In this moving sermon, Richard Boonstra from Prison Fellowship shares stories of hope, redemption, and the radical love of Jesus for those society often overlooks. Reflecting on John 4 and his own experiences in prisons across Australia, Richard challenges us to “stay weird” by following Jesus into uncomfortable places, where the harvest is ripe and lives are being transformed. Tune in to hear how God is working in prisons, and how we’re all invited to partner in the Kingdom work of rescue, restoration, and redemption.
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Read the transcript
Our Bible reading today comes from John chapter 4, verses 34–42, just after Jesus has been speaking with the Samaritan woman.
My food said, Jesus, is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
Don't you have a saying? It's still four months until harvest?
I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields.
They are ripe for harvest.
Even now, the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.
Thus the saying one sows and another reaps is true.
I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you've reaped the benefits of their labor.
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.
He told me everything I ever did.
So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with him.
And he stayed two days.
And because of his words, many more became believers.
They said to the woman, we no longer believe just because of what you said.
Now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.
This is the word of the Lord.
Introduction
Good morning. Thank you for having me here this morning. my name is Richard Boonstra, and I'm the, the state manager for Victoria for Prison Fellowship. apologies to those who are here at the 8 a.m. service. You're going to hear the same things again, but, it's how it goes.
I didn't come to the Ministry of Prison fellowship to work. it hasn't been part of my career. My career is, teaching. So I'm a school teacher and a school principal by trade, and I spent many years teaching and leading in Christian schools.
However, in 2016 2017 we moved to Melbourne and I felt the need to just get out of Christian school, out of schooling and do something different. But my my passion for Christian ministry started when I was very young, newly married in in the 1980s, and it all started when I was at a small group, and it was a small group for newly married couples, and our small group leader said, hey, I'm a volunteer with Christian Fellowship, and we've got a workshop at Canning Vale Prison in a couple of months. We need some more volunteers. Who's interested?
And I felt something in me just thought, yeah, let's do that. So I put my hand up, said, yeah, I'm interested. And my friend next to me, he said, yep, we'll do it. So we had to wait for a little while until the training day comes, because you don't go into a prison without training. By the time the training day came around and I could get the training done, my friend had dropped off. So it was just me. I still went ahead and did the training and, we completed the training. The day arrived of the workshop. I got in my car, drove down to Canning Vale Prison, which is about a half an hour of where I lived. Got out of the car in the car park, looked at the walls, the razor wire and I thought, what am I doing here?
I had that moment where you sometimes have where you think if someone told me that they had to cancel it, I'd be okay with that? No worries. But they didn't. They still went ahead, so I thought. Stop it. Swallow it. Come on. So I went ahead. Went through the doors. Bang! No. Two doors in a prison opened at the same time. And they didn't just bang, bang, lock. Click. That was it. I was in, I couldn't get out if I wanted to. Anyway, I went through to the room where we had the workshop, and I'm sitting here thinking, oh, what am I doing? And, the guys came in and started coming in from the different units of the prison for the seminar, and it was like a fog that just the sun came out and disappeared. All that fear and apprehension just went and I thought, huh, I think this is where I should be. This is my happy place. And I just thought I had the greatest time. I had a great day just sharing with the guys. You know, one of the best things is to talk to them and treat them as people. Not to look at the greens that they were wearing, but to think of them as people and to treat them as people. From there, I straight away signed up to join a team and we went in to, Fremantle Prison. Fremantle Prison, if you don't know it, some of you may have been to Perth, may have been for a tour of Fremantle prison because now a museum and now that it's a museum, probably gives you an idea of what it was like. It was built in 1850s and nothing had changed. There were no toilets in the cell. There was just a bucket. And the cells were made for one two people per cell. It was pretty rough and spartan. We were a team of about 6 or 7 of us. There was myself and my friend from the Reform church. There was a Catholic nun who was with us as well, two salvo guys who probably looked like they came off the ark with Noah, a charismatic Baptist lady and a couple of Anglicans. And we worked so well together. And I thought, this is also what God wants to see people from different denominations working together, sharing the gospel. And that's what we did every Saturday afternoon for about five years. We ran a little chapel service in the prison. So that's my story. And that's why I became passionate about prison fellowship and reaching people in prison. So when we moved to Melbourne, the opportunity came up to work for it. I thought, yes, that would be good. So I did that.
