BOOK 5: BEARING WITNESS TO THE RESURRECTION
The program might be ending, but this opens the door to something new.
This is the second to last module in the One Parish One Prisoner learning. You’ve made it this far. You’ve been through a lot together.
Bless you.
You’ve reached your hands and hearts into the American underground—the prisons, the civic burial sites, the hidden places and hidden wounds beneath the surface of your community.
You’ve been part of opening legal gates, opening relationships, opening conversations.
You’ve seen something new.
You have been witnesses to the resurrection, even if your experience was imperfect and incomplete.
What if this is just the beginning?
The early church movement began with a handful of people who had a life-altering experience at the tombs, and then ran to their wider community to tell the story and pray together about what’s next.
These final two modules will help you follow this earliest of traditions.
A LONG WALK TOGETHER
“We stay in relationship. God works through relationships that transform us. We trust that and follow what God has put in front of us.”
— Doug, team pastor
When we first started building One Parish One Prisoner in 2017 with a handful of teams, we quickly learned a foundational lesson. (We shared this story in Module 2 on Success, but it’s well worth repeating here.)
Terrance had only been out of prison a few months. He was still wearing a GPS ankle monitor, not even past his official release date yet.
He told me his One Parish One Prisoner team had all gathered on a sunny Sunday morning, excited to see him again in person after pandemic distancing. After about an hour of catching up about their lives, one team member asked, “So what’s next? Do we keep meeting? Are we done?”
“I just stayed quiet,” Terrance told me on the phone. “I thought I’d just see what they were thinking.”
Another team member said, happily, “I think we are done.”
Another said, “Well, maybe we’re done with Terrance,” and gave him an approving wink. “But I think we start with the next guy now?”
The rest of the team agreed.
Terrance sounded hurt when telling me this on the phone. “The next guy? Oh, OK. It’s like that, then? I mean . . . I dunno.” He paused, not wanting to sound ungrateful. And not wanting to sound foolish.
“I thought we were building lifelong friendships. Isn’t that what this was all about? I feel kinda dumb for wanting that now. I mean, if this was just a little bit of help when I get out and ‘see ya later, good luck,’ I coulda just used the resource center downtown. I didn’t know this was just a short walk kind of thing.
The line was quiet. I listened, nodding.
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful for all they’ve done and all their kindness, but I thought this was about a long walk together.”
We can be so used to programming that’s geared toward helping the maximum number of people.
Terrance understood much better than his team what this journey of reentry and relationship is all about. He knew he was just getting started.
These final two modules help us look beyond the “program’s end” to imagining a “long walk together”:
What if this is just the beginning of our relationship with our resurrecting friend?
What if this is just the beginning of a transformation insideme?
What if this is just the beginning of a larger call forour congregation?
What if this is just the beginning of a larger resurrection movement?
QUICK QUESTION
WHAT IF THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF OUR RELATIONSHIP?
This program has connected you, built a bridge between your worlds, a structure to assist in the resurrection and reentry process together. You don’t need the training wheels anymore; you can ride as you please. Your lives are connected now. You don’t need prison letters or video visits to chat. You can text and call and see each other whenever you want.
Essentially, this is your neighbor. Hopefully, a friend.
Resurrection—healing, reintegrating into society after years of prison and isolation and separation from family, friendship, economy, society — can take years.
Your relationship may be different than what you expected or hoped for, depending on how your released friend is doing in their reentry journey.
Here are some common situations.
IF THEY’RE DOING WELL:
Stay connected! They’re entering the land of the living. Revisit the Magic Season module.
How do you integrate this relationship into your own life and your community’s life?
Monthly coffee or a walk? Is there a role at the church you can invite them to fill? Greeter, Usher, or setting up for service? Invite them to join in feeding the homeless or preparing the fellowship hall when a blood drive comes. Invite them over for holiday meals and special events, like you would with a relative, or a friend new to the area.
Remember, resurrection takes years. There are so many stones to continue rolling away for folks who’ve been out of prison over a year: petitioning to remove old charges off records, starting a new lease, larger debts to cancel, custody to gain in their kids’ lives.
