Half 3 of a 3-part collection exploring a jail ministry at Bibb County Correctional Facility
Within the chapel stood a Christmas tree, a festive array of wreaths and garlands, and multicolored lights strung throughout the railings and the partitions. Because the lots of of worshippers quietly filed in, reflective strains from an electrical piano stuffed the room. The worshippers included nearly 200 males in khaki jail jumpsuits and some guests, or “free world individuals” in jail parlance.
“That is the day that the Lord has made,” Warden Christopher Gordy of Bibb County Correctional Facility learn from Psalm 118 just some days earlier than Christmas. “We’ll rejoice and be glad in it.”
With that, the assembled—inmates, guests, and guards alike—all stood to sing.
The Arrival of the King
The Christmas holidays generally is a tough time for a lot of. Loneliness, loss, and sorrow are likely to hit tougher this time of yr. For women and men in jail who’re separated from their households and family members by bodily and relational distances, the battle can typically be worse.
Because of this, the Christian group at Bibb held two Christmas providers in December 2024 for graduates of the Birmingham Theological Seminary jail applications and Unbound216 members, together with their sponsors, school, and jail employees. These providers used hymns, exhortations, and testimonies to concentrate on the excellent news of Jesus’ start.
Gordy opened the service with a message of gratitude for what the inmates have completed, reminding listeners that the religion and hope of this system members have remodeled Bibb jail from the within out.
“We had a imaginative and prescient to vary the tradition of Bibb,” he mentioned. “Not by the administration, however from you. We couldn’t do what we’ve completed with out you and your willingness to take part.”
Noting that an opportunity at rehabilitation was a present, Gordy reminded them of the route their lives may have taken. “[For] a few of you, jail saved your life. You had been headed in one in every of two locations—right here or to the cemetery. However regardless of your circumstances, you’re blessed—you’re higher off right here than some of us on the market are at present. By no means have a look at your state of affairs as hopeless.”
Echoing Gordy’s sentiment was Eddie, one of many missionaries to B4.
“As an alternative of this place being a spot of incarceration,” Eddie noticed, “this place is now a spot of restoration.” He paused to go searching at his listeners.
“There are 300 some members in our ranks now. God is so good to us.”
Taking the pulpit for the primary sermon was the Rev. E.O. Jackson of Higher New Antioch Baptist Church in Birmingham, who spoke primarily from Philippians 2:14-15. In a message heavy on software, Jackson provided a robust sermon in regards to the public-facing id of believers, noting the character of sunshine to shine within the darkness.
“Jesus is the sunshine,” Jackson preached to loud murmurs and amens from the inmates. “However he needs us to be an extension of his gentle. This world is darkish. There’s a nice want for gentle, and you may be these lights to youthful males.”
Noting the self-sacrificial nature of candles burning themselves as much as present gentle, Jackson urged the lads to keep away from grumbling and to look outwards to these round them in want. “There could also be somebody down within the valley,” he concluded, “who wants your gentle to get house.”
Such a message resonated deeply with males for whom the BTS and Unbound216 applications have been lights in their very own private darknesses, and who at the moment are studying to share that gentle with others.
After the service, space church buildings, together with native PCA church buildings, partnered with the jail to host a particular Christmas lunch within the cafeteria, providing dozens of recent meals introduced in from the surface (a uncommon deal with) and items for each inmate current. In dialog at these tables, all variations between inmates and free-world individuals quickly disappeared.
Transitioning Out
“There are 106 males in every bay,” chaplain and PCA Instructing Elder Mitch Haubert reminded the inmates in his remarks on the Christmas service. “Every of you represents a household which implies there are 106 households in every bay. Take into consideration what it means to depart a legacy: you’re doing this that will help you serve and shepherd others, to be the daddy, husband, or son you’ll want to be. To be the leaders you’ll want to be.”
Such an perception is a sobering reminder that for every one in every of these males, the aim shouldn’t be merely a brand new stroll with Christ and a safer place to sleep at night time, however restored, renewed relationships with their household and group. Each believer on the within lives with a novel stress between their two identities, their secular, authorized id as a prison, and their sacred id as a brand new creation within the eyes of God (2 Corinthians 5:17).
For these with extra severe fees in opposition to them, and as a lot hostility and suspicion awaiting them on the surface as there ever was on the within (if no more), the challenges of transition again to public life will be a few of the most tough but. Job prospects will be frightfully skinny for these with felony information, they usually return to damaged relationships with households and friends in determined want of mending.
