At Angola state prison, turning inmates into pastors: Robert Mann
Rev. Jerial Hardy, an inmate pastor, preaches to his Assembly of God congregation at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola's Main Prison on May 16, 2015. (Screenshot by permission of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola)
By on June 05, 2015
What if, instead of serving as the repository for some of our state's worst problems, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola became part of the solution? What if our prison system focused more on correction and less on punishment? What if local churches embraced former inmates and empowered them to help rescue lives and souls in Louisiana's inner cities?
That's the vision of a group of Louisiana Department of Corrections leaders at Angola, led by Warden Burl Cain. For five years, Angola has worked with judges in New Orleans and Baton Rouge to implement an innovative re-entry court program designed to give short-timers employable skills, like air-conditioning or automotive repair, as well as important life skills that will facilitate their re-entry into society. Long-termers or lifers provide the training and mentoring.
By all accounts, it's been a successful experiment, one that's being replicated around the state. A prison that once housed mostly lifers is giving hundreds of short-timers a chance at redemption.
Now, Angola officials have devised an additional component to their re-entry program – a project to enlist short-timers interested in church ministry and train them to be preachers and ministry leaders in the inner cities.
Cain and his staff have dubbed it the Onesimus Project, named after a former slave who St. Paul mentions in the New Testament's book of Philemon. "Formerly he was useless to you," Paul told Philemon, "but now he has become useful both to you and to me." That philosophy – redeeming those once considered "useless" – is the program's animating spirit.
"I kinda call it 'seminary in a box,'" Rev. Ricky Sharkey, senior chaplain at Angola and co-director of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary at Angola, told me. "It's not getting a college degree, but the goal is to equip them for ministry, urban ministry, in particular."
The whole story is here: http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2015/06/at_angola_turning_inmates_into.html#incart_most_shared-religion
That's the vision of a group of Louisiana Department of Corrections leaders at Angola, led by Warden Burl Cain. For five years, Angola has worked with judges in New Orleans and Baton Rouge to implement an innovative re-entry court program designed to give short-timers employable skills, like air-conditioning or automotive repair, as well as important life skills that will facilitate their re-entry into society. Long-termers or lifers provide the training and mentoring.
By all accounts, it's been a successful experiment, one that's being replicated around the state. A prison that once housed mostly lifers is giving hundreds of short-timers a chance at redemption.
Now, Angola officials have devised an additional component to their re-entry program – a project to enlist short-timers interested in church ministry and train them to be preachers and ministry leaders in the inner cities.
Cain and his staff have dubbed it the Onesimus Project, named after a former slave who St. Paul mentions in the New Testament's book of Philemon. "Formerly he was useless to you," Paul told Philemon, "but now he has become useful both to you and to me." That philosophy – redeeming those once considered "useless" – is the program's animating spirit.
"I kinda call it 'seminary in a box,'" Rev. Ricky Sharkey, senior chaplain at Angola and co-director of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary at Angola, told me. "It's not getting a college degree, but the goal is to equip them for ministry, urban ministry, in particular."
The whole story is here: http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2015/06/at_angola_turning_inmates_into.html#incart_most_shared-religion
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