Would You Contribute One Dollar?

To help a criminal leave prison as a Christian, not a better trained  Criminal?

Contribution

Tulsa County Jail.

On Pace to deliver 5,000 Classroom lessons this year into David L. Moss or Tulsa Co. Jail.

Jim Pinkston & Francisco Davila teach the men.

Ron Babbet teaches with us men when his schedule allows.

Four ladies go to the women’s pods every Friday for the last two and one half years, to teach.  Elaine Russell, Carol Siling, Teresa Hawkins and Alison Valentine. Two more ladies, Lori Varnell & Jan Upton, have taken the training and are waiting to get their badges.

Jody Gilkey has moved back to Tulsa and has started back at the jail with the ladies. We have just received permission to teach in the third POD #18 on Thursday afternoons. This will have us teaching in all the lady pods.

Carl Moore and Zeth Parkhurst have finished the training and have received their badges. They will be able to teach the hearing impaired.

On October 10, 2015 over 200 inmates were baptized at DLM. 105 were the students of the Park Plaza Prison Ministry.

Bill Hamrick, Ron Hass and Ralph Hunter Church of Christ preachers also go into DLM between us all the men’s pods are visited each week. In

December Park teachers baptized 64, and March 2016;  85 more.

 

Creek Co. Jail

is a new work started by Terry. He takes Celebrate Recovery into the jail every Monday and on Friday afternoon New Life Behavior.  Due to this ministry going into Creek County, The inmates there studied salvation and 107 were baptized into Christ. Over 20 of these are Terry’s students.  The last time Creek held baptisms was 5 years prior to these. David Stikes now has his badge and is teaching there.

 

John H. Lilly Correctional Center.

Terry teaches New Life Behavior, Thinking for a change, and sponsors Celebrate Recovery. He is also the Assistant Chaplin. Roger Bentley has received his training and got his badge and has started helping Terry at John Lilly. John Ulrich is helping on Saturdays with CR. On Wednesday April 13, 2016 Terry baptized two men into Christ.

 

Dick Connors Correctional Center.

Jim has worked there since 1990. Elaine started a couple of years later.

Jim teaches NLB Lessons and CASA.  He also teaches in the faith based unit and preaches there four evenings each month. Tuesday night Oct.20, 2015 one inmate was baptized during the service the Park Plaza Prison Ministry did.

On November 4 another young man was baptized into Christ.

Jim and Jody Carmichael, Elaine Russell help and Booker leads singing when he can.

Jim’s (Pinkston) wife Jean now has her badge and is going with the group to the services there. So far this year we have had four baptisms there.

Correspondence.

35 packages of 6 to 7 lessons mailed to many prisons in Oklahoma.  Every two weeks = 228 lessons x 2 = 456 per month or 5,472 per year.  We have several helpers that show up every other Tuesday night to grade all of these and get them ready to mail. Many of these are people we studied with at Tulsa and Creek County Jail and have gone on to prison. This is one way we keep up with them.

 

Re-entry program.

(Hope City) It houses four men at this time.  Randy Milam is the onsite manager.  We have the space for five.  Two units are being remodeled to where it can handle seven.  We also have a RV that is being plumed at this time to where it can house one making the total eight.

One of these men (Bryan Campbell) is being trained to go into the prisons and be a full time minister like Jim Pinkston and Terry Finch.  He has a degree in bible and masters in drug & alcohol counseling.

Through the ministry he was funded for these while incarcerated.  He will receive his badge in January. In the last year and one half over twenty men have been helped and are closer to Jesus because of this great ministry. Two of these men have their own business today and employ several ex-offenders.

 

Advisory Board. 

The board is made up of eight men.  James Ivy, Ken Williams, Steve Stade, Scott Blackwell, Gary Medley, Mark Clayton, Randy Milam and Kevin Neiman.  Jim & Terry are the recruiters for the applicants.  The board decides who is approved to enter the reentry program.  They go by a set of guidelines approved by the Elders. The board also oversees the operation of the program.

 

Future Plans.

To continue with the programs that are now being successful and just see where God leads us in 2016.

 

Baptisms from this work

2010                            94

2011                            109

2012                            139

2013                            259

2014                            406

2015                            382

2016 Jan Tulsa County 56 March Tulsa County 85 As of April 1 2016 Dick Connors 6 John Lilley At Boley 7. = 154 So Far in 2016

Total                          1543 Since 2010 That we know of.

 

To put this in perspective, 1543 would more than fill first & second service at Park Central. 

 

Impossible without your support.

“Jesus did it!!!”

 

 

 

 

THOSE WHO GO FOR SERVICES

 AT THE DIFFERENT PLACES

Jim Pinkston

Terry Finch  

Elaine Russell

Booker Murphy

Jerona Robey

Jim & Jody Carmichael

Francisco Davila

Carol Siling

Teresa Hawkins

Alison Valentine

Jody Gilkey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW WORKS FOR 2016

 

Tulsa County Jail

 

Carl Moore & Zeth Parkhurst  have finished their training and will soon receive their badges. They will be teaching the hearing impaired at Tulsa County Jail.

