Prison Ministry

In 2020 Christian leader John Perkins interviewed the lawyer, Bryan Stevenson. Perkins, the son of a sharecropper, was born in poverty in Mississippi. Stevenson was born two years after Perkins’ conversion to Christ, in a poor, black, rural community in Delaware. Stevenson eventually graduated from Harvard law school and founded the Equal Justice initiative. He represents people who have been sentenced to death on flimsy evidence or without proper representation.

Stevenson told Perkins the story of his first visit to death row. As a law student intern, he’d been sent to tell a prisoner that he was not at risk of execution in the coming year. Stevenson felt unprepared. The prisoner had chains around his ankles, wrists, and waist. Stevenson delivered his message. The man expressed profound release. They talked for hours. But then two prison guards burst in.

Angry that the visit had taken so long, the guards reapplied their inmates’ chains. Stevenson pleaded with the officers to stop. He told them it was his fault they overrun their time. But the prisoner told Stevenson not to worry. Then he planted his feet, threw back his head and sang:

I’m pressing on the upward way,

New heights I’m gaining every day;

Still praying as I am onward bound,

Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

Everybody stopped, Stevenson said, “The guards recovered, and they started pushing this man down the hallway. You could hear the chains clanking, but you could hear this man singing about higher ground. And in that moment God called me. That was the moment I knew I wanted to help condemned people get to higher ground.”

Eduardo Rocha shares his dramatic testimony in an issue of CT magazine:

It was March 13, 1986, I was all alone and getting high. But I had also gotten drunk on fantasies of somehow becoming a drug kingpin at age 18. Earlier that night, I had left my brother’s house to deliver 4.5 ounces of cocaine to one of his customers. I hadn’t noticed the headlight out on Dad’s 1978 Plymouth Volare, but the New York state trooper sure did. After pulling me over, he also noticed that I was driving under the influence, not to mention the lump protruding from the left pocket of my leather jacket.

I was young and naïve, clueless about what lay ahead. But the stark reality caught up with me later as I sat in a cold cell at the Orange County Jail, where I wrapped a bed sheet from an old cot around my neck and began tightening it. Death seemed like the only way out of this mess. I was trapped. Hopeless. Finished.

As the sheet got tighter, the world started fading away. But just before succumbing to the darkness, I heard a voice in my native Spanish: “Eduardo, no lo hagas. Hay esperanza para tu vida.” (“Eduardo, don’t do it. There is hope for your life.”) That sweet, soft voice saved my life that day. After hearing the voice that stopped me from killing myself, I said, “God, if that’s really you, please help me.”

Eduardo was facing a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. When a guard gave him a Bible, he started reading the Gospels. He was captivated by the stories of Jesus—how he would speak to people in great need and meet those needs in miraculous ways. But the verse that made the deepest impression was 2 Corinthians 5:17, where Paul promises that “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” And so, at a church meeting in the jail’s gymnasium, on October 6, 1986, he surrendered to the love of Christ, accepting his offer to be his Lord and Savior.

In a sequence of seemingly miraculous events, his sentence was reduced and he became eligible for parole after just three years. In March of 1989, Eduardo was released but he was immediately taken into custody by an immigration official. He was deported back to Uruguay (where he had been born) and banned from returning.

Over the next 21 years Eduardo never gave up his goal of returning to the US. While he waited, he attended Bible college and began preaching. He married and started a family, but the US Embassy in Uruguay denied his repeated requests to immigrate to the US. Finally, after writing an extensive letter to the US attorney general, he received a pardon from the State Department and a tourist visa was approved.

He returned to the United States in 2010, and connected with a church near Nashville. In 2012, this church hired him as the pastor of an on-campus Hispanic church. Over time the Tennessee Department of Correction hired him to serve as psychiatric chaplain in a maximum-security prison.

In January of 2022, God finally granted my fervent wish for full US citizenship. That sweet voice that cared enough to whisper encouragement into my prison cell still cares deeply for me now. Life has not been easy, but I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, even to those who make terrible mistakes like mine.

Editor’s Note: Today Eduardo Rocha is a corporate chaplain for Charter Construction in Tennessee and a military chaplain for the Tennessee State Guard.

