Chapter 4

You Can Start Your Own Prison Ministry

"Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners." Heb. 13:3 NIV

The Florida Prison Ministries outreach has several basic spiritual and social objectives. The spiritual objectives could be summed up as follows:

1. To present the gospel of Jesus Christ
2. To share the love of God
3. To express the meaning of faith
4. To show the power of prayer

Some of the social objectives are:

1. To provide a link between the community and the persons confined in correctional institutions.
2. To prepare persons confined for re-entry into social (physically, mentally, morally and spiritually).
3. To serve the families of persons confined in correctional institutions.
4. To help a person find a redeeming religious experience involves his finding the same in the people around him.
5. To know the meaning of forgiveness involves being forgiven and offering forgiveness to others.
6. To know the meaning of love involves being loved and a chance to love.

It is difficult for an inmate to worship the Lord in terms of praise when he is untaught in terms of Christ dying for him. It is difficult when he has never known praise himself. He builds his religion from generous portions of his family experience, bad, good or indifferent. One of the purposes of prison ministry outreach in a correctional setting is to provide the means of interpreting God's love to the inmate. Simply stated, the overall objectives of prison ministry are stated as follows:

1. Through Christ every inmate is redeemable.
2. To reconstruct the whole person.
3. To bring to the inmate's family a new lifestyle based on Christian methods.