A Broken World: The Bad News
First I'm going to start off with some bad news. There's good news and bad news. I'll start off with the bad news.
We live in a broken world. That's the bad news that we know. And I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you already don't know. Both in and out of prisons, people are broken, and they don't treat each other as they should. They've lost sight of what it means to be truly human. To be living in peace with God and with themselves and with each other and with creation, to find that shalom. People have lost sight of it.
But there is now I'm feeling, and we feel that in prisons too, the beginnings of a yearning. Dissatisfied with what the Western cultural mindset has led them to believe or has promised them, is not happening. And so they're looking for something different, looking for a different way of living.
But first, I'll just show you some statistics from our prisons. As a slice, as a snapshot of the brokenness in our world, you can see that in the prisons at the moment, there are 6551 people in prison. A little bit up from what it was about a year ago. At the end of December last year, we were below 6000, which was really exciting. And I track these numbers, so I'm keen to see the numbers go down. And that's really because of the Victorian Government, the Department of Justice and Corrections Victoria and the prisons have a much more progressive attitude towards the people in prison. I just went on a tour of Western Plains Correctional Centre, which is a new one, opened up, and constantly the staff are talking about the people in our care. People in our care. They adopt a trauma informed and trauma based approach to caring for the people in prison. They're still there. They need to be there. They know that. But while they're there, let's see if we can help them. So that's really the attitude.
But they're competing with the government policy. So the numbers are going up a little bit because of the recent controversies around bail and toughening the laws, the bail laws. So it means more people go to prison instead of go out on bail. So that's where we're at – 6500 people in prison. 95% are men, a small proportion of women. But for a woman in prison, it's a lot harder. There's a lot more at stake for families and for kids when mum is in prison. So it's a very different kind of situation and scenario for volunteers going there.
40% are unsentenced. Now this is really interesting because we often think, oh, they're on remand. But when you're on remand, there's so much uncertainty and so much anxiety. What's going to happen? Where am I going to go? Because the remand centre that you're in won't be where you'll stay. You'll be shifted to another prison. Will I have a job when I finish my sentence? What's happening to my family? What about my kids and all this stuff? I've sat with a guy in Melbourne Assessment Prison and just – I didn't have to say anything. I just sat with him and let him talk, because he needed to get a lot of stuff off his chest, stuff that was swirling around his mind. And just to have someone listen, who empathetically listened, was important for him.
14% of people in prison are Aboriginal. It's still an imbalance when you measure that against what the percentage of the Victorian population is – 1% – yet 14% of the prison population. So there's a big difference there. And that's multiplied when you look at places like Northern Territory and Western Australia and Queensland; there's a higher proportion of Aboriginal people. The prison I was visiting in Perth, Fremantle Prison, at one stage we were told there were 80% Aboriginal, and so many of them were Aboriginal people who came from way up north in the more cultural tribal areas, and they were in there for driving offences, which was crazy. But because of mandatory sentencing and things like that, they straightaway went to prison and it was nuts. So it was really great to minister to them, because they were lovely people to minister to and share with, and especially when we got Aboriginal volunteers to come in with us as well. That was fantastic.
60% – that's gone up now – 60% of people will return to prison within two years. So that's a statistic we want to hopefully drive down. If you measure that over ten years, it goes to 80%. 80% of people will return to prison. That's how hard it is, once you've been in prison, to shake that experience off and to make a life outside of prison. I met a guy in prison in Perth who was released, and about six months later he was back again. His name was Hynes. It was a long time ago, so it won't matter. But I said, Hynes, what happened? Why are you back? He said, where else can I go? He said, here I have a bed and three meals; out there, he had nothing. And that was sad that he could – the only place he could go was just commit a crime and go back in again.
A statistic that's not up there, but is – 25% of people in prison come from 2% of Victorian postcodes. So there's a correlation. And the prison staff and the police call them prison collection areas. That's what they colloquially call them because they get so many people there.