You’re not responsible for solving everything. But we are the Department of Connections. You have immense social capital: Connections. Like a bank manager. A lawyer. A social worker. Someone with snowshoes for a family outing or kayaks to borrow on a sunny afternoon. Tickets to the stadium for the game.
Nothing beats a good phone call. “How’ve you been?” Time to listen. Tell them how you’re doing. Be real.
Mark your calendars for one year from release date. Celebrate that big day together.
IF THEY’RE BACK IN JAIL OR PRISON:
You’re back at the tombs together. You’ve been here before. The cycle begins again. You have more practice now. Keep meeting as a team. Weep as Jesus did for his friend Lazarus.
The criminal punishment industry is layered and punitive and not built with healing or restoration in mind. Your friend being back inside a facility may be a tragic (yet common) overreaction of the parole/probation system. It’s possible your friend was understandably slipping and struggling, but when they needed more assistance and healthy intervention, they were snatched up, labeled a menace to society.
Stay connected! Look up their name on the county roster or the state prison database online. Drop a letter to the local jail.. They are probably drowning in self-contempt, beating themselves up for letting you all down, assuming you hate them, imagining all this was a waste of time.
You can write them something that washes that ugliness away: “We love you. We miss you.” Keep it simple. You don’t need to fix the situation. Just finding them with a word of grace is so often what resurrection looks like. Think about Jesus coming to the disciples after they abandoned him. “Peace,” Jesus says to break the ice, knowing their anxiety and fear and guilt. “Don’t be afraid.”
If you’re a parent, get your kids to draw colorful pictures to mail in. Imagine your friend opening them up in a depressing jail cell, with a short letter from the team: “We’re not going anywhere. We’re here. We care about you. Thanks for letting us get to be part of your life. You’re stuck with us now ;) Hope to hear from you.”
Mercy reaches deeper into all of us. We are gaining the heart of God.
Remember: don’t send any money. We go back to the basics, same as at the beginning: relationship over resources. That’s where the healing’s at.
This is hopefully just the beginning of a long relationship with someone who has only begun to taste a very different kind of care from you. It can take years to rewire brains and heal spirits that have been formed by years of untrustworthy relationships.
God works through relationships that transform us.
Your friend, through the months with your team, now has a glimpse of what is possible. It takes a while to learn freedom, to heal.
If they write to you, bring it to the team. Stay connected. Look at their new release date. Do they want to try again? Don’t make a decision right away. Just assure them that you love them and see if they stay in touch over the coming months. Watch, wait, pray. Don’t be in a rush.
Also: don’t run from the feelings. You can grieve that your friend is back in the tombs. Feel the anger. That broken heart, that weeping, takes us right back to the start: Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus was in the tomb. It’s the beginning of any resurrection story, the secret to resurrection power.
This has been the case with at least half the individuals we’ve loved who’ve been sucked back into the prison system. It’s devastating to watch. It’s often easier to get mad at the broken human than at the dehumanizing system.
IF THEY’RE OUT ON THE STREETS, NOT RESPONDING:
Wait. Reach out occasionally, send a message that your team misses them, loves them, and wants to get together. And wait for them as God waits for us — with patience, tenderness, and a persistent hope.
“God didn’t try fixing me. But he was there. Always. Until I was ready.”
— Tony, released team member
A retired gentleman on the team with Tony agreed. He had deepened in patience over time, and shared about his years in Alcoholics Anonymous, walking his own slow healing alongside others in recovery:
“The nice thing about a loving God is he lets us make our own choices. He won’t control us. When we get ourselves into hot water, we ask for help. He waits for that. He loves.”
— Rick, team member
That sounds like the Welcoming Prayer: we let go of control, and in doing so, learn the un-controlling love of God.
This is what we mean with that question we ask at each month’s team meeting: What am I learning, through this relationship, about God’s heart?
It’s the same thing with waiting. Father Greg Boyle says, “Ours is a God who waits. Who are we not to?”
As you wait, make space for feelings and tears. We grieve differently — from each other, and from one hour to the next. Lean in. Pray the Welcoming Prayer. You are being formed into the heart of God, and entering the ache and power of the resurrection.
