On a hot July morning, we trudged across a blank courtyard and up unadorned cement steps to a stark upstairs room. Some thirty of us outsiders found seats in clumps, waiting, until eighteen men in blue streamed into the room, our hosts, residents there at the men’s state prison in Chillicothe, Ohio. They circulated among us as we stood to greet them, with handshakes and some (initially) tentative hugs. So began three days of truth-telling and vision-casting, wreathed by razor wire.
What was the truth that we heard again and again, from these incarcerated men? The church has failed us.
A man I’ll call Bing described the city neighborhood he had known. “There was a big church on the corner. People would come there and look over at me like I was the scum of the earth.” Not one of them ever had anything to say. They’d just go quickly and silently on inside that church building. Next to the church was a parsonage, but the pastor didn’t live there. “He rented it out to a guy who sold drugs. He knew that’s what was going on there. He didn’t care.”
Another man whom I’ll call Ray had been, before his incarceration, a long-time member of a church. Looking back, he doesn’t remember ever hearing Matthew 25 and the idea of serving the least of these. Church was “just a dog and pony show,” Ray said. “Grease the palm; pay the tithe.” When he got locked up, “not one member of the church came to see about me.” No one has made contact in the seven years he’s been in prison.
Ray told his truth, face downcast. Then he looked around and issued the call that reverberated within those aging concrete walls, and around our heads and hearts: “Show me and the guys here that the church is for real.”
He raised a crucial question. Is the church for real?
Hearing these men’s stories made me think about the church I have known and loved. I grew up in my grandparents’ church, in the town their grandparents had helped to settle. I never doubted the watchful eye and positive regard of that loving community. It’s no wonder church has always been family to me. It’s no wonder I could so freely enter into the life of other churches in different times and places across my years, without a shred of fear that I would be unwelcome.
It isn’t this way for the women I meet at the Iowa prison where I serve as pastor. Some of them have found supportive community through their churches. Most have not. When I surveyed dozens of them about serious life circumstances like homelessness, rape, addiction, mental illness, and deaths in the family, they reported experiencing these challenges with striking frequency. It is rare, though, for them to have confided in any church leader or church friend about those circumstances. “It was made very clear to me that I made the choice to use,” said M. “There wasn’t a place for me in the church.” Women who confide in a pastor or faith leader about the abuse they’re experiencing at home likely meet a brick wall of disbelief, inaction or platitudes about submission. A young woman looking forward to joining in the recovery program at her grandmother’s church heard these words from Grandma: “You can come; I hope you will. But you mustn’t mention your addiction, or talk about being locked up.”
I meet a lot of women in Mitchellville who are asking, in one way or another, “Is the church real?”
That bunch of us in Chillicothe, Ohio last summer: we were a bunch of church people. We had been invited by the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church to join in this gathering. We came from a half-dozen states and with a wide range of experiences in prison ministries. It was hard to hear that the church, so dear to so many of us, had so failed these men who became, over the course of three days together, our “brothers in blue.”
At one point we were invited to sit in silence and entertain a vision to which God was leading us in these conversations. When we gathered to share, I described seeing a vital stream of people, talking and laughing, working and sharing, moving in and out of a church whose doors and walls were thrown wide open. A colleague from Iowa shared the vision that had come to him: he had walked up to the women’s prison in Mitchellville, empty now and overgrown, no longer needed. He heard a child ask what this place was, and the answer came, “This used to be a place where we locked people up.”
My favorite vision, though, surfaced later in our time together. And it’s not for the faint of heart. But I share it here because it says something of the earnestness of the men we met in Chillicothe, and of their sincere hope for the church, and for their own potential. Read on, if you dare:
One of the men was speaking of the need for mentoring men like him, within the church. Another, whom I’ll call Clint, picked up this theme and described the “payoff” that the church would receive. “Remember Bing,” he said, “how he’d stand on the street across from that big church on the corner? You might want to say something to him, but you don’t know what to say. One of us who’s been mentored? We’d know what to say. And we’d bring those people in.” Clint went on: “Once you’ve got a strong foundation in your church, with some sex offenders and some drug addicts and some murderers, then we can begin to have those real conversations in your churches. You give us some space, and once we get on our feet, we can give back.”
I can imagine that some of you, reading this, are startled—horrified, even—by this vision. Sex offenders and drug addicts and murderers? In my church? It’s a vision that highlights the need for good boundaries and excellent communication and careful community-building. But it’s a vision that also demands our prayerful attention. What couldn’t the church do, thrown open in that way? I’m pretty certain Jesus would be in that place, with those people, having those real conversations. Will we?
I want to be part of a church that real.
If you’re intrigued by this conversation and would like to join in, check out the conference we’re hosting for this purpose in Ankeny, Iowa on October 16-17, 2015. It’s called Right Next Door: Beyond the Walls of Church and Neighbor. That experience in Chillicothe helped give birth to this conference. You can learn more and register at rightnextdoor2015.org.
Why would this scare the people in the “church” to have murderers druggies pedifiles and more. WE ALL have a PAST – before we became Christ followers. Some of us did things in the past that we are still hiding from our church friends, even things that are still going on today in the lives of the church members. Do you really know who you are sitting next to at church? It might surprise you!
I admit most of the church people put on that “Sunday Face” and no one will ever know what’s behind those smiling eyes and shiney smiles. The leaders in the churches need to be teaching deliverance. Without real deliverance being taught in the church today, there is going to be a continual struggle for “the Church” (the people that sit in the pews) to be healed and accept the people that come out of incarceration. How can you fully minister to others if you have not been healed and delivered yourself. That’s why the guys and ladies on the “inside” ask those questions.
When I read this I thought about our Safe Sanctuaries policy for my church which states that anyone on the sex offender list can only be in the church if he/she is in the constant company of a church member. Don’t know what the answer is, but that thought struck me–right between the eyes. I know we have (have had) some drug addicts in the church–but they were watched (!); not sure about murderers, but have had some members who have been in prison. This is certainly something to think about…and work on. I can see that most churches would not be very welcoming to lots of people. Maybe someday I’ll be in a church that is “for real.”