66% of people in prison were in care or were adopted as kids. So that's where this whole idea of being trauma informed comes in. A high proportion of people – and that's the same percentage of people – have a mental health issue in prison as well, whether it be ADHD or all sorts of different stuff happening in their life. So there's trauma.
Now, we say that doesn't absolve them of the responsibility for their actions. They still need to suffer the consequences for their crime and for what they've done. But at the same time, we help to understand them and help – helps to understand their background, to help them to rehabilitate.
So in all of this brokenness, we sense a yearning. We're sensing that more so now – a yearning for something different. My life isn't going well the way it is. I want something different. And in a sense, it's the yearning for that shalom – a yearning to be truly human again. To find that place where I'm free of guilt and maybe free of that endless cycle of offending and re-offending, offending and re-offending.
But now for the good news. The Bible tells us that God was not happy with this situation. Back in Genesis 3, he already started that plan – he took – God took the initiative to sort it out, to fix it. He took the initiative and promised to restore all things. To restore our relationships with him. To restore our relationship with each other, and to restore our relationship with creation. This is the Kingdom of God. He stepped into our world himself in the person of Jesus. He entered our world, and through Jesus he initiated the Kingdom of God. Jesus initiated it. And at the end of Matthew you can read where he said, I'm going back, but I want you to keep going. I want you to keep growing it. The Kingdom of God was initiated by Jesus.
Jesus entered our world and demonstrated – showed us what a citizen of this new kingdom looked like. He deliberately reached out to the marginalized, the downtrodden, the oppressed and the imprisoned, the forgotten or invisible people. And then, through his death and resurrection, he opened up the way to restored relationships with God, with each other, and with creation. Jesus reached out to the ones that everyone else thought were weird. He went places where people thought, that's not – it's weird to go there. He came to rescue, restore and redeem and then to call us to put our faith in him, to discover freedom – the freedom of being released from sin and guilt and to find our true selves as God's children.
One of the key things I say to people when I go into prison, when I sit down with guys in prison, is I am just as much a sinner as you are. Just because you're in prison and I'm not doesn't make me any worse or better than you. In fact, I don't use the word prisoner, because I don't define you by where you are. You're a person – someone who God created. And so I see that. I see you that way. And I want you to know that I was in darkness, and I needed to find the light, and I did, and I found hope, and I found love, and I found what it means to be truly human. And I want to share that with you. So we approach people in prison with a sense of humility – not coming in as the great white savior, but coming in as a humble person who has found hope and wants to share it.
And so we see a little example of Jesus modeling that kind of way of reaching people. In John 4, we read from John 4 verses 34 to 42. But just a little bit of background about it – where this happened was in Samaria. Wait, what is a good Jewish rabbi doing in Samaria? That was weird. He, Jesus led the way of being weird. He showed what it meant to be – to be going to weird places. He – and he deliberately did that. He chose to go that way. Now he's on his way from Jerusalem to go back to Galilee – the place where he based his ministry in Galilee was strategic for him, but that's another story. But he diverted, and he went through Samaria. Wow. I'm sure his disciples must have thought, what are you doing? Why are we going this way? Do you know where you are? This is Samaria. But Jesus knew what he was doing. Jesus never did anything by accident – nothing was a coincidence in Jesus' ministry. So he had a plan. He had an appointment. This was no coincidence. All along he planned to meet this woman at the well.
That's just before this passage that we read – it's the woman at the well passage. Who was she? A Samaritan – that black mark; a woman – black mark for the Jewish rabbis at least. Anyway, also she was regarded as a woman of ill repute. We don't know exactly what her story was, but chances are that a lot of that wasn't her own fault – that she was a victim of a very patriarchal society where she was passed from man to man through no fault of her own, just because of that patriarchal mentality. Regardless of that, we know that she was one of the people that nobody wanted – she was one of the weird ones, if you like, because she could only get water at midday. No one else was allowed to be with – she wasn't allowed to be with anyone else. She could only get water from the well at midday.
