INTRODUCTION TO MINTS THEOLOGICAL TEACHING MINISTRY IN PRISON
BAM 326
By
Dr. Cornelius (Neal) Hegeman Ph.D. in Christian Thought
MINTS International Seminary
14401 Old Cutler Rd.
Miami, Florida, 33158, USA
(home)
2017
INTRODUCTION TO MINTS THEOLOGICAL TEACHING MINISTRY IN PRISON
PART I. WELCOME!
PREFACE
HOW TO STUDY THE COURSE
INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE
LESSON ONE INTRODUCTION TO PRISON MINISTRY
PART II. BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
LESSON TWO JESUS AND THE TWO CRIMINALS
LESSON THREE PAUL’S CHURCH ACTIVITIES IN PRISON
LESSON FOUR PAUL, PHILEMON AND ONESIMUS
LESSON FIVE WHEN EVERYTHING GOES WRONG
PART III MINISTRY CONSIDERATIONS
LESSON SIX THE DIVINE PASTOR REACHES INMATES BY MANY MEANS
LESSION SEVEN BEING THE CHURCH IN PRISON
LESSION EIGHT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET YOUR FREEDOM?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
TEACHER’S MANUAL
APPENDIX
A. SOME DO’S AND DON’TS FOR PRISON MINISTRY
B. PRISONERS AS WORKERS
BIOGRAPHY OF AUTHOR
PART I. WELCOME!
In the welcome section of the course the reader and students are presented the author’s preface, the methodology to study the course, an introduction to the course and the first of eight lessons.
PREFACE
The need for writing this course comes from MINTS International Seminary teaching program in prisons. MINTS is involved in prisons in Ecuador, Nicaragua and throughout the USA.
The author’s experience in prison is limited. He has not been an inmate, nor does he have family to visit in prison. His teaching role in prison starts with being invited to teach at Zephyrhills Correctional Institution, and then following up in Ecuador, Charlotte CI and Miami CI. Besides being the coordinator for MINTS Hispanic program he also is the Academic Dean for prison ministries for the MINTS program. He works with Barry Smith in Miami, who is a MINTS coordinator at the centers at Dade Correctional and Everglades, as well as Rev. Jeff Krause at Charlotte CI. In 2017, a MINTS program has b
The organizational goal is to establish MINTS study centers where five volunteer teachers teach each work day of the week, so that the inmates can take a full Bible College and Seminary program. The involvement of local volunteers helps bring the theological training efforts of a variety of ministries together. MINTS offers an academic structure by which to accomplish our mutual goals.
MINTS efforts are not unique. Dennis Shere in Cain’s Redemption. A Story of Hope and Transformation in America’s Bloodiest Prison,[1] describes the story of the development of Bible College and Seminary programs at the Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana. It is a testimony to how Bible and theological education can be organized in prison and provide a rehabilitating and calming effect.
The author also had opportunity to teach at Divine Hope Reformed Bible Seminary, originating out of Danville Correctional Center in Danville, Illinois.[2] This seminary has extended into Indiana as well.
Three MINTS graduates are developing teaching and counseling ministries in the correctional centers in Quito, Ecuador. The author has had opportunity to visit and teach there, but most of all, to encourage the teachers to continue to use theological education to rehabilitate the incarcerated.
Finally, the course is dedicated to the new MINTS teachers who will be teaching Bible, Theology, Ministry, History and Mission courses in the prison systems. May this course help them to be even more effective.
HOW TO STUDY THE COURSE
OVERALL GOAL
The student will be introduced to themes that are familiar to Christian volunteer theological teaching ministries in the prison systems.
