July 8, 2022 - The Park Prison Ministry

UPDATE July 2022

& Prison Report for 2021

We have experienced several changes and quite a bit of growth so I feel this would be a good time to update our report.

We still are not allowed into David L Moss with the exception of baptisms once a quarter. This doesn’t allow as much training for the inmates as we would prefer, however it is still a blessing we are able to at least perform this function.

In most cases this is handled by Jim Pinkston, Ray & Suzanne Vaughn, Elaine Russell, and Francisco Davila.

The correspondence students have increased to over 1,100 with app 55% of the inmates at Eddie Warriors Correctional Center in Taft taking our courses. We now are in need of more courses for our students. Last year, Jody composed two new courses for them, and now Carolyn Kusler has just completed her 3rd new course for students. We thank God for Carolyn! Even still, we have students who have completed all courses and are wanting more.

We also began in house grading again, along with our home graders. We meet every Thursday evening from 6:30 to 7:30 pm for grading, and we have at least 10 new people who come to these sessions. What we cannot complete on Thursday evening by 7:30, and lessons we receive on Thursday and Friday are distributed to our home graders on Sunday Morning, and they return them Wed evening when they come to Wed services.

Just to give you an idea of what that means in actual numbers, in the month of June, our volunteers graded almost 4,000 lessons, and since the beginning of the year over 20,000 lessons… that is a lot of grading! This explains why we need so many volunteers to help with the grading. We are hoping to find one or two volunteers who will come into the office and help us with the paperwork and processing work, as it can be overwhelming at times.

In addition to those numbers the men at Dick Conner’s who do their own grading have graded 352 lessons so far this year.

Considering the preparation for the mailing and grading, I think you can see the amount of work involved, and without our wonderful volunteers we simple would not be able to keep up.

In May of this year we were granted permission to bring recording equipment into Dick Conner’s by the Warden, and so Kevin Peters stepped up to the challenge. He came to the prison for two days in a row and made videos of our worship service. On Monday May 17, he recorded the testimonies of the chapel orderlies, and then returned on Tuesday evening to record the Tuesday night service. This means several hours of recordings, and he is now in the process of editing the videos and that is another major job he is doing for us. When the video is complete, it will be posted for all to see.

FUTURE PLANS

Immediate:

We are now working on establishing the next phase of the Prison Ministry [The Park Prison Ministry Family Engagement Project] by reaching out to the families of inmates to make sure their basic needs are being met, to work with them in Christian matters, such as staying in the faith, returning to the faith, or introducing them to the faith, teaching them about eternal life and how it can be obtained.

Our basic Goal is to keep the family unit together. In addition if we are showing love to the families of inmates it should inspire them to use the time in prison to grow their Christian life through knowledge of the Word, how to live by it, and how to defend it.

Of course this means we will need more volunteers to work as mentors.

The Families of Prisoners are serving their own “sentence” as well as their loved one. Often, they suffer from great shame, guilt and embarrassment over as a family of a convicted felon. They want their loved one to come out of prison with a changed heart, which is our goal. They fear that the hardness and darkness of prisons will change their loved one forever. They hope and pray for something to happen in prison that changes their life. But unless their loved one has been actively involved in a religious program, the chances of something good happening are minimal…

Not only that, they do not realize they need help as well, to learn a new way of life right along with their loved ones. To understand the conditions that brought on this behavior, and how they can change the direction of their family.

Often, with the father and possible main bread winner now incarcerated meeting the basic needs of life may be difficult. Adding the mental, emotional, and physical stress they are under may be more then they can take, and the family unit is destroyed.

The Church also has a stake in what happens in prisons because it is one of the precepts of Christianity to visit those in prison. However, this is very strange for most members of a congregation, they can’t imagine going into one of the dark places, these institutions developed to house those convicted of what is often a horrible crime.

Additionally, I have spoken to Scott & Erin Street about these plans and how it could work with their new ministry, which is reaching out to the people who have contacted The Park through the Next Steps Ministry led by Mike Johns. I believe their ministry may be the most important ministry of our time, considering the number of people that are leaving the church, the condition of the USA, and the world. I hope many of our ministers, Elders, and Deacons will attend the meetings discussing and training people in this ministry. It meets at 7:30 in the Staff Meeting room located in the old office section.

Future Plans for Next Year…

Currently our prison ministry continues

Reaching out to those who are incarcerated, teaching them God’s word, how to live by it, and how to defend it.
1. 1. Inside missions
  2. Correspondence
  3. Jail ministry
  4. Family Engagement (hopefully coming soon)
Angel Tree headed up by Danielle Schrock, with the help of Hannah Brown, Lisa Hutchins and Michelle Courtright
Hope City managed by Marc Clayton

Next year I hope to begin working with local employers who are willing to hire those released from prison in order to help these men and women gain employment very quickly upon release.

We would also like to mention and thank for their help our newest volunteers: Debbie Allison, Janice Coates, Gayla Garren, Steve & Jade Harrold, Billy & Lesley Mize, Krystal Owens, Wayne & Pam Pope, Vicki Younger, Betty Batey, Don & Debbie Branscum, Glen Dennis, Rocky & Dawn Giles, Darrell & Sue Hicks, Patty Maupin, Daven Tackett, Erin Tackett, and Ken & Sarah Wiley. Praise God!

This covers our progress and I will update again at the first of the year.

Jim Carmichael

Just one year ago Jim Pinkston decided to retire from the Prison Ministry and handed over the reins to me, Jim Carmichael.

