I have been part of the Inspire Movement since retiring from pastoral ministry in 2017 and have known my place in ministry is in disciple making.
About a year ago the senior pastor at the church where my wife and I attend, asked me to consider becoming part of the church’s jail ministry. I had been seeking the Lord’s leading as to a direction in ministry since I retired. I joined the pastor for a try and was hooked.
Since then I have been going into the local county jail each Friday. I spend about 3 hours mentoring/discipling men there. We spend a few minutes catching up on our week past and then dive right into engaging in spiritual conversation.
The recent School of Discipleship course in Skills of Spiritual Conversation has been extremely helpful. Since starting that class we don’t engage in much “idle” conversation on my jail visits, but engage almost immediately talking about how Jesus is impacting our lives and where we are seeing God at work. It is amazing to hear how these guys are experiencing God at work in the jail.
Each week I assign a portion of scripture for the guys to read and study and the next week we dive in discussing that scripture and how it shapes their life. Most of the guys I work with have come to salvation since being incarcerated and are therefore new believers. Just the other week after our time of mentoring and Bible study the pastor and I were told that several inmates wished to be baptized and we were invited to help. That day we ended up baptizing 15 men and 7 ladies!
I am praying for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in that jail and I believe God wants to do it as well. I claim no credit for what the Holy Spirit is doing in these men’s lives, but am thankful that I get to join in.
Ed, Inspire Missioner, Indiana, USA (May 2022)
