The Annual Conference of Yokefellowship Prison Ministry
Friday and Saturday, October 28-29, 2005
SPECIAL 50TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE
9:00
AM Speaker – Rev. Ulli Klemm, Administrator, Religion &
Volunteer Services, Bureau of Inmate Services, PA Department of
Corrections Topic - PRESENT – Volunteers Are Not All Equal: Toward
Effective Volunteering in Corrections
Being an
Effective Volunteer in Prison
The
following is an excerpt from the speech given
by Reverend Ulli Klemm at the YPM 2005
Annual Conference. Ulli is the Administrator of Religion and
Volunteer Services, Bureau of Inmate Services, for the PA
Department of Corrections
I would like to introduce you to five prison ministry volunteers I
have met on my journey as a prison chaplain. While most
volunteers view themselves as being effective servants for
Christ, unfortunately, many are not as effective in their
ministry as they perceive themselves to be. Let us reflect on
our own volunteer service as learn from these examples.
The first
volunteer I want to introduce you to is Earplug Eddie.
Earplug Eddie
always went to prison with a well-planned Bible study, complete
with outline and handouts. His job, as he saw it, was to get
through the materials he prepared at whatever cost. As his
study progressed, he did all the talking, never pausing to
answer questions because he was trying to get through the study
in the time allotted. Unfortunately, amid his great intention
to share the Living Word with the inmates, he had forgotten to
remove his earplugs. His earplugs distanced himself from his
learners and their stories and prevented him from hearing their
questions, doubts, cries and pain. Because his ears were
closed, the Bible had little chance of intersecting with the
story of the individuals he intended to liberate with God’s
Word.
In order to be an effective
volunteer, you must enter someone else’s story. In order to
enter someone else’s story, you have to open your ears and
intentionally listen to that story to allow it to penetrate you.
Only then can you find and ask God’s grace to help you intersect
God’s Words with the lives of those you seek to help.
The second volunteer I want to
introduce you to is Exhibitionist Eileen. Exhibitionist
Eileen has lived an
exciting life, often on the edge. Her stories from the streets -
stories of experimenting with drugs, selling her body, and
serving time in prison – were always engaging. Members of
Eileen’s church were anxious to get her on their prison ministry
team. What credibility she would lend to their efforts! But
whenever Eileen shared her testimony in prison, she spent her
entire time entertaining her listeners with how bad she was back
then: how she hung out with the worst of them, stole to feed her
additction, overdosed, was shot at and almost killed. Then all
of a sudden, with a minute left to share, she dropped the “Jesus
bomb,” telling inmates in thirty seconds how she gave her heart
to Jesus and has never been the same since. It was like she
took a magic pill and was “high on the Lord” The men, who
listened sat there motionless, confused. To them, changing for
the better was always a struggle. To her, as soon as Jesus
entered her life, the struggle stopped. Although Eileen’s last
incarceration was ten years ago, and the stories of life on the
streets were entertaining, the guys couldn’t believe her. It
was as if being a Christian is one glorious day after the next
with no pain, no struggles, no doubt. The men know that that’s
not the way life is. Truthfulness, being real, telling what it
was like back then: yes that is important. But telling what
it’s been like since then and telling it with truthfulness and
honesty is even more important.
We all have things in our past,
maybe not quite so exciting and on the edge as Eileen, but we
all have things in our past that we are not proud of. We also
have things in our lives that we struggle with as Christians.
We need to share those areas in order to be an effective witness
of God who is at work with us now, just as God was at work when
we first came to faith.
Good Guy George
is the third person I’ve
met in prison and with whom I am well-acquainted. For I was
“Good Guy George” at one time. I was living in Chicago,
married, had a stable job, and was part of a healthy church.
When I was asked if I would go and visit folks in prison, I
thought that here is an opportunity for me, ‘the good guy,’ to
visit the ‘bad guys.’ I went to visit those in prison, figuring
that I, as a ‘good guy’ would get the royal treatment. My
assumption was to be dispelled. As I entered the prison, an
officer immediately told me to take off my jacket, belt and
watch and to remove my shoes. “Hey” I wanted to yell, “I’m the
good guy! Why are you treating me as if I was a bad guy?”
