APPROACHING THE TOMBS
YOUR NEXT STEPS TO GET STARTED
We’re so glad you—and your congregation—have gotten to this page. You’re already taking a step closer to the realities of our brothers and sisters in prison, hoping there’s a community in their hometown who will know and welcome them.
Even in your process of discernment, your community is already “approaching the tombs.”
Jesus called a local community to come closer to the tombs where his friend Lazarus was coming alive inside. They heard the call to help roll away the stone, help unbind Lazarus as he emerged, and so participate in local resurrection work.
Here’s everything you’ll need to move forward with us.
These five essential steps of preparation may not happen in this exact order, but they are all part of your start-up process, starting now:
I. LEADERSHIP Blessing
We don’t equip a few volunteers from the back. We get the entire congregation involved.
That starts with getting leadership fully behind the journey.
The first step is sharing the basic vision. One Parish One Prisoner is a two-year journey for your congregation answering the call to be a resurrection community: an incarcerated brother or sister will be returning to your neighborhood soon. They applied to this program, asking for new community and new life.
A local church community, gathered in the name of forgiveness and resurrection, has everything a releasing person might need to rebuild a new life (trusting friendship and community, rides to appointments, job connections, funds to pay off stranglehold fines and get a driver’s license, hope). Just as importantly, this relationship would transform every church.
This is an opportunity to disciple an entire congregation towards Christ’s ongoing work of resurrection in an age of mass incarceration in America.
It is essential that this journey begins with your church leadership’s full blessing, where they can say:
YES, this will be a missional priority for our church for 2+ years.
We’re excited to involve study groups, sermons, youth, and missional energies to this work. We want to know and love an incarcerated friend through their release—and we want to grow, ourselves, through the journey.
TUITION
One Parish One Prisoner is funded in part by participating churches’ TUITION, operating on a sliding scale. This is a one-time cost for your church’s two years of curriculum, pairing, training, program support and guidance—on a sliding scale, according to size of congregation/parish.
12 - 50 congregants / 6 - 10 families: $250
50 - 300 congregants / 10 - 75 families: $1,000
300 - 750 congregants / 75 - 250 families: $3,000
750+ congregants / 250+ families: $5,000
When church leadership says YES to this journey, commitment, and cost, you can mail a check to us or click the button below:
Underground Ministries
PO Box 174
Mount Vernon, WA 98273
II. INVITING THE CONGREGATION
Get the entire congregation excited.
Share the One Parish One Prisoner video with your congregation during the mission or announcements portion of your service. Announce that this is a missional opportunity you are exploring.
You can also invite our founder Chris Hoke and other Underground Ministries team members to guest preach and share more of this work with your congregation, answering more questions during the coffee hour (in person or remotely).
Ask folks for feedback after the service, and the week that follows. Listen not just for excitements and fears, but for what the Spirit might be bringing to the surface already:
stories of unhealed wounds
relationships that already exist with incarcerated loved ones
fear-based, punitive mindsets not aligned with Christ’s redeeming love for sinners and outcasts
members who’ve volunteered in a prison or had a nephew locked away but never mentioned it before
Share widely in your church communications, newsletters, emails. Link to our homepage: oneparishoneprisoner.org . Use our logos. We see many congregations’ faith and interest surge during this season: a sense of purpose for the church in this age!
Often, just the invitation opens and unlocks parts of your congregation.
The work has already begun.
III. RECRUITING YOUR TEAM
The next—and probably most important—step is prayerfully recruiting your Team: 7 members of your wider church community (including the Pastor role) to enter this two-year journey of relationship and mutual transformation with one community member releasing from prison.
Many pastors tell us this was a surprisingly energizing experience: talking with a variety of men and women in their congregation about a very specific opportunity for discipleship and mission. It opens rich conversations about their stories, and provides an opportunity for pastors to name their gifts and bigger yearnings within very personal conversations. You as the pastor will be part of the team, so the invitation is strong.
WHO TO RECRUIT
We are not looking for the experts and veteran volunteers who are already very engaged at your church. We aren’t looking for expertise nor experience. (We actually recommend avoiding correctional professionals or veteran prison ministry participants.) Rather, this works best with folks who want to grow, learn, be challenged, become more involved in their faith and in their community.
Don’t just wait for volunteers to self-select. Get a sheet of paper and prayerfully brainstorm folks in your church to personally invite into this work.
Reach out to the retiree with wisdom and time to write letters, to offer rides. The restless college student asking big questions about God and society, possibly on their way out of the church. This is for them. The mother raising two kids and itching for meaningful conversation with someone else facing confinement! The hurting, the broken, the humbled, shy folks and eager alike.
If you have a formerly-incarcerated member of your community (regular attendee or not), invite them to join the team! This is an opportunity to honor their lived experience, learn from them.
The more variety, the better: young, old, faithful, skeptical, church veterans, new visitors.
