Video Transcript: The Church as a Re-entry Place for Returning Citizens

It's all good. Oh, it's just inner city. Oh. I was locked up with some very wealthy drug dealers and wealth by birth, not by virtual earning, creating a sense of compliment inclusion. We're glad you're here. Mother, you don't have to hide the fact that your son's locked up anymore. Grandma, you don't have to weep by yourself that your daughter granddaughter is locked up, reducing the stigma and the shame. I can't deal with Christmas. I get that all the time. I said, those can't deal with the prisoners. One of my students said to me, can I borrow your Bible? Just in mind because he came to seminary to have your faith taken away from somebody to do that seminary, and that's something you understand. The Bible, Imma, take some stuff out the Bible. She said, really? I said, Yeah, you can't deal with prisoners, Imma, take out the book of Genesis because Joseph was an inmate. You can't deal with prisoners. Imma take out the book of Jeremiah because he was a solitary confinement you can't deal with inmates. I'm going to take out the book  of Daniel because Daniel was a two time loser and Shadrach Meshach and Abednego on death row. You can't deal with inmates? You're going to take out the book of Revelation because John wrote Revelation while he was locked up. you can't deal with inmates? Going to take out First and Second Peter, because Peter got locked up, and church did pray for him all night long. In fact, he got early release, and then when he came back to the church, they wouldn't let him in. They had a reentry problem. You can't deal with it? Can't deal with John the Baptist, Paul and silence locked in jail. You can't deal with it. Dealt with good baptisms. You know, we understand what you're trying to say, but those are good people that got locked up. We're talking about bad people in those prisons. I said to me, like the guy was reading about was walking on the street one day and saw one of his boys being jumped on by his boss. He jumped a little fight and killed the boss. He said, Yeah, you like a guy like that. Why you just thought you just locked up? Moses.  You mean, like the musician who took the day off from work and looked over the battle and said, Lord is my shepherd. I see what I want. Y'all, who's that? Her name is Bathsheba. I gotta get with that. No, you can't do that. Man, she got somebody; his name is Uriah. We can arrange a little search. Man, they want to call a child on that. Peter better be glad he was not born in urban America, he pulled a knife on a cop in Chicago. Jesus would have reformed two miracles. Peter had to heal the cops here and raise fear from the dead.

That same violent liar, I don't know. We may not sound like I'm with him. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who's begotten us again unto a lively hope,

We've got to destigmatize this incarceration. We have to hold people accountable. We have to remove the stigma and see the image of God created in them. Somebody said to me, why do you give out your inmate number whenever you speak? I do this. When I go to churches, I get my inmate number out there right after the introduction. Why you do this? And number one, so you can't find out, because you can't find out, it's really easy. Back in Pennsylvania, I live, they got this new app called docket. Give you a docket. You give somebody a name if you got a record in Pennsylvania, hit the docket, hit the app, your whole packet comes up, not just your convictions, your whole packet, every time you get arrested. So number one, you can't find out. Number two, every time one of us who's been away comes home and we talk about it, we set somebody free and let folk know that it's alright to talk about it, and that God did not give up on us while we were gone. We should not give up on anybody while they're gone.

In congregation, is the training that brother Robert and others do we remove the stigma? We work on reducing the stigma and the shame, helping to foster a transformation of hearts, minds and communities. This is not about just how many volunteers we can get. I want us to get volunteers. But if you change the culture of the church, the volunteers will come forward. And we saw that here in Michigan, where the volunteer numbers went up as we began doing the healing communities training in various cities. Number four, facilitating acceptance of responsibility, actions and behaviors. This is not a Get Out of Jail Free card. This is the recognition that in order for us to move forward when we come home, we have to take responsibility. We need you to help us hold ourselves accountable. I can always tell Robert, you can always tell all of us that are doing this, you can tell when a guy's not ready, because it's always somebody else. You know they're not ready to take responsibility. When a person's ready to change, one of the first things you do, you can see, is they're ready to take responsibility. When I go to the inmates, he said, speak to them. I tell them I don't get arrested and I rescued. One of the things about church, I don't know what your theology is, but you know, some folks, they believe that God can actually show you stuff. And one of the saints of the church came up to me the two days before I got arrested, said, you drive. She said, I want to pray for you. I said, Okay, she ain't driving a white car. I said, Yeah. She said, You got arrested and be in your house. I said, in the driveway. She said, I see it. I see the Lord tapping the on the shoulder saying, Go get my son. It's time I was rescued. And I have to take responsibility for that. I have to take responsibility for the fact that I do things whereby God had to come in, even the guys who are innocent. If you take responsibility for the fact that you got, here's the question, it's not whether you're innocent or guilty, but if you hadn't been arrested when you were, where would you be right now? And as for some of us, it is dead. God came up to me. I just got home from 17 year bid. Man, 17 year bid said, Really, yeah, 17 years but something I didn't do. I said, Really? Man, yeah, I was innocent. Man, something I didn't do, 17 year bid, what did they do? What I really did? Out of that life, he's taking responsibility. His life will be the same. And so part of what we do within the Christian tradition is become people who take responsibility for their own lives, being accountable for their actions and for their behavior, and then building networks of support. Mentoring is simply a new government agency term for discipleship. One of the reasons it's hard to recruit mentors is that very few churches disciple anymore, and so we have to step outside the church, where the head of the church has said, 'Go and make disciples' and go to an agency and learn what we should be doing all the way along. But the good news with hope network, and the good news with with with your criminal justice chaplaincy, is that the principles of discipleship are what they use in order to train mentors, and so it's a matter of developing the witness that we're supporting.