Ministry Update
It has been a busy several weeks!
After nearly a year and a half of being shut out of prisons due to the pandemic, most have now reopened to programs. It has been so good to be back inside behind the razor wire with our brothers and sisters! They have been so glad to see us!
I wanted to share some highlights of what your faithful prayer and financial support has helped to accomplish.
In July I made a weeklong trip to Florida. I made a ministry report in a supporting church in Miami and hosted a volunteer/supporter dessert reception. I visited three prisons and met with Seminary-in-Prison students and chaplains to plan the restart of programs post-pandemic. In Zephyrhills Correctional Institution I taught a two-hour introduction to my course/book on Deuteronomy, which has been followed up by a chaplain who facilitated the lessons.
The day I went to Zephyrhills CI I was accompanied by a new Seminary-in-Prison staff instructor from Orlando. After the class we drove to Tarpon Springs to meet with the Metanoia Ministries Correspondence Course Facilitator. The next day I met with staff at St. Andrews Chapel who plan to donate 250 Reformation Study Bibles for Seminary-in-Prison students. On the way home I was able to visit a long-time supporter of our ministries who lives in Gainesville.
Back in Chattanooga we have been extremely busy with the reopening of facilities both for the Seminary-in-Prison and for Metanoia mentoring.
At the Next Door women’s reentry facility in Chattanooga I’ve recruited a new group leader, trained eight new mentors, and revived/restored the database to provide better administration and oversight.
At Walker State Prison we’ve been faced with many changes and challenges. At the prison the warden, deputy warden for care and treatment, deputy warden for security, senior counselor, another counselor, and one of the two chaplains we work with are new to their positions.
In our ministry, our Mentor Ministry Administrator, and four of our six group leaders are new to their positions. Several mentors decided to not return to the ministry post-pandemic. Quite a few of our prisoner/mentees transferred to other facilities during the seventeen months we were away. There has been a flurry of activity in making mentor/mentee matches.
Many of our 100 mentors allowed their Department of Corrections volunteer credentials to lapse during the pandemic. I’ve worked with our Mentor Ministry Administrator to help mentors renew their credentials. And in the last few weeks, I’ve conducted two orientation/training sessions with seven new mentors.
In-person mentoring started two weeks ago at Walker. In the first two weeks our six mentor groups had 76 mentor sessions with 152 mentoring hours. All in an environment of increasing Covid infections in our area thus requiring us to put Covid protocols in place. We have had to implement processes for identifying mentors who become infected with Covid or exposed to an infected person, both of which have happened.
It’s been quite a stress filled process, but the results have been so good. The men on the inside have been so happy to see their mentors after almost a year and a half absence. And it’s not only the mentees who are glad to see mentors back inside. I was there for the first night back for each of the six groups. Every night men from the general population came up to me to thank us for coming back inside the prison.
The Seminary-in-Prison also restarted at Walker. We have twenty students in two classes. John Fields is teaching a course on Romans chapters 1-8. I am teaching a course on A Biblical Understanding of Suffering.
And we have a graduation scheduled for September 17th for 12 students who pressed forward during the pandemic, studying under inmate-professors, inmates who have earned advanced degrees while incarcerated and were qualified to teach.
Finally, things have started moving forward to begin Metanoia mentoring in Tennessee prisons.
Metanoia Mentoring will begin at Bledsoe County Correctional Complex in Pikeville in September. We will start off supporting the Tennessee DOC Take One reentry mentoring program, a program for inmates with 18 months left on their sentence. Take One mentors meet with their mentee once a month prior to their release and then weekly for one year after their release. The goal is to assist offenders and their families to successfully adjust to society.
I will be the first Metanoia Take One mentor. I will start next week working with a mentee. At the same time, I will be recruiting and training other mentors for Bledsoe.
I have been approved to provide certified training for volunteers for the Tennessee Department of Corrections. This will streamline the process for our mentors. I will be able to do Metanoia training and Tennessee training for our volunteers in one session.
We have two experienced Metanoia mentors who will join me to form our Bledsoe mentor leadership team. Together the three of us will be recruiting and training mentors for Bledsoe and building mentoring at the Men’s and Women’s prisons at Bledsoe.
Much has been happening. It couldn’t have happened without your prayer and financial support. Thank you again. I appreciate you!
Much love, Barry