OBJECTIVES
1. To study about prison ministries with other Christians
2. To develop personal and group theological teaching skills applicable to prison ministries
3. To familiar oneself with the experiences and observations of others involved in prison.
4. To write materials that will be useful in communicating the gospel in prison ministries.
5. To orally present the message of the course to others.
REQUIREMENTS
1. Participate in 15 hours of communal dialogue about the contents of the course.
2. Complete the study exercises as contained in the 8 lessons
3. Locate helpful reading materials dealing with prison teaching ministries.
4. Write an essay of no more than 7 pages, 1.5 font at BA level and 12 pages at MA level.
5. Preach, teach or counsel on themes developed in this course.
EVALUATION
1. One point for every hour of class or communal interaction (15%)
2. Four points for each class in which the students came prepared with corresponding questions answered. One point for completion of all (25%)
3. For readings (300 for BA or 600 for MA) and incorporate readings into the essay (25%)
4. Write an academic essay on a pre-approved theme on prison ministry (25%)
5. Final exam. Ten questions taken from the questions at the end of each lesson (10%)
APPLICATION
1. The student will be enriched in his dialogue about themes related to prison teaching ministry
2. The student will develop teaching ministry skills for prison ministry
3. The student will have access to literature dealing with themes of prison ministry.
4. The student will be able to write about issues relating to prison ministry
5. The student will be able to orally communicate to others about themes of prison ministry
REQUIRED MATERIALS
1. 1. The MINTS course on Introduction to MINTS Theological Teaching Ministry in Prison.
2. 2. Dennis Shere. Cain’s Redemption. A Story of Hope and Transformation in America’s Bloodiest Prison. Chicago: Northfield Publishing, 2005.
CLASS RECORD
Name of Student- / Attendance(15%) / Home-Work
(25%) / Readings and reflections (25%) / Written Work
(25%) / Final Exam
(10%) / Final Mark
(100%)
INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE
This is an introductory course for both the author and the student. So we are in the same boat. Hopefully, we are not asleep with the knowledge of the true God locked into our slumbering minds, while the boat is sinking and the freaked out sailors are crying out to their idols for rescue. Only when Jonah was awakened by the captain of the ship and asked to explain what mission he was on, did the pagans hear about the true God and purpose of the storm. When Jonah and the pagans obeyed God, the storm was calmed and Jonah was rescued by God through the big fish whose name is Resurrection. As Jonah was called to enter through the closed gates of the terrifying city of Nineveh, so Christians are called to enter into the bastions of the prisons in America and throughout the world. While we, like Jonah, doubt the sincerity of the “jail house conversions” that does not mean that God does. While our churches may be oasis of palms trees where we await the destruction of America and the world that does not mean that we should meet our maker waiting for God to punish the world.
If you are convinced that the gospel is the only hope for the inmates in prison then this course is for you. If you are not convinced of the ultimate utility of the gospel, you are invited to continue reading, with the warning that you may be in for the biggest surprise of your immortal life.
This course is written for the Christian volunteers who are teaching biblical, theological, ministerial, history and missiological truths to the inmates.
LESSON ONE. INTRODUCTION TO PRISON MINISTRY
INTRODUCTION
The USA is known as a law abiding nation, on one hand and a country of many liberties, on the other hand. It is also said that the USA has the highest percentage of their population incarcerated.
Comment “Both in raw numbers and by percentage of the population, the United States has the most prisoners of any developed country in the world — and it has the largest total prison population of any nation. That didn’t change in 2013. After several years in which the prison population dropped slightly, the raw number of inmates in United States custody went up again in 2013.
More than 1.57 million inmates sat behind bars in federal, state, and county prisons and prisons around the country as of December 31, 2013. In the federal prisons, more than half of those sentenced to a stints of a year or longer are still there for drug crimes. In states including Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, and Georgia, at least 1 percent of male residents were in prison on December 31. And across the country, racial disparities persist. Black men are six times more likely than white men to be in prison. Hispanic men are 2.4 times more likely, according to a Sentencing Project analysis of the data.
This doesn’t paint the full picture of the U.S. incarceration system. Many have estimated the total number of U.S. incarceration to be more than 2.4 million. This is in part because another estimated 12 million individuals cycle through the county prison systems in a given year for periods of less than a year, and are therefore not factored into a snapshot on December 31. There are also other mechanisms of incarceration not factored into this figure, including immigration detention, civil commitment, and Indian Country facilities, according to a Prison Policy Initiative briefing.