In an issue of CT magazine, Gene McGuire tells the story of how God found him serving a life sentence in prison and gave him new life in Christ.

I’d always looked up to my out-of-town cousin, Bobby. I was thrilled when he invited me to come along that night to a bar. After a few games of pool and several drinks, Bobby told us he was going to rob the place. While surprised at his sudden intentions, the alcohol seemed to dull any impulse for protest. Sid and I would leave—as locals, we’d be recognized—and Bobby would commit the robbery alone.

We waited outside. After several minutes, we poked our heads in the door—Bobby had brutally murdered the bar owner. He shouted, “Don’t just stand there! Help me find the money!”

On the run, McGuire followed Bobby to New York City, but he couldn’t escape the reality of what they had done and went to the police. Bobby told him, “Gene, tell the truth. It was all me.” McGuire told the detectives everything but because he was present when the crime was committed, he was charged with murder. A day before his 18th birthday the judge sentenced him: “For the rest of your natural life,” without the possibility of parole.

In prison McGuire met Larry when he visited as part of a nationwide outreach event organized by Prison Fellowship. A preacher shared a gospel message and ended with an invitation saying, “Real men make commitments.” But McGuire held still.

McGuire returned the next day. Again, the preacher ended with those words, “Real men make commitments.” He watched as others made the commitment. He really wanted to—but he couldn’t. Then a volunteer approached him. “Hi, my name is Larry.” McGuire asked, “How long have you been a Christian?” “Since I was 4-years-old,” Larry replied. McGuire thought, “Was he putting me on? If a 4-year-old could sort out this Jesus stu­ff, why couldn’t I? What was I doing at 26 without a clue?”

The next day—the final service—I went back, and again it ended with the familiar “Real men make commitments.” A war raged within me—Go! No, don’t go! Get up! No, don’t move! I held on to the chapel pew with a white-knuckled death grip.

Suddenly, it just happened. I was on my feet, putting one in front of the other until I was at the altar. I remember praying, “Jesus, I believe you died and rose again for me. Please forgive all my sins. I want to be saved. Jesus, come into my heart today. Amen.” It sounds cliché, but I felt as if a ton of weight rolled right o­ff my back, as if chains fell away and I was free. Life in prison remained life in prison, but from the moment I believed in Jesus, the newness of life was extraordinary.

The Lord continued to use Larry in my life; for the next 25 years he mentored and discipled me, never letting me lose sight of opportunities to love God and serve others.

Meanwhile, I was actively petitioning the governor to commute my life sentence. Yet another attempt—after 32 years in prison—ended in rejection. Then, in June 2010, I received a notice from an attorney out of the blue. It informed me of a new Supreme Court ruling that could o­ffer juveniles given life sentences the opportunity to return to court and possibly receive a lighter sentence.

On April 3, 2012, I finally got my release. As a 17-year-old looking squarely at a lifetime behind bars, I never would have imagined this outcome. But God’s love is so great that nothing can separate us from it; his mercy and grace so powerful that no shackles can confine us. I’m living proof. I received a life sentence and, along the way, I found life—and freedom.

Editor’s Note: Gene McGuire is the author of Unshackled: From Ruin to Redemption . He lives in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, where he serves as pastor for a Christian family-owned restaurant company.

Pamela Perillo was on death row waiting for execution by lethal injection when she found Christ.

Pam grew up in the 1960s in Los Angeles. Two adults and five children struggled for living space in a tiny two-bedroom rental house. Church and the Bible were unknown. Her mother had a fiery temper and Pam always felt that she cared the least for her. That feeling led to a spiraling loss of self-esteem. When Pam was nine, her mother ran off with the cook where she worked as a waitress. She died in a car wreck shortly thereafter.

Pam’s father was an alcoholic who molested her. When the police investigated, her father and brothers convinced them that it was just a bad dream. She felt so isolated that at age 10 she ran away from home. She spent the next three years running away from foster homes and being sent to juvenile hall.

Pam writes:

At age 13, I met Sammy Perillo, who was 19. We crossed the border into Mexico and married in “quickie” fashion. Just like Sammy, I started shooting up with heroin. After he went to prison, I delivered his twins, but only one survived. I never saw Sammy again.

