MONEY

Maintaining relationship & removing barriers.

Money is a force, a power.

It can hurt. It can sabotage relationships, enable addiction, deter honesty, and re-enforce the power imbalances that we want to undo between us.

It can also help. It can pay off debt, remove massive barriers, purchase communication possibilities, provide needed materials, and wrap a vulnerable life with tangible favor.

Money can degrade the relationships we are building. Money can also dignify, when used carefully in ways we’ll outline this month.

RELATIONSHIP OVER RESOURCES

Here are the two principles in which we want to frame all money considerations in your relationship with your releasing friend:

1. One Parish One Prisoner’s focus is always RELATIONSHIP, not resources.

   Say it: relationship, relationship, relationship.

2. What resources we do spend are for REMOVING BARRIERS to relationship and to full reentry.

   Including postage, collect calls, and court fines upon release, the lists below will guide your team.

We are communicating this to our currently-incarcerated participants, and we were upfront in the application: this is about relationship, not resources.

This takes away temptation for them when applying to One Parish One Prisoner. And this adjusts our methods, if we are used to offering money instead of time, trust, curiosity, and real relationship.

YOUR TIME IS THE GIFT

To keep the focus on this deeper relationship that reveals and heals, while they are still incarcerated, we do NOT use money for these purposes:

• money on their books/accounts for commissary, food, clothing, music/media

• financial help to family or friends on the outside that they ask for, or initiate (It’s quite different when you, as a team, identify a need in a growing relationship with their loved ones on the outside and want to offer help or a gift they did not ask for. Still, wait a few months before introducing this money/resource power dynamic to the relationship.)

Why?

Every friend I have in prison tells me that folks inside are all looking for people who can help them meet these material desires. These aren’t bad desires. But the only way to ensure our relationships are real, to not incentivize telling us what we want to hear, is to have no financial gain in this relationship.

RESoURCES CAN REMOVE BARRIERS

However, the following are good uses of money: to remove barriers to relationship while incarcerated:

• small, $5 money orders sent to their “postage” account for stamped envelopes to write letters with you as a team (you can’t mail them stamps)

• JPay, attach return/reply email “stamps” so they can reply at no cost, or even transfer stamps (no more than 5 at a time, just to write the Parish Team)

• money on your own phone’s Advance Pay account, so they can call you at no cost

  (If, after a few months they naturally start sharing about desired contact with their children or aging mother, and have made contact, but the family on the outside lacks phone funds, try putting some money on their Inmate PIN Account to call family. This requires trust. But even better would be to get to know their family and add funds to the family member’s Advance Phone account. See the logic?)

• costs of gas and time to visit them in often-distant facilities (plus some reasonable snacks and a paid visitation room photo together)

• purchasing a new book online that’s connected to something you are discussing together or reading together as a team, and having it shipped directly to them in prison

These costs are relatively small. You can decide as a team if you want to use your own money for small costs or use part of the church’s ministry or mission budget for this.

VIDEO: MONEY IN PRISONS

So while our friends are still in prison, we put the focus on RELATIONSHIP.

The money you might want to share—start saving it for the REENTRY COSTS they will face upon release.

There are a million societal restrictions designed to keep them underground—locked out of housing, licensing, employment, with legal debt and fees—if not for your help. Jesus called Lazarus’ local community to roll the stones away.

These barriers too often roll with a debit card.

And so the second half of this Money module is helping your team plan to gather these resurrection resources over the next year:

“ROLL AWAY THE STONE” FUND

While we avoid the small money exchanges this month, we want to start planning for the larger fundraising component of One Parish One Prisoner.

Many of the “stones”—system barriers to entering the land of the living—can simply be rolled away with a debit card. Taking holds off driver’s licenses, small court payments, paying the deposit for a transitional home’s first 1 or 2 months of rent.

Those leaving incarceration often don’t have money to do this. So they stay in prison longer. Or they stay with old friends, drive without a license, and live the underground existence. They continue to live as if they’re alive and out in the open. They are not.

The wealthy don’t stay stuck in the underground. (Mass Incarceration 101.)

Good news: that’s why we’re here. Jesus calls a community to move these barriers, not expecting Lazarus to roll the stone away by himself. (That’s an American value, not a biblical one.)