 

Lori Varnell & Jan Upton have finished their training and will soon receive their badges. They will be teaching the ladies with the other Park Plaza ladies at Tulsa County Jail.

 

Creek County Jail

 

David Stikes & Jody Gilkey will soon receive their training and receive their badges and start teaching at the Jail.

 

JOHN H. LILLY CORRECTIONAL CENTER

 

Roger Bentley, Brian Campbell and John Ulrich will receive their badges and start teaching at this prison with Terry.

 

Dick Connors Correctional Center

 

Jim Pinkston has started teaching in the Faith Based Unit. This is a program where every inmate in the unit is a believer in God. The men stay in this unit for eighteen months and spend there time studying Gods word.

Jim’s wife Jean is getting her badge and will start going to Dick Connors with the group soon.

Jim Carmichael will start teaching Apologetics the first Monday of April. That is how to defend the Christian Faith.

 

I would like to share with you a post from Eric Obeng Asante

Preacher at Church of Christ / Gospel Preacher Planning Churches Of Christ In Africa

Studied at Southern Africa Bible College
Lives in Johannesburg, South Africa
From Accra, Ghana

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Here’s what I noticed, much like the civil rights movement in America, the most successful activist who became known as one of our greatest leaders was Dr. Martin Luther King, who sought reform through peaceful, yet forceful & determination.

Those who seek reform through violence, are always forgotten, and have much less success.

Christianity has evangelized the world through mostly peaceful means, sharing the word of God, and the message of salvation through peaceful loving methods, and when the truth is heard, people are converted, worlds are won for Christ.

Yet while the Muslim world evangelizes by the sword, and they have temporary victories, and always , ultimately loses.  They do not worship the loving God of heaven but the Hating God of this world.

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The founder of Islam was Mohammed, born at Mecca, in Arabia, A.D. 570. He began his career as prophet and reformer in 610, when forty years old. At first disciples were won slowly, but his cause grew sufficiently to meet with persecution.

He fled from Mecca in A.D. 622, and his flight, called the Hegira, supplies the date from which the Mohammedan calendar is reckoned. He succeeded in bringing under his religion and authority the scattered Arabian tribes, and returned as a conqueror to Mecca. When he died, in A.D. 632, he was the accepted prophet and ruler throughout Arabia.

His religion is named Islam, “submission,” that is, obedience to the will of God; and his followers are called Moslem — the name “Mohammedan” being never used by them. The articles of their faith, as stated by themselves are:

that there is one God, whom they name Allah, the word being of common origin with the similar Hebrew word “Elohim”;

that all events whether good or evil have been foreordained by God, consequently in every act they are carrying out God’s will;

that there are multitudes of angels, good and bad, invisible yet constantly dealing with men;

that God has given his revelation in the Koran, a series of messages communicated to Mohammed through the Angel Gabriel, though they were not collected until after the prophet’s death;

that God has sent inspired prophets to men, of whom the four greatest have been Adam, Moses, Jesus, and, above all others, Mohammed;

all the biblical prophets, the Christian apostles, and the saints who lived before Mohammed having been recognized and adopted as their own;

that in the hereafter there will be a final resurrection, judgment, and heaven or hell for every man.

At first Mohammed relied on moral influences in preaching his message; but soon changed his methods and became a warrior, leading his united and fierce Arabs to the conquest of unbelievers. To each land or tribe they gave the alternatives of Islam, tribute, or death to those who resisted their arms. Mohammed was succeeded by a series of caliphs who built up a vast empire by the sword.

Palestine and Syria were soon conquered; and the holy places of Christianity fell under the power of Islam. Province after province of the Greco-Roman Empire was seized, and soon all that was left was the city of Constantinople, so that all the lands of early Christianity became subject. Where the Christians submitted, their worship was permitted under restrictions. Eastward the empire of the caliphs extended beyond Persia into India. Their capital was at Bagdad on the Tigris.

Westward, their conquests included Egypt, all northern Africa, and the greater part of Spain. Nearly all of this vast empire was gained within a hundred years after “the prophet’s” death. But its progress in western Europe was stopped in southern France by Charles Martel, who rallied the discordant tribes under the leadership of the Franks, and won a decisive victory at Tours in A.D. 732. But for the battle of Tours, it is possible that all Europe might have been a Mohammedan continent, and the crescent have taken the place of the cross.

It is an interesting question — why did the Mohammedan religion and arms triumph over the oriental world? We may name some of the causes. The earliest believers in Mohammed were the fierce, warlike Arabs, never conquered by a foreign foe, who followed their prophet with a sincere, intense, all-conquering faith. They believed that they were accomplishing the will of God, and were destined to succeed. Everyone who fell in battle with the unbelievers was destined to enter an immediate heaven of sensual delight.

Against this virile, unconquered, and conquering spirit was the weakened, submissive nature of the Asiatic Greeks. From remote ages those lands had submitted meekly to conquerors. Their people had lost their vigor, would rather surrender than draw the sword, and pay tribute in preference to defending their liberty. Vast numbers of those in the Greek Empire were churchmen and monks, ready to pray but not to fight.

