From Jerusalem to Timbuktu by Stiller Brian C.;

Author:Stiller, Brian C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: global Christianity;world Christianity;growth;expansion;church;secularization;global south;majority world;Holy Spirit;renewal;holism;public square;indigenous;local;leadership;ministry;translation;missions
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2018-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE POWER OF THE WHOLE GOSPEL

SOME MEMORIES JUST DON’T FADE. On a sunny day Ron Nikkel, president of Prison Fellowship International (PFI), and I walked into a dark Reclusoria Sur Prison in Mexico City. It holds ten thousand men, all of them sentenced to at least fifteen years. Sections are run by drug cartels, the underworld power of Mexico linked into drug-producing countries to the south. Sleeping space here is often where you can find it, including bathrooms and hallway floors. Yet we walked among the men without fear, many reaching out for a handshake. They knew of PFI, a prison ministry started by Charles Colson—Richard Nixon’s hatchet man—following his imprisonment.

We made our way through a maze of corridors, hearing music coming from a chapel. The clean white building, in sharp contrast to the dingy prison, was constructed by inmates and paid for by PFI. Seated inside were 120 inmates garbed in tan prison uniforms. At the front were twenty-five women in red PFI golf shirts, singing, playing instruments, and leading worship. (I admit to feeling some skepticism: Attractive women ministering to male inmates? Hardly the equation for unfettered spirituality, I thought.) Singing progressed and then two women, like a tag team, led in teaching the Lord’s Prayer. They were dynamic and the men sat at attention, listening for almost fifty minutes.

Next came a liturgical mass with singers leading in highly spirited songs. While music played, some of the inmates left their seats to take confession with the priest at the side of the chapel, their sobbing clearly heard.

After mass, lunch was distributed, but I couldn’t have anticipated what came next. As volunteers passed out bags, inmates moved to another section of the chapel with an evident sense of excitement. I wondered why they had such exuberant joy. It was then I noticed what each man obviously regarded as his precious contents: two rolls of toilet paper and toiletries. They were like excited teenagers at Christmas, for good reason. They had to buy their own toilet paper. And some have no family, no money, and no one to visit them. Without funds, no toilet paper.

In 129 countries, PFI has national ministries, caring for men and women in prison. That morning I watched it minister love and healing—as moving and real a ministry as I’ve ever seen anywhere. My emotions were on a roller coaster as I saw kingdom life lived out in such pure and unadulterated ways. Going to the forgotten and those deemed unworthy, Christian volunteers gave these men what few did: unbridled love.

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