And so what does Jesus do? I love this. He comes up to this well. She probably sees him, but she just knows she better keep her head down and get on with what she's doing. And he speaks to her. And what does he say? Can I – could you get me a drink of water? Whoa! She stops and looks – said, did you just speak to me? What – men don't talk to her, let alone Jewish men. And she just can't deal with it – what's going on here? He asked for a drink of water. In one sentence, in a beautiful way, he reached out to her, treated her like a human being – treated her normally – and said, can you get me a drink of water? Well, it – it worked, because it arrested her attention. She got him a drink of water, and then she engages in this long conversation with him during which he, in a beautiful way, teases out her life and gets down to the nitty-gritty of what's going on in her life. You can read the story for yourself later, but there's so much stuff that he's dealing with there. But needless – short story short – long story short, he loved her and she couldn't escape from it. She didn't want to escape from it. And he restores her gently – so much so that she drops her water bottle and runs back to tell everyone in the town where she lives what has just happened. It's like suddenly she's been made new and she's been loved and cared for, and she sees a glimpse of what it means to be truly human.
Why didn't she run away from him? I told the story in the first service – in Brazil, in South America, and a few other countries now too, there are these prisons called humane prisons – they're run on Christian principles. They're run by Christians. These prisons have no walls or fences. The inmates look after the keys and lock up the gates at night. It's amazing – it's astounding. They have regularly Christian courses like Alpha running throughout the prison – all different things happening. They have families come in – families can come and visit and stay for the weekend with their loved one, like a conjugal visit. And they were interviewing one guy who was there, and he had been a notorious inmate – he had escaped from lots of different prisons. And they got this guy and said – we'll call him John – John, you've escaped from all these other prisons. This one would be easy to escape from – there's no walls, no fences. Why don't you escape? And you know what he said? Nobody escapes from love. Why would I want to leave there, he says. Here, in this prison, I'm loved. I'm cared for. Someone took the time to love me. And so why – he's willing – wants to stay there.
Above the door going into one of the main prisons is, here enters the man; the crime stays outside. And I love that thought.
So she, like this man, doesn't want to escape from him. She sits down and talks to Jesus, and then he opens her eyes. And incredibly, he does something towards the end of his conversation – and I think this is significant. Here is this Samaritan woman – so-to-say ill repute woman – and Jesus says – she says, who are you? He says, I am the Messiah. He discloses to her. And I believe – for me, it's one of the first times he actually honestly, clearly says I am the Messiah – I am he. And who does he do that to? A woman – a Samaritan woman – a woman who has a bad reputation. I think that's significant. That's weird in the eyes of the world – that's weird. You know, if the Messiah was coming, you'd think he'd announce it to all the important rabbis and bishops or whatever. But no – he chooses this woman, because many other times people sort of work it out – are you the one? – he says, don't tell anyone. But here he says it openly to her.
Anyway, the disciples – of which they come – he's gone ahead, and they come and find him. And the disciples – you've got to imagine, the disciples are just young; many of them are still in their teenage years – and they come up to Jesus and – Jesus, can we keep going? This is not a place for a good Jewish boy to be – this is Samaria. They were thinking, if our parents saw us here right now, we'd be in so much trouble. But instead, they mutter amongst themselves and they finally work up the courage to go to Jesus and said, Jesus, you need some lunch. Should we go into the town and get you some food? I'm sure many times Jesus rolls his eyes. And then he says, my food is to do the will of him who sent me. And he says this sort of – sort of a – almost a bit of a cryptic way: my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Food – the word food in Hebrew can also mean calling in life. So is he saying my calling in life? You're worried about food and bread and stuff like that, but I'm thinking, what is your calling in life? What are you here to do? He says, I'm here to do the will of my Father who sent me – sent me to finish his work.
And then he goes on and says, don't you have a saying, it's still four months until harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the harvest. Look at the fields – it's there, ripe for the harvest. Even now, the one who – who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying, one sows and another reaps is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you've reaped the benefits of their labor. What's he saying here? He's saying to his disciples, that's what we're here for – we're here – we're called to bring in the kingdom, to share the good news, to share hope, to rescue. Open your eyes, guys – it's time for the harvest, it's right now, it's right in front of you.