This is an opportunity for discipleship. Who do you want to call into this journey with you?
Keep in mind, the pastor will not be the one driving the team. We’ve split that up into two roles that your team will elect at the Kickoff Orientation together:
the CONVENER will send meeting reminders and handle distribution of resources
the FACILITATOR will keep the monthly team meetings on track and handle some details
the BARD coordinates regular updates to your congregation
the PASTOR gets to focus on the hearts of the team, enjoying this incredible opportunity for healing, spiritual formation and helping the wider congregation enter this gospel journey
We make it easy on you. We’ll build a page for your church specifically, to orient and register team members.
Just send that link in an email to each person, invite them check it out and consider joining you on this journey. Enjoy assuring them that, yes, you thought of them specifically for this work.
While you are assembling your crew of 7 people, getting everybody prepared, committed, done their Pre-Kickoff Homework and registered, we will be on the lookout for…
IV. pairing you with an incarcerated applicant
This is much of the hidden work of Underground Ministries: receiving applications from men and women in various prisons, calling their prison classification staff and personal references, verifying dates and timelines, highlighting certain details, and taking time to honor the vulnerability and courage of our incarcerated brothers and sisters applying to be the Prisoner of One Parish One Prisoner.
Sometimes we already have someone returning to your town, and we are eager to pair you and schedule the Kickoff Orientation immediately (see fifth step below)!
But sometimes a church is ready . . . and we don’t yet have an applicant who is releasing into your neck of the woods (often the case in less populated regions).
This is not a problem, but a rich opportunity for two pairing paths:
LAZARUS IN YOUR OWN COMMUNITY?
Mass incarceration affects more of our communities than we want to admit.
It’s very possible that several members of your congregation already know someone who’s locked up. They just don’t advertise it. The hurt is there in the shadows, in the pews, in the silence.
In fact, after one parish proudly announced they would begin this One Parish One Prisoner journey, played the videos, shared the website, a woman wrote to the priest: essentially,
“My own son came home from prison just last year and no one here would help him. He wanted to change, and come to church! But because of his charges, he got the runaround, they quoted policy, and he despaired of ever finding welcome or support in his new life.”
We recommend doing a “Lazarus Inventory” early on as you share with your congregation. From up front on a Sunday, say (and get ready to take notes):
“Raise your hand if you have an idea of what it’s like to be incarcerated, to be removed from your family and community, and then released from prison.
“Now raise your hand if you know someone in prison.
“Keep your hand raised if they are coming home to this area within the next few years.
“Do you think they’d want something like this?”
“Raise your hand if our congregation is a safe place, ready to gradually unpack our stories of trauma, addiction, hatred, violence, racism, unhealthy coping mechanisms
with Christ’s example of unconditional love and healing.”
If hands are still raised, wonderful.
We are excited to help you talk to that family, get an application to the incarcerated loved one, and practice resurrection within your own parish!
OR GET A JUMPSTART ON YOUR TEAM’S LEARNING JOURNEY
If you’ve done the Lazarus Inventory and there’s not an organic pairing from within your own parish, no problem.
We can schedule your team’s Kickoff Orientation, get you started on your monthly team meetings and learning modules. Within a few months, we’ll be thrilled to introduce you to your releasing friend, and your letters will begin. It’s actually best this route, as your team has a chance to practice the rhythms of learning and meeting as a tight team before turning your full attention to your first letters with a new friend, still in prison.
OR READ AS YOU WAIT
A few churches have preferred to use this waiting time to invite their team and some small groups to prepare by reading one of two books as a team—or even as a church-wide common reading: either WANTED by our founding director, Chris Hoke, or HALFWAY HOME by Reuben Jonathan Miller.
Consider Underground Coffee for church use (post-COVID, probably) and congregants subscribing for home sipping. Coffee’s always been the church’s informal sacrament for relationship-building. Read, sip, pray.
Once your Parish Team is assembled and we have an applicant with the corresponding release date and location, we will schedule your . . .
V. KICKOFF ORIENTATION
We will schedule this with your team, which will be easy because everyone has registered and completed the Pre-Kickoff Homework. We’ll find a good time to gather together for two and a half hours—whether we get together on Zoom or we come to your church.
When the team is all registered, we will mail Starter Kits to every team member, get you equipped, make introductions, and send you off on your journey together.
APPROACHING THE TOMBS
REVIEW THE STEPS:
Leadership Blessing / Tuition
Congregational Invitation
Recruiting Your Team
Pairing With A Releasing Applicant
Kickoff Orientaion
Many congregations tell us even this discernment process was like a shot in the arm, waking up the church’s passions and interest in ministry.
We are excited for you. We’re here to help every step of the way. We’ll be in touch.
Don’t hesitate to email us (alvin@undergroundministries.org ) with any questions along the way.
We’re thrilled you’ve come this far. And we’re here to help you at every step towards the tombs of your community, where Jesus is waiting.