The Islam religion was far superior to the paganism which it displaced in Arabia and the lands east of that peninsula; and, it must be admitted, stronger than the type of “Christianity” which it met and overcame. The Eastern Church, unlike the Western, had long ceased missionary effort, had lost its energy, and was inclined to speculation, rather than to moral or spiritual effort.

In the religion of Mohammed at its best there were, and still are to be found, some favorable aspects, elements of value to the world. One was its simplicity of doctrine. It believed in One God, whom it was every man’s duty to obey implicitly. It had no mysterious intricate system of theology, giving rise to interminable, useless controversies. There was no need of scholarship to understand the articles of the Mohammedan faith.

Another trait of the Islam religion was its opposition to image worship. Throughout the Christian world the statues of the old gods and goddesses of Greece had simply given place to images and pictures of the Virgin Mary and the saints, which were worshiped in all the churches. The Moslems cast them out, destroyed them, and denounced all adoration of images, whether carved or painted, as idolatry.

The Mohammedans rejected also all priestly and saintly mediation. The church of that world made salvation depend, not on simple faith in Christ and obedience to him as Lord, but on priestly rites and the intercession of departed saints. The Mohammedans swept all these away, and in their doctrine, brought every soul face to face with God.

Throughout the Moslem world is the rule of abstinence from strong drink. The first “temperance society” in the world’s history was the Nazirites in Israel; and its successor on a larger scale was the Mohammedan religion, which forbade the faithful to drink wine or strong liquor. This is still held as a principle, but is not universally followed where Mohammedans live in contact with Europeans.

In the early period, under the caliphs, literature and science were promoted. The Arabians gave us the numerals, 1, 2, 3, etc., which were a great advance on the Roman system of notation through letters. In astronomy, they made one of the earliest catalogues of the stars. The court of the caliphs at Bagdad was a literary center. Mohammedan Spain was higher in culture and civilization than the “Christian” kingdoms of the period in that peninsula. But all intellectual progress ceased when the barbaric Turks succeeded the enlightened Saracens as leaders of the Mohammedan world.

Not to make our picture of Islam more favorable than the truth would warrant, we must notice on the other side some areas wherein Mohammedanism has failed, i.e., its errors and its evils. A major wrong to humanity was in its method of missionary enterprise through the sword, promoting hate among men instead of love. Wherever a city resisted their conquest, its men were put to death, the women were placed in the harems of the victors, and the children were brought up in the Moslem faith. For many centuries the Turks made a regular practice of seizing untold thousands of “Christian” children, tearing them away from their parents, and bringing them up in distant provinces as bigoted devotees of Islam.

In the old Islamic conception, the state and the church were absolutely one, and the government was expected to use its power to the utmost for the promotion of the true religion and the suppression of false faith. Prior to World War I, the Sultan of Turkey was also recognized as Caliph (“successor of Mohammed”). When Turkey became a republic, the Sultan was dethroned and the Caliphate abolished. Other changes have taken place with the modernization of Turkey: One significant fact was the translation of the Koran into the vernacular. At Istanbul, in 1932, the Koran was read in the mosque of Sancta Sophia for the first time in Turkish.

The Mohammedan conception of God is based on the Old Testament [a misunderstanding, at that], rather than the New Testament. God is portrayed as a fierce, relentless Oriental despot, with no love for humanity outside the followers of the Prophet [Mohammed]. [Such, of course, ignores the many passages which assert the universal love of Jehovah.]

Islam practically leaves Christ out of its doctrinal scheme. In the Mohammedan view he is not the Lord of the heavenly kingdom, the Son of God, the Savior of men; but is reduced to the rank of a Jewish prophet, inferior in every respect to Mohammed.

Its conception of heaven, the abode of the blessed in the life to come, is totally devoid of spirituality and is altogether sensual.

One of the most debasing traits of the Mohammedan religion was its degradation of womanhood. Women were looked upon merely as the slaves or playthings of men. Modern Turkey has remedied this condition, and in 1930 gave women the right to be electors and to be elected at municipal elections. But outside Turkey, women are held in small respect in the Mohammedan world.

In the field of history and politics, perhaps the most striking failure of the Mohammedan state has been in the realm of national administration. The Mohammedan leaders were amazing in their conquests, sweeping in a resistless torrent across continents from China to Spain. But they showed no power for wise, just government of the empires which they founded. Islam lands were the worst governed on earth. Contrast the history of the Turks in this respect with that of the ancient Romans, who showed that they could not only win a great empire, but could rule it wisely, bringing prosperity to every land which they had conquered.

NOTE: Max Muller (1823-1900) of Oxford University was one of the most learned and popular scholars of his day. In an article published in Nineteenth Century magazine (February, 1894), Professor Muller argued that Mohammed was quite familiar with both the Old and New Testaments, referring to them as the Word of God, and that he had a regard for Jesus, speaking of the Lord in higher terms than Abraham. Mohammed’s favorite wife was well acquainted with Christianity. Muller says, however, that the form of “Christianity” to which Mohammed was exposed was exceedingly corrupt. Consequently, he turned away from it.