So he teaches his disciples, as a good rabbi would. Rabbis didn't have classrooms – they wandered around the country and they looked at something and they said, see that tree over there? Let me tell you something about that, and then they drew a lesson from that. So now the disciples are saying, you want some food? Sit down – I'm going to teach you about what this food thing is all about. And I'm going to teach you why we're here today. We came here for a reason – I want you to see something. So he says, open your eyes – I've come here because there is a harvest here; people are really keen to hear the good news, and we'll find that out in a minute. The time to get harvesting is now. But then the really cool bit of this bit I like as well is towards the end – remember, it's not just up to you; it's a partnership. One sows, another reaps, another packs the harvest up, another fertilizes, another waters – it's a teamwork thing. And that's very much so for the ministry that we have at Prison Fellowship – it's a team thing, it's a partnership. Deep Creek Anglican is very much one of our partners – we are incredibly thankful, incredibly thankful for this church, for the way that you partner with us and walk alongside us and help us to do the work – the kingdom work of sharing the gospel in prisons. So thank you for the amazing work that you partner with us in doing. It's like you're going in with us – even though you're not physically there, you're going with us into prison – and we thank you for that.
Jesus looked at this woman and saw someone who was ready to hear the gospel and to be redeemed and restored. The impact of her story – and I think this is amazing – if you look at verses 39 to 42, this woman has gone back and dropped her water bottle and ran into town. And that's no small thing – I said to someone, and I said to the group in the earlier congregation, it's like leaving your phone at home and realizing you've got it – it's that essential; it's like an important object. But she – this was so important, she just forgot everything else and went and told the people in her village.
Let's read the passage again.
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.
He told me everything I ever did.
So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them. And he stayed two days.
And because of his words, many more became believers.
They said to the woman, we no longer believe just because of what you said. Now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man is really, really is the Savior of the world.
What a testimony. Have a think about what that would have been like – she, being the woman she was, had to go back to her village. Now, that wouldn't have been easy to tell people about what has just happened to her. They've got a – they've got an attitude towards her; they judge her. So she has persisted – she's pushed through all of that attitude to finally get some to hear. And so they said, okay, we'll come and have a look. And when they come there, they're just amazed – they're touched by him – by Jesus as well. And Jesus stays for two days, and there's a two-day-long Bible college Bible study. They sit down – wow – that's like the first church planted in Samaria. That's weird – that's weird. Think about it – you grow up thinking that Samaria is one of those people, and that's where Jesus goes. I love it, I think it's amazing. And that's exactly what Jesus models for us to do – to get out there into places where people think is weird.
Jesus came to rescue, restore and – and redeem the rejected, the marginalized, and the invisible people – prisoners. To many in society, this is weird.
I've gone a little bit behind – here we are. Mark 2 verse 17 is one of my favorite verses in prison ministries as well. We use this in one of our programs. Here, Jesus clearly says who he's come for. He's talking to the Pharisees.
He says he didn't come to those who think they're right.
I've come for those who know that they're wrong.
People that know they need to be restored and they need to be healed.
But look at the word – the favorite word in that passage for me, and I'll share this with the guys in prison when I share this passage with them – is the word call. It doesn't say I have not come to force the righteous, but sinners, or I have not come to push the righteous, but sinners, or I have not come to drag – all these words – he says I've come to call – a gentle but honest word, I've come to call the sinners. Jesus comes to call. And I say to the guys in prison, he came to call you. And what does call mean? That means a response is needed. So you need to think what you need to do with this – are you going to respond to this call when Jesus calls you? Are you going to say, yes, I'm going to come in here – because he's not going to force – he's not going to push you or twist your arm or anything. He comes to gently but persistently call, and he'll keep calling. And we keep having an opportunity – a choice to make a decision. Can you hear that call today? Many of us here today have – have heard that call and have come to Jesus, experiencing his love and being constantly restored.
Are you ready to go out and bring in the harvest? Remember the three points.
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The harvest is right in front of us.
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The harvest time is now.
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It's a partnership.
We believe with Augustine, who first said, every saint has a past. Sorry – every saint has a past; every sinner has a future. I read that again. Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future. We want to share that – the call of Jesus that we first responded to, the love that conquered us. We want others to hear that call and to discover God's love, joy, hope, and his rest.