And a vastly greater number of Americans — 1 in 31 according to 2009 Pew figures — are under U.S. corrections custody either through parole, probation, or incarceration. One in three Americans have a criminal record, according to recent FBI estimates.
But it’s not all bad news. In just the federal prisons, the population actually dropped for the first time since 1980. Some experts attributed this to decreased priority on marijuana arrests, as states move toward decriminalization or legalization, and federal authorities shift their resources elsewhere.
The federal prisons are where drug offenders are serving many of the most onerous sentences for drug offenses carrying mandatory minimum sentences. And despite the first decrease in more than two decades, its population remains expansive.
“These figures challenge premature and overly optimistic forecasts of the end of mass incarceration,” said Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project.
Just this week, a Congressional Budget Office analysis found that passing a bipartisan bill in Congress to reform mandatory minimum sentences, the Smarter Sentencing Act, would reduce prison costs by $4 billion in just the first decade. The Justice Department projected savings of at least an additional $7.8 billion in the second decade. The Smarter Sentencing Act would roll back required sentences for drug offenses that start at 5 or 10 years in prison and ratchet up quickly from there. It would instead allow judges to use their judgment to set an appropriate sentence, as well as retroactively eliminate an antiquated and racist disparity between sentences for crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses. And some recent changes coming from the executive branch this year to attempt stopgap sentencing reform were too recent to have affected the 2013 population.
At the state level, populations saw a drop over the past few years in large part due to court-ordered population reductions in California, where the U.S. Supreme Court deemed prisons so overcrowded that they constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Now that California’s reductions have leveled off, the state population went up again in 2013, despite reforms in some states that are widely considered models for the federal prisons. Even some red states cited by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder as having been leaders in some areas of criminal justice reform, such as Texas, saw slight increases in their prison populations.
“The existing reforms can only take us so far,” University of California, Berkeley, criminal justice scholar Steven Raphael told the New York Times. University of Missouri – St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld noted that just thwarting the exponential increase in the population was an achievement, particularly at the federal level. Prior to this year, the federal prison population had spiked more than 790 percent since 1980.
Local prisons, which typically house inmates arrested but not yet sentenced and those sentenced for less than a year, also saw their daily population rise this year.
The proportion of inmates held in private prisons actually decreased 3 percent in 2013, after a few states ended their relationships with private prisons entirely. Private prisons now house some 8 percent of the U.S. prison population. The industry, however, has more than made up for its loss in the prison industry with its share of federal immigration detention, and its entry into other criminal justice industries like rehabilitation.”[3]
The need to minister to a significant portion of the USA population incarcerated lies among the responsibilities of Christians and the Church in America.
THE INMATE
So what is the correct term to use when speaking of an incarcerated person? The list includes both serious as well as derogatory labels: inmate, prisoner, captive, incarcerated, “men in blue” (Florida), prison birds, convicts and a list of less serious designations. Let us define some of these terms as they related to the prison system.
Captive. “One who is forcible confined, restrained, or subjugated as a prisoner.”[4]
Convict. “To find or prove (someone) guilty of and offense, especially by the verdict of a court.”[5]
Criminal. “A person who has committed or been legally convicted of a crime.”[6]
Incarcerated. “To put in prison.” “To shut in, confine.”[7]
Inmate. “A resident in a building or dwelling.”[8]
Offender. “These terms (offense, crime, sin, and error) are [9]related in denoting infraction of a code.”
Prisoner. “A person held in custody, captivity, or a condition of forcible restraint, especially while on trial or serving a prison sentence.”[10]
The Florida Department of Corrections makes the following statement:
“Definitions for Terms Used
Below is an alphabetical listing of terms used throughout the Prison Facility Profiles area of our website. If you need clarification on a term used that is not listed, please e-mail us.
Adult Facility
Any facility designated to house offenders other than those committed or classified under the Youthful Offender Act.
Cell Housing Units
Secure, self-contained cellblock units where each cell includes a lavatory. Houses one or two offenders per cell.