Jim Pinkston still works as a volunteer, going into the Tulsa County Jail when allowed, along with Ray & Suzanne Vaughn, Elaine Russell, Francisco, Theresa Hawkins, and others. As we all know this has been very limited due to the Covid-19 lock-down in both the prison and jail systems. The county jail remains on lock-down due to the constant flow of people in and out, however the prisons were reopened to volunteers around August.

But in that same light, the offices at the church were locked down for some time, and The Park began having services “live streamed” which also became a blessing… as we now have our in-house congregation (those who come to services) and an “on-line” congregation as well.

Jim P and Elaine continue to attend worship services four times a month in Hominy (DCCC) and Jim P and I take turns preaching.

My prison visitations however were not interrupted, being a volunteer Chaplain at the Dick Conner prison, but this also required Jody and I to work from home most of the time during the Covid-19 shutdown.

When we (Jody and I) took over the prison ministry in January of 2021 we were mailing out about 175 lessons a month.

Jody immediately made a few changes and began challenging the prisoners.

In the past, we were mailing out the first 6 lessons, and then when we received them back, in order to save on postage, we held on to them for weeks before sending the last 7 lessons (each course has 13 lessons).

So, Jody in her great wisdom felt like we would lose students because they had to wait so long to receive lessons, so she decided we should grade and return lessons immediately. This led to a couple of issues… before we were having “grading night” twice a month which often also delayed returning the lessons. Of course we experienced an increase in cost of mailing. Thanks to two of our contributors, Phil Smith and David Huey, who offered to handle this postage expenses, we can breathe a little easier, however, there are other expenses.

We decided it would be quicker to use volunteer “home graders”, so we now have wonderful, hard-working volunteers who pick up the lessons, grade them, and return them quickly. As this part of the ministry grows, we see a great need for more volunteer graders.

They include Dave Huey, Ray and Suzanne Vaughn, Waymon and Diane Honeycutt, Fran Thomas, Billy Mize, Wes Crafts, Jim Pinkston, Elaine Russell, Mike and Theresa Hawkins, Caroline Kusler, Mike and Bunny Williams.

The next thing Jody did was study the patterns of the students and discovered that women who were in prison for child abuse would take our first course “A sense of self” but would drop off after that.

We were in the habit of immediately sending the following courses which addressed family and parenting issues. So with that discovery, we started skipping these two courses and moved onto “True Freedom” and that corrected the problem. We discovered that later many of these ladies would take the family and parenting course, even though many of them have had serious issues with parents and family.

Two months ago, we decided we could substantially save on postage by sending the complete lessons rather than just half at a time. We expected our mail to be reduced by half… but it didn’t… the people are completing the entire lessons and retuning them at the same rate of speed. What a blessing!!! We now see a great need for new lessons to send to our students.

These folks are hungry for the Word…

Due to the work of Jody, over 1/2 of the women at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center in Taft Ok (a women’s prison which houses 900 women) are taking New Life Behavior, The Park’s Bible study lessons, and Christian Apologetics lessons.

At Dick Conner’s Correctional Center in Hominy OK, we have started a very aggressive evangelistic program, reaching out to every man incarcerated encouraging them to take our courses… with men in each pod who have committed their lives to Christ to be our inside contact, and inside evangelists.

One man, Andrew Williams is handling all our courses for us there, distributing them, receiving, and grading them, and letting us know who needs to receive a certificate. Andrew is one of 6 chapel orderlies, of whom most have received their bachelor’s degrees, and with the help of the benevolence ministry and at the direction of Clark Lineback, we are sponsoring a few of these men to achieve advanced degrees in ministry. All are training to be inside evangelists, with an eye on the future. When they return to their homes, they will be “street evangelists” to their neighbors, friends, and family, with some becoming preachers in local churches. Again, a special thanks to Clark Lineback. He demonstrates true caring for these men, and women. He realizes that most of these people have never received proper, if any, encouragement in their lives, and when someone steps up to the plate for them, they are moved. The impact is far greater for these people than the average person who has received encouragement from family and friends…

One man who the Park Church of Christ, (through the benevolence committee headed by Clark) has sponsored is Reggie Wilson, who is about to receive his master’s in Divinity, and will begin studying for his doctorate. Reggie is a big, football player kind of guy from the streets of Chicago where he intends to return, taking the word of God with him.

The Angel Tree Project: A few months ago, I approached Danielle Schrock to consider helping with The Angel Tree project which is reaching out to the children of inmates, purchasing Christmas presents for them, and other activities throughout the year. Danielle is a super star… no other way to put it… she has not only investigated it, but has associated with this group, has already found 13 children to help with Christmas, has already raised the funds, purchased the presents, and is now going to take the presents to them.

Jamie Simons told me he is experiencing the overflow… and now has 30+ new people in his classes as a direct result of Danielle’s work.

Our next goal is a family outreach program. A program designed to assist the spouses of the incarcerated, helping them with the basic needs of life if needed.

We are looking for our next superstar to join the ranks of Danielle, Clark, Phil Smith, David Huey, Don & Donna Millican, Glen Dennis, Ray and Suzanne Vaughn, Waymon and Diane Honeycutt, Fran Thomas, Rochelle Epperson, Billy Mize, Wes Crafts, Jim Pinkston, Elaine Russell, Mike and Theresa Hawkins, Caroline Kusler, Linda Brown, Mike and Bunny Williams.

Because I am in the prisons personally, teaching and preaching, I am not allowed by DOC regulations to be involved with their families on the outside… so I must find help.

We need help in the following areas…

People who would be willing to go on the “inside” with me to preach or teach classes.

People who will help with grading.

People who will help with our family outreach program.

People who could help create new courses of study for inmates.