We have a harvest field in our prisons – it's right here. It's not overseas; it's right here in our town and our city, and it's calling for people to come to join the harvest.
Caring for Prisoners: Ministry in Action
I'm going to show you a little video now. It'll give you a bit of an idea of our ministry.
In this cell. Your biggest enemy is time – you drown in a sea of it. And you think? And think. In those first days, my mind drifted to what was happening outside. It's Wednesday. You know. I wonder what my wife is doing. What projects are the guys working on? Is anyone talking about me? Or have they all just moved on? Their remorse and regret are constant companions. Over and over again, you remember that you've stuffed your life up. Reputation, family, friends, colleagues – all lost in the blink of an eye, and the guilt of the hurt you've caused is like a heavy weight that stays on your shoulders. I'll admit, there were days when I felt that all hope – all reason to continue – had gone. I'll never forget the first time I was visited by Greg. I remember thinking it was strange that someone I'd never met wanted to come and talk to me. Up until then, I'd gotten pretty used to people wanting to distance themselves from me. In prison, you do everything you can not to draw attention to yourself. Don't tell jokes. Don't tell your story. Don't look people in the eye. But here in these chairs I could talk, I could laugh. I could share my regrets and talk openly about my failures. And it was met with kindness and friendship. Greg told me about himself. And in doing so, he told me about Jesus. I later learned that close to a thousand volunteers – men and women – are visiting prisoners, running programs, playing sports, and leading Bible studies through Prison Fellowship. Prisoners like me have been profoundly impacted by this ministry. Through it, we've grown in character. We've taken responsibility. We've built self-control, and we've expressed repentance. We've come to understand grace and forgiveness. And hope is powerful – it brings life and light to your soul. I found hope here, and it grew within me. I learned dependence. I learned to pray – really pray. I found myself with a peace that was totally at odds with my harsh and miserable situation. The gap between prison and the real world beyond the gates can be very daunting. You're asking the big questions again: how can I stay out for good this time? Is there anyone who can help me? Will I get a job? Can I restore those relationships? To have Greg and the others from Prison Fellowship to be there to help me bridge that gap was everything. All. Inmates are just like everyone else. They need purpose. They need grace. They need healing. They need someone to offer hope.
That gives you a bit of an idea of what we do as a ministry. (It) covers most of the activities that our volunteers do in prison. The prison itself is not an active prison anymore – the one in the film – but it's a little bit like Fremantle Prison was – like, very rough; lots of sandstone walls and barbed wire and bars. It wasn't a very pleasant place.
This year has been going well for us as a ministry, in that we've had lots of good opportunities to get into prisons. There's still some prisons we've struggled to get into, but we're working on that. We've been able to serve, sharing love and friendship and ultimately the good news of the gospel and God's gracious love with people in prison. We also serve families who have a parent in prison or children who have a parent in prison, and often the families serve a social sentence themselves, which is very hard for them.
So our key thing is visiting in prison. We have our volunteers go in and just be a presence – we call it sometimes a ministry of presence – just sitting there with guys and being prepared to share the hope that they have with people in prison when that opportunity comes up. But many times it's just someone to chat to – to develop a friendship with.
We have The Prisoner's Journey, which is an eight-week gospel course based on Christianity Explored but written from a prison perspective. So it's very successful and very well received by the prisons and by the men themselves.
We have another course called Change on the Inside, which is not Christian-based, but it's on developing positive character.
We also have our annual Easter Biscuit Bake, which I'm – I'm told Deep Creek is a part of as well. So thank you for sharing in that and enabling people in prison to get a bag of home-baked biscuits with a gospel card at Easter, telling them the true meaning of Easter. And the impact of a biscuit on a person's life is amazing – I've given them out to people in prison, and I've looked a guy in the eye who said, are these for me? I said, yeah. He said, I can't believe people would do this for me. So it has such a deep impact – you'd think, just a biscuit – but it certainly has a deep impact. A little thing goes a long way.