As you wait, keep meeting as a team. You are not alone.
Hold this question: Whatever struggle or sickness is keeping your friend from entering a fuller life right now — how many thousands of others leaving prison have this exact same story? You are a witness to this one.
We’ll say it again: this might be just the beginning.
RESURRECTION IS A CYCLE
As you’ve heard in stories and videos throughout these modules, our returning friends’ ’ journeys rarely follow a straight line or fit neatly within a two year program.
Many of our formerly incarcerated staff members here at Underground went back to prison after a few attempts at reentry. Our friendships deepened each time. We learned to trust. We tried again. Now Alex, Leroy, Corinna, Roger and hundreds of others are working, in college, raising their kids, on nonprofit boards or staff, and leaders in our community.
There is no “failure.” There is only learning faithfulness, and recognizing where we are in this resurrection cycle together. The transformation is mutual.
When people in your congregation ask about your releasing friend, don’t feel pressure to have some “success” story. You can tell them where you are in the ancient story of transformation right now.
And invite them into the long walk together.
WHAT IF THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF A WORK INSIDE ME?
What has this relationship done to you?
We’ve been asking this question in our post-silence reflection at the start of each team meeting. God is changing our hearts as we’ve approached the tombs of our culture together and removed our own protective layers. How are you being transformed through this?
In our very first One Parish One Prisoner pairing, the entire church rallied around their releasing friend, Leroy: weekly updates during “prayers of the people,” a big fundraiser to pay off fines, safe housing secured, rides lined up to take him to appointments. We picked him up from his facility and the next day all sat at a banquet table at the Mexican restaurant across town, the week after Easter. He even got a gym membership to share with one of the men on the team.
But Leroy hid his mounting anxiety, insecurities, and loneliness and soon disappeared, reaching out to the very gang and drug contacts on the streets he promised himself he’d never go back to.
The team was crushed.
As we reflected together in the months that followed, and later shared with the congregation, we started to tell stories.
Two of the women on the team can’t help but drive through town a little slower now: “Each young man I see walking the sidewalks, I think, Is that Leroy? No. Wait, is THAT Leroy?”
These white, middle-class church grandmothers, who may have feared tattooed, gang-affected Mexican men in our valley for years? Now they see the beloved everywhere as they search for their lost friend.
They hadn’t realized this is part of God’s transforming work in them, in their church! Even if Leroy wasn’t fully ready to transform his entire life, what if every church in America had congregants with renewed eyes and hearts for their neighbors like this? It happens through one relationship.
Folks in the church would come up to team members and ask, “Where’s Leroy?” At first it made the team feel awkward, ashamed to say they didn’t know, like the program had ‘failed’. Then they realized that never before had the congregation asked, with hope, why a former gang member wasn’t worshiping with them that Sunday.
The church family felt a Leroy-shaped hole in their midst.
What has this relationship done to your congregation? Your family?
Years later, Leroy surfaced. The team got letters from prison. He was ashamed. He was releasing again and wanted to know if people would still be there for him. Today, Leroy is home, married, working a manufacturing job, and becoming a core member of the Underground Ministries community.
That’s Leroy in the gray suit, above. The photo is from his wedding in the church that stuck with him through his slow journey home.
When we wait, when we are faithful, resurrection happens.
YOUR STORY
Enough reading.
Now it’s time for your story, your voice. We want to learn from you.
This month, as we ask “Is This Just the Beginning?”, we’ve built a special space in this module for you to actively review your journey so far, sharing some of your reflections and memories. This helps you get specific, draw closer to what you’ve seen and experienced.
LET’S MEET!
Our Parish Mobilizer will be joining your team meeting when you gather to discuss this module.
Remember your Kickoff Orientation? This is our chance, two years later, to come back together and reflect with you.
This is a core part of the journey, and we hope everyone on the team can participate –including your releasing friend, if they can make it!
During this time, we will review your Story So Far, consider ways to share and utilize it. We’ll also ask “Is this just the beginning?” with your wider congregation as we approach the final module.
