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In a normal six-day work week, Kevin Instrup, 39, a commercial video maker in Chicago invests his creative energies into educational films. But when Gordon McLean, director of the Juvenile Justice Ministry of Metro-Chicago Youth for Christ, wanted to educate people on what God is doing among ex-gang members, Ingstrup got an eyeful from behind his lens.

"The forearms of these young men—scarred by bullet holes, knife wounds, needles—really tell a big part of their story." Former members of the Latin Kings, Satan's Disciples, and 2:6, who first met McLean while incarcerated in the Cook County Juvenile Center or 17- to 19-year-old high schoolers in Cook County Jail, took Ingstrup to meet their "families."

One incident during the filming made Ingstrup especially nervous. His "security guard" was an ex-gang member armed only with a cellular phone. When a squad car happened to stop a gang member and frisk him before releasing him, he noticed Ingstrup filming him. The gangbanger headed toward Ingstrup shouting expletives interspersed with "I should bust that camera over your head."

Meanwhile, Instrup thought quickly. Pretending he was having technical problems with the camera, he stopped filming. Other than a verbal barrage between the ex-gang member and the gang member, nothing happened.

"It's a misconception that most people have about gangs," McLean, a 48-year veteran of YFC ministry explains. "They are at war with each other—gang against gang; not out to get the ordinary person."

Ingstrup says that working with the Christian ex-gang members impressed him, especially hearing testimonies of how their "crazy lives" got "hooked up with Jesus." Going back with the gospel to their "home boys" is real heroism.

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