We have a children's ministry or families ministry – we call it Extraordinary Lives – and in Victoria we do three things. We engage in one-on-one mentoring. Children with a parent in prison are six times more likely to go to prison themselves. So if we can have a mentor for them – a younger person, a young adult who could walk with them, commit to spending time with them and share with them – then we hope to change that statistic. I spoke with a grandmother on the phone who said, it's really hard – she's a grandma, she's looking after the kids because mum can't have them and dad's in jail (or sometimes it's both mum and dad are in jail). He can't talk to anyone at school about it. He can't talk to his teachers about it. Just me. He needs someone to talk to. And so that's where a mentor comes in and can be that person he can talk to.
We also have camps. We're running one residential camp, but also we have some day camps – some day-outs. Churches host families, and the kids have a day together just doing some fun things like a Lego day, or we've taken them to Bounce or to the zoo or something like that – and just help them have a good time and hope. The idea is to develop relationships and ultimately to get a mentor relationship happening.
And then we do the Angel Tree campaign, which I'm told Deep Creek was a part of a few years ago. But you're more than welcome to join us this year in our Angel Tree campaign. This is a program where we facilitate the giving of Christmas gifts to children who have a parent in prison on behalf of their parent. So the person in prison fills a form in, writes down the name of their child and what they like and their age. We then send it out to churches who purchase the gifts and deliver them to the families. And again, like the biscuits, it's the little thing – it's not so much about the gift, but it's all about connecting – keeping families connected. So we get every year messages back saying, I can't believe my dad didn't forget about me – that's great! Or my mum still remembered me and got me a present for Christmas – and that's significant, that's special. So Angel Tree is a really good program – it's a big program; it takes a lot of work, but we look for lots of churches to support us in that.
We do a little bit of work in post-release as well. As people come out of prison – I'd love to develop that further – we do pick up people on the day of release and walk with them a little bit just in that first day, but we'd like to expand that if we can. People coming out of jail need at least two years of mentoring, and a home. They need a job, and they need mentoring.
God is very active in our prisons and wants us to join him in furthering the work that he has started. But we can't do this on our own – we know that. And just like Jesus shared in that passage we read, it is a partnership. We walk together with others – with individuals and with churches. Churches like Deep Creek Anglican that walk with us in this journey and help us to achieve the things we can to spread the kingdom into prisons.
Partnering in the Harvest
So my challenge to you is, will you partner with us in that individually as well? And there's three things that you can do for that.
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Pray. Prayer is foundational for us. We have a prayer meeting every Monday morning on Zoom, and I put out a weekly prayer diary. We need people to pray for the ministry on a regular basis. Someone said to me once, Richard, the kingdom of God moves at the speed of prayer. And so please sign up if you want to get a prayer diary. There's a sheet on the back table there that I've got there that you can sign up to get a prayer door if you'd like to join us. Each week we put some prayer needs in there.
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Support Us Financially. Perhaps you're willing to support us financially. Maybe you're willing to make that sacrifice and to give as Deep Creek Anglican do that so well – support us. But maybe as an individual, you want to support us by providing financial support. We offer everything we offer to the prisoners for free. We don't get any money back from our government funding – it's all based on donations.
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Go as a Volunteer. To go and see that harvest field, to go and be one of the harvesters, to bring in that harvest in partnership with – with many people from other different churches.
One of the things we're initiating as well, in Victoria and across the country, is to have restoration hubs. We often have people come out of prison who have become Christians in prison, but need to be discipled when they come out. When they come out, one of the many challenges they face – besides getting into society – is to find a church that will be open and receptive. So we're looking to establish a network of churches across the country who would be willing to take in and look after someone from prison.
It's a challenge, and it takes a lot of extra work. There's a lot of thinking that needs to go around that – how do we handle that, with all the policies and child-safe policies and everything that goes with that? But it's still a commitment for a church to commit to us and to join with us as one of our restoration hub churches to support us. Deep Creek are already an amazing supporter for us. And so in many senses of the word, there is a restoration hub here already and we are thankful to Deep Creek for that.
I'll be available at the end of the service, and if you want to come and chat with me more about the ministry, please feel free to ask any questions there. Prison Fellowship is a faith-based, for-impact organization seeking to grow the Kingdom of God that Jesus initiated 2000 years ago.
Thanks for having me today.