To support her drug habit and her son, Pam danced at a strip joint. She then teamed up with a man named Mike to rob a frequent customer. Fleeing California with Mike and his wife, they hitchhiked to Houston, Texas, where they were picked up by a stranger. Mike noticed that the man had a roll of money. High on PCP, they murdered him and his friend and left for Colorado.

When Pam realized she could no longer withstand the emotional upheaval within, she confessed to the police. She was extradited to Texas, where she had been indicted in absentia for capital murder. A swift trial followed, then a verdict of death by lethal injection.

Pam writes:

While I waited in Houston before my execution, a woman involved in prison ministry visited. This angel talked about Christ and his path to forgiveness and I recited the sinner’s prayer. After 24 years of being tossed about like a dry chunk of dirt, God poured in the waters of life and began molding me for his purpose.

When I first accepted Jesus, I felt a change, but I found it hard to believe the change was for real. How could God ever forgive me for the horrible crime I had committed? My soul was in torment.

Then Pam met Karla Faye Tucker on death row. Karla Faye’s redemption was dramatic and the subject of movies. Her commitment to Christ resounded throughout the world before her execution. And her magnificent conversion was the spiritual cement that Pam needed. She said, “I knew then that in Christ, God can forgive anyone, no matter how severe their transgressions.”

Pam says:

In 2000, I received welcome news: My sentence had been reduced from death to life in prison. And today, after nearly 40 years of incarceration, I give thanks for how God directed my path to salvation. As grateful as I am to have escaped death row, I am a thousand times more grateful for the promise of eternal life. Fortunately, the Texas prison system allows for church and Bible-study groups, and I have shared my testimony on many occasions.

Editor’s Note: Today Pamela Perillo trains service dogs for disabled veterans through the Patriot PAWS program.

In June, a group of students were honored in an off-campus commencement ceremony, being conferred with degrees from a neighboring educational institution. But unlike many pandemic-era distance learning arrangements, these students were not doing their learning from home. On the contrary, these men were residents of Statesville Correctional Center. But despite their institutional disadvantages, they earned master’s degrees in Christian Ministry and Restorative Arts from North Park University in nearby Chicago.

Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom is the former dean of faculty at North Park, and says she helped start the program because most Statesville inmates have never had access to quality education. The Statesville Restorative Arts program examines Biblical theology and history, but also includes courses on trauma, race relations, nonviolent communication, conflict transformation, restorative practices, and transformative justice.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx was in attendance as the commencement speaker, and praised the graduates for their initiative. She said, “We achieve our highest calling as a community when those who have the least among us are leading the charge to get us there.”

Perhaps the best summary of the program’s significance was uttered by one of its participants, Jamal Bakr: "Our potential is not defined by our worst mistakes. Let today's event be an example of what happens when opportunities are created, potentials are unignored and complete restoration is always the aim of justice."

Possible Preaching Angle:

No one is beyond God's redemption. Even those who've done wrong can still find roles to participate in God's service.

Casey Diaz was a gang member as a teenager in South-Central Los Angeles. As a leader in the Rockwood Street Locos, he led his gang in home invasions, robbing convenience stores, and stabbing rival gang members.

He was eventually caught by LAPD and sentenced to nearly 13 years for second-degree murder. When he was transferred to New Folsom State Prison the guard said to him, “Listen closely, Diaz. We know that you’re a shot caller (a prison power-broker), so we’re putting you in solitary.” He was cooped up in an eight-by-ten-foot windowless box, with all his meals slipped in through a slot in the steel door.

The only source of illumination in his cell was a heavy Plexiglas light that couldn’t be turned off, which made it difficult to get any sleep. There was nothing to do—no TV, no radio, no books. He had been told by other prisoners that if a person is not strong-willed, then solitary confinement could absolutely break him.

He writes:

After about a year at New Folsom, as I was lying on my bed, I heard an older woman say, “Is there someone in that cell?” The guard said “Yes, ma’am, but you’re wasting your time.” She answered, “Well, Jesus came for him, too.”