In my early days as a chaplain, I
thought that my number one assignment was to teach those bad
guys and women how to be like me: a good guy. The inmates
listened politely to what I said and expressed appreciation for
my coming to talk with them. But there was something wrong with
this picture. You see, I came into prison with an assumption
that I and the inmates in my care were not made of the same
fabric. I assumed that I was different than them. That they
were the ones who needed changed, not me. And so when I prayed I
prayed, “Lord Jesus I pray for them that they
might hear a word today; that they might be changed.”
I didn’t pray, “Lord I pray for us because life is hard
and we have hard choices to make. “ I didn’t pray “Give
us the courage to be faithful when we are
tempted” No, me the good guy, prayed: “Lord touch these
men. Change their hearts.” In reality, it was my heart
and my attitude that needed changed.
Prisons need ‘good guys’ but even
more they need good guys who know they are bad guys. Prisons
need volunteers who pray, “Lord, have mercy on us…help
us to change….help us to grow….”
A fourth volunteer I have met I
will call Predetermined Pete. As a chaplain I received
many calls from Predetermined Pete. Always, he would tell me
that God had spoken directly to him as he was reading Matthew
25:39 or Hebrews 13:3. As he watched a movie about prisoners,
he thought, “I’ve got to get in there.” As he talks with me on
the phone, he tells me that God has told him exactly what he
will do in the prison where I am chaplain, on what day of the
week and at what time. He further states that if I’m a godly
man, that I would open the prison doors wide and let Pete come
in.
For some reason, without having
stepped foot in our jail, Pete decided that he knew exactly what
we needed. When he didn’t get the response he was seeking,
under his breath he muttered that I was of the devil.
When you approach a chaplain, a
superintendent and want to offer your help, simply say: I feel
called to do prison ministry. I know there’s a lot I don’t know
and a lot I have to learn, but how can I be most helpful to
you? In my tenure as a chaplain, I didn’t get many calls like
that. When Predetermined Pete would call, I’d put his name on a
different list.
Finally I’m going to talk about
Righteously Indignant Rochelle. Rochelle’s number one
concern was inmates. Her concern led her to drive 10 miles out
of her way to pick up another volunteer and then drive another
30 miles through rain and snow to the prison. She wanted to be
with inmates. And unfortunately her zeal to be with inmates,
let her to ignore any and everyone else en route to the prison
chapel or classroom. The officers she met at the prison gate
were simply necessary evils. They were not people to treat with
the same Christian kindness she treated the inmates who attended
her study. She treated them as if they didn’t exist.
One day, when the lobby officer
asked her to remove the suit jacket she was wearing, she stood
up straight as if she was about to rebuke Satan, and said, “No,
I’m not taking this jacket off. I have always worn this jacket
into the prison and I don’t intend to take it off now. It goes
with my suit.” As you might expect, Rochelle was stripped of
her volunteer privileges and sent away. It was too bad that she
didn’t treat the officers at the prison with the same Christian
love she showed to her inmates. She became her worst enemy.
I contrast Rochelle with an
elderly volunteer I knew, a volunteer who still volunteers in
her 80’s. In her own saintly way she would kiss the balding
heads of the officers she met en route to the chapel or to visit
inmate on their housing units. Over time, officers began to
position themselves to happen to be wherever she was to receive
her blessing in the form of a kiss or a hug. I my opinion, she
is the most effective volunteer at that prison because she loved
inmates and staff with the same depth of love that God loved
her.
These are five of the volunteers
I have met in my journey as a prison chaplain. There is a
common string that binds these not-so-effective volunteers
together. The string is “self.” Self is what often gets in the
way of our being effective volunteers. When we put “self” above
our service to others, we will always lose. Self rears its head
in the form of our pride which thinks that what we have to say
is more important to listening to others. Self becomes evident
when we deny the truth of our struggles as Christians pretending
once we give our lives to Christ that life is one big party.
Self judges ourselves as good, while judging other as bad and in
need of change. Self is present whenever we feel we have the
most clear and direct line of communications to God as if we
were an angel and everyone else is a demon. And finally, self
finds ways to distinguish who is worthy and who is unworthy of
our love when God calls us to love all.
In Matthew 16 Jesus said of the
self:
“If anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up
his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will
lose it but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”
To be an
effective volunteer in prison you must lose your self because
self will get in the way of faithful, compassionate and
effective ministry every time.
9:00
AM Speaker – Rev. Ulli Klemm, Administrator, Religion &
Volunteer Services, Bureau of Inmate Services, PA Department of
Corrections