“You may are available as a lone wolf,” Eddie advised me,“however over time you understand these individuals listed here are your loved ones. You eat, sleep, and bathe with them. However the restoration of your loved ones on the within drives the necessity and the will to reconcile with your loved ones on the surface. Individuals are dying on the market. I solely have one probability to make it proper.”
Throughout my journey to Bibb County Correctional Facility in December, I met two graduates of the BTS program who had lately accomplished their sentences and moved into transitional housing supplied by BTS and Brent Presbyterian Church (PCA). Each Adam and Kenneth attend Brent PCA, a small companion church within the space whose volunteers serve within the ministries contained in the jail. After a number of weeks of looking upon their launch, each males discovered work in a close-by poultry processing plant, working lengthy hours however grateful to have a gradual job on the road. They share a small home that was furnished and renovated by a group of volunteers and companions who needed these males to really feel genuinely at house of their lodging after years of residing in cinder block dorms.
Each Adam and Kenneth acknowledged the difficulties they confronted of their reentry, however every of them additionally shared that God had sustained them by a few of the most attempting occasions of their lives on the within, and that they’d little doubt he would proceed to take action.
Ready patiently on God’s provision and timing, Kenneth noticed, was key to his hope of reconciliation together with his household. However, with out his coaching and non secular progress within the BTS program, he would have rushed to judgment, made impulsive selections, and ruined the possibilities of reuniting with these he cherished most.
“Now I simply take issues in the future at a time,” he mentioned, “and I’m at peace with that.”
Throughout his incarceration Adam skilled devastating tragedy: a number of relations, together with two younger sons, died in a automotive accident. He was pressured to look at this harrowing information footage on the jail tv, with BTS and Unbound216 brothers surrounding him in prayer and comfort as he cried out in grief. However his cries had been blended, he advised me, with the popularity that even within the worst ache of his life—the lack of his sons—he may nonetheless declare that God was good.
I heard Adam’s identical story repeated a number of occasions whereas chatting with inmates—it left a robust influence on all those that witnessed it that day. However the response was unanimous: that even amid this horror, God was nonetheless sovereign, nonetheless loving, and nonetheless understanding his plan of redemption.
“God is both good the entire time or not one of the time,” Adam advised me, choking up even years after his loss. “And I do know which one he’s.”
Gentle within the Darkness
Prisons are a recurring theme within the Bible. God’s individuals are imprisoned for quite a lot of causes, generally for his or her hard-heartedness, different occasions for his or her faithfulness to God. A few of Paul’s strongest letters had been written from jail, comparable to Philippians, the place he rejoices in his skill to evangelise to your complete jail guard, and Ephesians, the place he calls himself an envoy in chains.
However prisons are additionally deeply metaphorical. In response to Scripture, we’re imprisoned in our fragile our bodies, certain by the shackles of sin, and held captive by spirits of worry and wish. Finally, our closing vacation spot of the grave threatens to imprison us ceaselessly. However at each flip in redemptive historical past, God reveals his energy to liberate us from sin, worry, and loss of life itself by Christ.
Driving this motion is nothing lower than the Phrase of God itself, which has the ability to penetrate each wall, open each door, and break each chain. As Paul wrote to Timothy in one in every of his closing letters, “The phrase of God is not going to be certain” (2 Timothy 2:8-9). For the final eight years, the phrase of God has been sweeping by the bays and dorms of Bibb County Correctional Facility like a mighty wind, clearing out the mud and dust within the hearts of the lads who reside there. And, simply as God promised, he’s making all issues new (Revelations 21:5).
This story has been underway for eight years however in different methods, it’s simply starting. In every single place I went within the cell bays, whether or not strolling down the aisles of bunk beds or sitting with inmates of their lecture rooms, males got here as much as me and took my hand, thanking me for seeing them, for listening to their tales. They’re appreciative of getting their expertise acknowledged and celebrated.
However my transient mission of telling a few of their tales pales compared to the brothers’ ongoing, every day mission of caring for others, ministering to the misplaced, and, in Parker’s phrases, providing new hope by the gospel.
“We’re right here to point out guys on the within that they’re somebody, and that they’re not forgotten,” he mentioned, “displaying them grace like Christ reveals us grace.”
Each human makes an attempt to reside in isolation from our personal Creator. However the transformation from Bloody Bibb to Blessed Bibb demonstrates that there aren’t any obstacles past the ability of the Searcher of Hearts (Jeremiah 17:10, Romans 8:27).
Bibb reminds us God is at work reclaiming sinners, whether or not you’re in a cell block or a subdivision. BTS college students and Unbound 216 members are a residing testimony of God’s skill to reclaim individuals (and locations) from violence, vice, and sin for his personal throne.
Ben Morris is a byFaith contributing author.