She approached the cell: “How are you doing?” “I couldn’t be better,” was my sarcastic reply. She said “Young man, I’m going to pray for you. But there’s something else I want to tell you: Jesus is going to use you.”

A year later, he was lying down in his cell, daydreaming. When he looked at the wall, something strange was happening. A movie was playing, it was the crucifixion of Christ which he saw enacted in vivid detail.

He then writes:

What got to me most was when this man on the cross looked at me and said, “Darwin, I’m doing this for you.” I shuddered. Apart from the guards and my family, no one knew my real name. Everyone called me Casey. Then I heard the sound of breath leaving him. At that moment, I knew he had died.

That’s when I hit the floor in the middle of the cell. I started weeping because I knew, somehow, that this was Almighty God. I started confessing my sins: “God, I’m sorry for stabbing so many people. God, I’m sorry I robbed so many families.” With each new confession, I felt another weight come off my shoulders.

That was the start of my journey of faith. I was no longer a shot caller. I had found a new calling: telling other inmates about Jesus.

Editor’s Note: Casey Diaz lives in Los Angeles, where he serves as a part-time pastor.

Before walking out of jail a free man in February, Albert Woodfox spent 43 years almost without pause in an isolation cell, becoming the longest standing solitary confinement prisoner in America. He had no view of the sky from inside his 6 foot by 9 foot concrete box, no human contact, and taking a walk meant pacing from one end of the cell to the other and back again.

Then in April 2016 he found himself on a beach in Galveston, Texas, in the company of a friend. He stood marveling at all the beachgoers under a cloudless sky, and stared out over the Gulf of Mexico as it stretched far out to the horizon. "You could hear the tide and the water coming in," he says. "It was so strange, walking on the beach and all these people and kids running around."

Of all the terrifying details of Woodfox's four decades of solitary incarceration … perhaps the most chilling aspect of all is what he says now. Two months after the state of Louisiana set him free on his 69th birthday, he says he sometimes wishes he was back in that cell.

"Oh yeah! Yeah!" he says passionately when asked whether he sometimes misses his life in lockdown. "You know, human beings … feel more comfortable in areas they are secure. In a cell you have a routine, you pretty much know what is going to happen, when it's going to happen, but in society it's difficult, it's looser. So there are moments when, yeah, I wish I was back in the security of a cell." He pauses, then adds: "I mean, it does that to you."

Karl Barth preached regularly to the inmates of the prison in his hometown of Basel, Switzerland. Knowledge of that context adds poignancy to the sermons. Here was an audience of people who had been officially judged and condemned as guilty. One of the sermons is based on Ephesians 2:8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God." He illustrated by retelling a Swiss legend:

You probably all know the legend of the rider who crossed the frozen Lake of Constance by night without knowing it. When he reached the opposite shore and was told whence he came, he broke down horrified. This is the human situation when the sky opens and the earth is bright, when we may hear: By grace you have been saved! In such a moment we are like that terrified rider. When we hear this word we involuntarily look back, do we not, asking ourselves: Where have I been? Over an abyss, in mortal danger! What did I do? The most foolish thing I ever attempted! What happened? I was doomed and miraculously escaped and now I am safe!

In the same way, everyone who is trusting Christ for salvation by grace alone can say, "I was in mortal danger. I was doomed but through the cross of Christ I miraculously escaped and now I am safe!"

Walter McMillian was convicted of killing 18-year-old Ronda Morrison at a dry cleaner in Monroeville, Alabama in 1986. Three witnesses testified against McMillian, while six witnesses, who were black, testified that he was at a church fish fry at the time of the crime. McMillian was found guilty and held on death row for six years—all the while claiming his innocence.

An attorney named Bryan Stevenson decided to take on the case to defend McMillian. Stevenson told a reporter:

It was a pretty clear situation where everyone just wanted to forget about this man, let him get executed so everybody could move on. [There was] a lot of passion, a lot of anger in the community about [Morrison's] death, and I think there was great resistance to someone coming in and fighting for the condemned person who had been accused and convicted.

