 24-year-old Karen* looks like a frail child, but she has five young children of her own.
We arrived at the Sanders Estes Unit in Venus, Texas and pulled into a parking lot that could have been outside hundreds of correctional institutions all over the United States. The double fence, gates, razor-wired, small slit windows, and cold heavy doors were “standard issue.”