I Just Got Out of Prison…

I just got out of prison…

Recently, I’ve started investigating whether I want to get involved in prison ministry. After a lot of paperwork and clearances, last Monday was my first actual visit to the prison. It’s the medium-security prison located in Pacific, Missouri (20 minutes from my home). I was shadowing Will Cook, the Mamertine Prison Ministry Executive Director, as well as Will Black, fellow FATC member, who recently joined this ministry.

If you want to know more about this ministry visit http://www.mamertine.org and contact Will Cook. Another fellow FATC member, Steve Darr has also been involved with this ministry for several years. Steve recently introduced me to former inmate, 59-year-old Yogi, who was in and out of prison for roughly 40 years. Yogi told me that eventually no one including family came to visit him in prison. Then one day he met Will Cook who started visiting him weekly for three years during which time Will took Yogi through a Bible Study called Operation Timothy.

According to Yogi, by the grace of God working through Will Cook and the Operation Timothy Bible study, Yogi came to know Christ and to trust in Christ to be his Savior and the Lord of his life. Not long ago, Yogi finished serving his last sentence and was released from prison. Since then, Yogi has not only been discipling other men, but he has also been learning how to live independently in today’s society. He’s learning the basics of everyday life outside of prison — including cooking, budgeting and getting around town.

These activities may be things we take for granted, but not so for people who have been institutionalized. To become institutionalized means to gradually lose the ability to think and act independently due to a long period of living in an institution. An institutionalized person is someone who has lived in an institution, such as a prison, hospital, or long-term care facility, for a long time and has become accustomed to its routines and structure to the point that they have difficulty functioning independently in the outside world. The term can also refer to someone currently residing in an institutional setting.

In the movie, Shawshank Redemption, Brooks Hatlen committed suicide because he was institutionalized and could not adjust to life outside of prison after serving 50 years. He chose to end his life rather than continue to suffer from his inability to cope with his freedom.

It got me thinking that maybe some people have become institutionalized with regard to their church or their religious denomination. They attend the church they grew up in and they feel they can’t leave it for another church. It’s as if they are a prisoner or locked up inside it. They routinely go through a lot of religious activities and ceremony, even though they would admit secretly that they don’t understand it or feel closer to God as a result of all the ritual and repetition.

They say they love the tradition, but others would argue tradition is great until it’s not great anymore—until it has lost its meaning.

I was wondering, do you think God is seeking a relationship with people or is God seeking people to be more religious? Is God looking for Christ followers or religion followers? It seems that even a casual reading of the Bible indicates that Jesus’ clashes were almost entirely with the religious elite—the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  Many of those religious elites were truly experts in the Torah, which was the entire collection of Jewish law and teachings. This includes much of the Christian Old Testament, but they lost track of its true purpose and meaning.

Jesus called the Pharisees and Sadducee “brood of vipers” and “hypocrites,” as well as “blind guides” and “blind fools”. He also referred to them as “like whitewashed tombs”.  Maybe this should serve as a warning to all of us regarding putting an emphasis on religiosity verses relationship with God.

Maybe we should be careful not to allow ourselves to live in a silo, and to guard against becoming institutionalized. Maybe it’s good to seek a relationship with God and to get to know God through reading His Word and discussing it with other Christ followers—both those that attend our particular church/denomination, as well as those that attend another church that’s part of another Christian denomination.

What do you think about this topic? And is there some of your thoughts or questions you would like to share on the FATC FORUM. Remember…It isn’t just about the fly fishing.

John Muckerman

FATC Inspirational and Leadership Lead

• This topic was modified 4 months ago by JOHN MUCKERMAN.