A whole church can easily round up $2,500 (a modest target we suggest) over the course of this year, to have ready for your releasing friend’s first months out of prison. This is your “Roll Away the Stone" Fund.

Don’t worry, we have an entire “Welcome Home Event” module ahead that will help your team put together a fun event to share what you’re learning with your congregation, introduce your releasing friend (via photo and reading a letter from him/her), and invite the congregation to all pitch in to roll away these stones facing most every releasing prisoner:

Here’s our list of the most common the financial barriers to reentry:

Driver’s License

• Knowledge Test ~$40

• Driving Test ~$40

• DOL (Re)Issuing Fee ~$180

Opening Payments in Court Debt Plans, to Remove Holds on License

• Average two different courts, ~$25 each court, for 2-3 months to get them started (to take holds off their licenses)= ~$150

Auto Insurance

• Often folks with bad driving records are legally required to get the more-expensive SR-22 high-risk insurance. This can be ~$300 per quarter, to start off their legal driving until their eventual employment and income (and budgeting, with your help!) kicks in. Be patient.

First Months’ Rent

• Hopefully your releasing friend and you have found some kind of low-rent program, transitional house, recovery home, or situation. Rent can be $500-600/mo. Save for two months’ help as they work their early reentry. This is decisive. $1,000-1,200.

Remember, we always suggest accompanying our friends through this gauntlet of offices, instead of handing hot cash to our friend. Better to bring a church debit card to swipe at those intimidating desks, as a talisman of forgiveness—erasing the barriers and burdens of sin and death.

THE ART OF STORYTELLING

Some congregations may prefer to begin to build this Fund out of their church budget. That’s a good start, if you want.

It’s better to use this fundraising as an opportunity to tell more stories with your congregation.

Because it’s about relationships before resources, right? Your congregation will happily—in time, and even overwhelmingly—give towards this Fund . . . when they have been hearing about this person, your releasing friend. When they see there’s a relationship of some sort being built.

This is the month to brainstorm for how to share this journey more regularly with your congregation. This is a core opportunity to connect this work to the larger body.

Starting now, you can:

• show the Underground Ministries video during a mission moment in your worship services. Or a clip of a film about mass incarceration we have in our modules

• with permission, read a portion of his/her letter from prison

• with permission, share his/her picture

• offer spot testimonies of your different team members’ experience getting to know your friend and what you’re all learning

• preach the story of Lazarus—how resurrection today involves Jesus communities called to roll these obstacles away

• pray for your friend

“WELCOME HOME EVENT” PREVIEW

By the time you have your Welcome Home Event, a month or two before your release date, (as we’ll help you in the upcoming module), your congregation will feel more connected to this journey and what your friend is up against.

That’s when you’ll get to invite the church to gather RESOURCES in these ways:

• Share the list of financial obstacles (above)

• Invite congregants to give generously to the Roll Away the Stone Fund and share in this work as a body, to roll away the hefty barriers blocking full resurrection. It’s not cash handed over. It’s a fund for your church to spend on  early rent support, fines and fees blocking early reentry.

• Pass around a list of needed supplies for a Welcome Home Basket. You’ll see a list of suggestions from us soon, but feel free to start brainstorming now—what would you need if you were starting from scratch?

• Share your ideas, needs, or opportunities for connection that have come up. One church just told us their youth group made “candles for Phillip” they sold as a fundraiser, telling their friends and teachers and coaches about a community member coming home and the prayers they’ll need!

ACTION STEPS THIS WEEK

• ASK YOUR RELEASING FRIEND (in letter or call or visit): “Has money ever warped a relationship in your life?” Answer the same question yourself.

• ALSO ASK: “What financial obstacle in your upcoming reentry are you most nervous about? Is housing a big one?”

• BEGIN BRAINSTORMING: Before your team meeting, imagine how your team can build this very important Welcome Home Event with your congregation a few months from now. What would it look like?

FOR DISCUSSION

• Go back to the quote by Jean Vanier above. Do you think it’s harder to offer that kind of relationship with your incarcerated friend—with intention, time, attention—than putting some money on his or her account?

• Has your person asked for financial favors? Do the two Money “Rules” at the top here (Relationship Over Resources and Funds Only to Remove Barriers) make it easier to remind each other of the role of money in this endeavor?

• Take a minute to think through getting the Welcome Home Event on the calendar, considering your releasing friend’s estimated release date.