A Way of Escape at San Quentin

Irelearned a few lessons recently at a tough, old prison called San Quentin.

We had been planning my visit there for months. Out of the prison’s 2,200 inmates, more than 300 had signed up for our Prison Fellowship chapel service, and I was excited about the grand opportunity to preach the gospel in this rough place.

Just days before our visit, however, officials uncovered a hidden cache of weapons and a potentially violent plot. The prison was immediately locked down, with inmates confined to their cells 24 hours a day.

When we arrived, the lockdown was still in effect. I asked if I could at least walk the blocks: five tiers of small, thick-barred cells with narrow catwalks along the outer walls. Guards in towers along the perimeter could keep their rifles trained on every cell.

Usually prisons are raucous with the sounds of television, shouting, scuffling feet, clanging steel doors. On this day there was silence.

We went on to the chapel, where a group of PF volunteers and honor camp inmates were waiting. They were mostly Christians. I was glad to see them, of course, but I was also disheartened. This had been my opportunity to preach the gospel to hardened offenders. Now I felt I was preaching to the choir.

I struggled with my lack of enthusiasm. Maybe I’ll just give a short devotional, ten minutes or so, I thought. I can’t really preach my heart out to this crowd.

But then I noticed a video camera in the far end of the room. Perhaps this is being recorded for the chapel library. Maybe I’d better give it my all.

And as I started to speak, spurred on by the eye of the camera, I suddenly felt the Holy Spirit’s conviction. I remembered I was called by God to preach his Word, no matter if one inmate or a thousand were listening.

I preached with more and more fervor, telling the inmates about the Christ who loved them even in that stronghold of violence and despair.

Afterwards, I mentioned to the chaplain how disappointed I was that I wasn’t able to give my message to the men on lockdown. He looked surprised. “Didn’t you know?” he said. “Because of the lockdown, the administration agreed to videotape your sermon. They’ll be showing it to all the inmates tomorrow on closed-circuit TV in the morning and again in the afternoon.”

I was overwhelmed. Because of the lockdown, 2,200 prisoners would hear the gospel. God had arranged a far more effective way for far more inmates to hear his Word. Yet, if I had not been faithful to preach it, the opportunity would have been missed. (And, I found out later, the prison administration aired the sermon not just twice, but nearly a dozen times over the following weeks!)

To me, the lessons were threefold.

The first is Mother Teresa’s simple truth: God calls us to faithfulness, not success. We are motivated not by flattering statistics or amazing testimonies—though we strive for good stewardship and are thrilled when inmates come to know Christ and we can tell their stories to his glory.

No, our goal is simply obedience. God has called me and an army of Christian volunteers to bring his light to places of darkness like San Quentin, his love to places of need like the homes of inmates’ families. We are to do it no matter what happens—or doesn’t happen—around us.

The second lesson is a paradox: When we set the full-scale changing of a prison, or of society itself, as our goal, we most often fail. But when we set obedience to God as our goal, he blesses those efforts in ways we could never envision.

As it turns out, Prison Fellowship’s area director in San Francisco tells me my visit opened the door for our ministry to begin a variety of new Christian programs in that prison. My one-time visit, in which nothing went as I had planned, was used by God for his plan to open up a new, regular, sustained ministry at San Quentin.

A third lesson extends to our mission as Christians to our society at large.

As I write this, many are feeling a sense of weariness and frustration. We throw ourselves into whatever ministry God has called us to—and yet the needs facing us are intractable. The forces of secularism, moral decay, poverty, homelessness, hunger, crime, and injustice sometimes seem overwhelming.

The temptation is to give up, to retreat to the safer ground of church suppers and choir practice. The problems seem so dismaying; our small efforts feel so draining. At San Quentin I was weary in well-doing—not because of a lack of conviction, but because sustained energy over the long haul can take a toll.

This is why we must bear one another’s burdens, why we must help one another when we faint. And we know that the One on whom we wait will not allow us to stumble, but will renew our strength.

And this is why we must each do our part. My part that day at San Quentin was to preach. As he carries the baton forward, our San Francisco area director will work hard to instill PF programs. The volunteers who follow will bring their love to inmates and their families, who will in turn touch others. God will work his will through those efforts.

So we must not waver. What our nation needs most right now is a movement of people motivated not by short-term success, but by obedience, demonstrating a holy perseverance that only God himself can give.

These are simple lessons, after all. But oddly enough, without the eye of a television camera on that locked-down day in San Quentin, I might not have remembered them. It is evidence yet again that in the face of temptation, God always provides “a way of escape.”

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