AWAKEN AMERICA

    
February 26, 2009                        

OUR MISSION

To identify, actively nurture, and support families of an incarcerated member

To link with active ministries and organizations toward:

o Reconciling families

o Transforming hearts through Christ

o Assisting in the provision of skills and services sufficient to help break the revolving door of recidivism

o Welcoming the whole family as members into Christ’s body, the church

                 

Why be bothered with prison ministry?


 2.700,000 men/women in prison
10,000,000 more in jail
7,000,000 on probation/paro
10% children in America has a parent in the "system"


No other country in the world competes with these numbers. How America defines crime, and deals with it is unique among both the civilized world and the emerging nations. Here, inmates are herded into vastly overcrowded cell blocks, deprived of all civil rights, excluded from any rehabilitative training, and ultimately released with only a prayer to make it successfully back into the competitive world. Is it any wonder the rate of recidivism is now approaching 70%? Some have likened incarceration to a postgraduate program for criminal behavior. How well does this square with America being as the ethical leader of the civilized world?
  
                                                 ********************

A LETTER RECEIVED TODAY


 Hello Bill and Pam, 


Thanks for your kind message.  I am the chaplain among some eleven hundred inmates, many of whom will be released directly from here or go on to State prison, where they might serve a term of a year or two. All of which is simply to agree with your observation. Most of the people we incarcerate will be back in our communities sooner or later.  And yes, the public seems blissfully forgetful of this.


As there is not that much direct community involvement with prisoners themselves, the other good task people like yourselves set yourselves to is ministry with, support of the outside families.  You fill one of the crying evils of our County, perhaps of our State--a near-total lack of transitional services, job assistance, ex-con and family housing.

At the County Jail level, the chief goal of Command staff is to keep inmates safe and secure, rather than rehabilitated, while they wait for their trials to unfold, generally very slowly.  Some will end by being acquitted of their charges, too, and freed.  As you probably know, there is almost no public money for inmate Program for them, while they wait unsentenced.  They will see very few civilians inside the Jail; all of them service people of one sort or another--nurses, parole officers, rehabilitation counselors, the chaplain. 


The sole exception are the ministry volunteers, whose task is to conduct worship in one form or another once a week for the many separate housing units here, for while in Custody (as opposed to State prison) we may not call together large general groups for worship. We cannot, for instance, call together all the Muslim or Jewish or Catholic inmates for their own worship services, because the inmates are separated into housing units, and kept apart on purpose, as seems most prudent to the safety officers.


So, I may applaud and give the God-speed to what you all are doing for the least of these. I don't see many places where our specific goals are going to overlap, although of course we share many of their general goals--especially to reconcile their spiritual health and well-being with the grim fact of their incarceration.  For they must and despite all factors,  become whole men and whole women,  in good repute and in ill repute, still called into relationship with their creator, carrying the image of that Creator,  and considered as having nothing, yet in truth possessing everything.


The Rev. Cynthia Montague
Chaplain, Monterey County Jail
Salinas, California
(831) 755-3890                   39cmont27@sbcglobal.net

 And was Jerusalem built indeed,among those dark satanic mills
      

The Government sequesters inmates and blind us to its practices. Our intention is to make visible the process through newsletters, forums, and conversation Society cannot afford a system that does not provide reconciliation and restoration, tears apart families, and consequently will promote further destructive behavior. Correction will not happen at once or globally; it starts at the local level, with our reaching out in the character of Jesus to those who cry out in their pain. Are we not to love one another just as He loved us? 
                                            
Bill Ziering Ziering@pacbell.net
831-250-7921  In His service