But with Stevenson's representation, McMillian was exonerated in 1993. McMillian was eventually freed, but not without scars of being on death row. One of those scars was early-onset dementia. Stevenson comments, "Many of the doctors believed [the dementia] was trauma-induced; [it] was a function of his experience of being nearly killed—and he witnessed eight executions when he was on death row." So even after McMillian was free from death row, free from prison, and an exonerated man, in his mind he was still a prisoner. When Stevenson would visit him in the hospital, McMillian was still telling his lawyer, "You've got to get me off death row."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Justification by Faith; (2) Prison Ministry; Racism; Prisons; Prisoners; Race Relations—This illustration also shows the lingering effects of racial injustice. In the NPR story Stevenson concluded, "One of the things that pains me is we have so tragically underestimated the trauma, the hardship we create in this country when we treat people unfairly, when we incarcerate them unfairly, when we condemn them unfairly."

Every Sunday Clive Jacobsen from Sydney, Australia boards a train with a leather duffel bag, finds a comfortable seat, and settles in for a four-hour journey. He's not on the train to look at the scenery out the window. Instead, Clive will unzip his duffel bag, get out a note- pad and a pen, and start writing letters.

The letters he writes will find their way to distant countries like Zambia, South Africa, and Thailand. Clive is writing to international prisoners. He writes to inmates because he was one once. Back in the mid-1960s, Clive spent a small amount of time in jail for a relatively minor offense, but he's never forgotten the sense of isolation and abandonment he felt while he was there. So it seemed only natural that when a letter-writing organization contacted him in 2002 about sending letters to inmates abroad, he seized the opportunity.

The organization told him he could write to more than one inmate if he liked, so he decided to write to three. As his correspondence went on and he began to develop relationships—however distant—with these men, so he upped it to four. Then 10, then 20, then 100. Now Clive Jacobsen maintains written correspondence with more than 550 prisoners abroad.

Many of them live in countries with extreme poverty and no opportunities to get out of it; many of them, in a fit of desperation, did something criminal in an effort to take care of their kids or wives. Clive understands them, and his heart goes out to them. In his words, "They can't undo the crime they've done, but no one is beyond redemption."

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, with 2.2 million adults behind bars. The United States also consumes more coffee than any other nation—146 billion cups of coffee every year (as of 2/2024). Those two facts may seem completely unrelated, but to a Christian businessman from Wheaton, Illinois, they provided a creative way to do something he loves and minister to former inmates in his community.

It all started when Pete Leonard, a businessman involved with a local software company, started roasting coffee out of his garage. About the same time, Leonard watched as a family member fruitlessly searched for work after serving time in prison. Leonard said, "He'd always get interviews, but the instant he had to check the box 'I'm a convicted felon,' that was the end of the story." Leonard also realized that his relative's story was typical of a much larger problem: Many ex-convicts can't find work, which drives them back into unemployment or crime.

Over breakfast one morning, Leonard and two close friends took a napkin and sketched out an idea of starting a business that would hire ex-offenders. But Leonard was also committed to making excellent coffee. "If the coffee is bad," he said, "you're not going to buy it again." So Leonard and his friends started Second Chance Coffee Company, which markets under the brand I Have a Bean. Leonard and his wife, Debbie, invested thousands of dollars to launch the business, and Leonard eventually left his job to pursue it full time. Today, Second Chance makes quality coffee while hiring mostly ex-convicts. For a mom or dad coming out of prison, that means being able to be a provider and pulling the family out of the cycle of poverty. According to Debbie Leonard, for her and Pete it's also meant realizing that "your security is in God and not in your bank account."

Editor’s Note: This company’s program continues in 2024. You can read their story here

Cornelius Plantinga Jr. writes in “Reading for Preaching”:

I was visiting on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. I asked one man if he would like to talk, and he said he would. He was a smallish man whose wire-rimmed glasses and intelligent expression made him look a little professorial. I asked him how he spends his days. He picked up his NIV Bible, hefted it, and said, "I spend a lot of time reading our book. I'm glad it's so big. I'll never get to the bottom of it." Then he said something I'll never forget. "You know," he said, "there are 2 billion of us Christians in the world, and everything today that any of us does that's any good has something to do with our book. And I have a copy of it right here in my cell!"