Discovering The Kingdom In Prison

Part 1: Reflections on my day job and how I got here...

For this short series, I will be reflecting on how saying ‘yes’ to God unexpectedly led me into setting up a theological learning hub inside a prison. Unless I have been given express permission to share an individual story, I will keep specifics vague and change some non-important details. If you would like to support or find out more about my work, please visit wtctheology.org.uk/prison. 

Photo by Tim Photoguy on Unsplash

I don’t mean to brag, but I have the best job in the world.

When people ask me, “What do you do?”, they are almost never prepared for my answer.

In short, I am setting up a theological learning hub inside a prison. 

How on earth did this come about? 

It all started in a pub in the spring of 2018. There, my friend Matt quite literally tricked me into agreeing to join him on a 5-day mission inside a Category-A, maximum security men’s prison in the east of England. 

I had never been interested in prisons before, and I was not reassured by this particular prison’s Wikipedia page, which at the time, stated that it housed “450 of the most dangerous convicted criminals in Britain.” 

But, somehow, Matt managed to rope me in, and I thought it might be a great opportunity to share the gospel and maybe see some lives be changed. I never anticipated that these men would change me. 

It took six months of training before I was allowed to be a volunteer for this mission organisation. Many were against me going in at all, since I am a woman. Some were concerned for my safety; others were worried that one of the men might fall in love with me, or vice versa. Some, sadly, still believe that women should not be allowed in any form of ministry despite the clear Biblical and historical evidence that women in the early church frequently did so.¹ 

Eventually, in the Autumn of 2018, the week of the mission finally arrived, and I was feeling pretty nervous. We had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. each morning so that we could have breakfast and be inside the gates before 7 a.m. The instant coffee was out of date.

On the first morning, after managing to get through security procedures that were more arduous than an airport, the entire prison went into lockdown, and we had to wait in a corridor for over an hour. All we were told at the time was that there had been an “incident,” meaning nobody could move anywhere in the prison. We later found out that one of the men had taken a huge dose of the infamous drug, spice, and then proceeded to set himself on fire. 

None of the security officers seemed particularly phased.

After setting up the chapel and ensuring everything was ready, the participants finally arrived, nineteen in total. It was evident that some of them were extremely nervous to meet us. Many later told me they were expecting harsh judgement from us “outsiders.” They assumed we were going to treat them like animals. 

Small acts of kindness - many of which meant nothing to us - were often more impactful than we anticipated. At the beginning of each session, we made the participants teas and coffees, and we wrote down how they liked it so we could remember for next time. One man fought back tears when someone remembered his order of coffee with milk and six sugars. Another smiled and told us it was the first time anyone had made him a cup of tea in over ten years. 

We ran multiple sessions, each lasting about an hour. A volunteer would give a talk for 20-30min, and then the men would sit in table groups, discuss the topic, and then present a poster outlining on what they discussed.

We were told that one of the core reasons why the men loved the mission was because they had finally been given permission to be vulnerable with one another. I joked with another volunteer that although we were praying for various miracles and signs throughout the week, the real miracle was that we had managed to get a group of tough “manly” men to sit in small groups and talk about their feelings. 

I noticed many participants had a change in posture throughout the week. For some, this happened when we held a forgiveness ceremony, and they had the opportunity to write the name of someone they were choosing to forgive on a piece of dissolvable paper. After putting that paper in a bowl of hot water, they watched it disappear before their eyes. 

For others, it was when they were divided into small groups of 3s and 4s, each with a trained volunteer, and they learned how to pray for the first time. Most came in at the beginning with hunched shoulders and mostly looked at their feet, but the majority left with their shoulders back, and were able to make eye contact and smile with us in the end. 

There was a young guy who wanted to begin reading the Bible for the first time, but was nervous because of his severe dyslexia. One of the volunteers gave him a New Testament and suggested that he begin reading the book of Mark, since it is the shortest gospel. We expected him to read 1 or 2 paragraphs, but he came back the following morning exclaiming, “Last night I read all of Mark! It was amazing! What should I read next?” 

Many participants told us that at some point during that week, they had a strong feeling that God really is real and that he really loves them.

Another core aspect of the mission’s success was the prayer room next door. For the duration of that week, that next-door room was full of other prisoners who were already Christians and had set up a round-the-clock prayer rota so they could pray over their friends who were doing the course.

I had the immense privilege of joining in and praying with them for a couple of hours. Listening to these men’s prayers was an incredible experience. They prayed with fire and passion. I could tell they were desperate for their friends to encounter God's love.

Some were able to recite very long passages of the New Testament that they had memorised. One told me his testimony about how he came to faith after a miraculous healing of stage-4 leukaemia. Another told me about how he was praying alone in his cell one night, and then spontaneously started praying in “a funny language” he had never learned before.

One man, who is serving a full life sentence and will never be released, told me that he no longer feels like he lives in a prison anymore. Instead, he feels he is in a monastery. This man regularly spends long periods of time praying for Christians on the “outside” (i.e. you and me), and tells me he prays that we would not fall into the trap of spiritual apathy. 

I make no exaggeration when I say that those five days changed the course of my life forever. 

I knew that I had encountered Jesus in the faces of these men, and that I was not going to be able to stay away for long.

Once the mission was over, the director of the mission group addressed all the volunteers with a speech. Towards the end of his talk, he started telling us about a US “Prison Seminary” programme in Louisiana in the USA.

There, prisoners who had come to faith could study for an accredited degree in Theology for Ministry. The men have four years of training followed by a psychological assessment. Those who pass are then commissioned to work as prisoner-chaplains for the rest of their sentence. This apparently sparked a revival in the prison since the new chaplains were suddenly seen as equals, meaning that inmates were much more receptive to hearing the gospel from them.

They now have so many prisoner-chaplains that they send them off as missionairies in twos and threes to other prisons around the country. This too has sparked multiple revivals in prisons throughout the US.

At the end of his speech, the director said that he and his wife had been praying for over twenty years that they might see something similar happen here in the U.K. They believed God had told them that they would see it happen in their lifetime. 

Immediately, I sensed the Holy Spirit say, “You could do that.” 

My stomach dropped.

1. For more reading on this, I recommend Lucy Peppiatt’s book, Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women and Nijay Gupta’s Tell Her Story.