Nebraska Synod ELCA

Followers of Christ is the prison ministry of your Nebraska Synod of the ELCA. It is the hands, feet, voice, and heart of Jesus, making the presence and love of God known and nurturing loving community in the Body of Christ, in Nebraska Department of Correctional Services facilities.  Love changes even a stony heart, freeing people to live the life God made them for.

Recently one of our participants was really angry because he had been written up for doing things that are normal on the outside and for things that were beyond his control, and then those write-ups were held against him.  He lives in a housing unit that is known both for having mostly inmates who are looking for trouble, and for having staff that assumes that everyone there is like that. It feels to him like a no-win situation.  Two other participants had lived in that same housing unit, but were out now. They had been put in that housing unit because of their behavior and history, but now they are changed people. It took them both a long time and a lot of patience to convince people of that, but eventually they were able.  Pastor Rob often talks about Jesus as the God who walks with us in our brokenness, and suffers from it the same as we do, and God using our painful experiences, even evil, for good. But there was no substitute for those two other participants, BEING the Body of Christ, walking with the third, letting him know that they are there for him and that he will get through this.

NDCS facilities are running at 120% of operational capacity in total, some better, some worse.  The average inmate returns to an outside community after 2-3 years.  The average 3-year recidivism rate for Nebraska has been about 30% over the last 10 years.  People go back to prison because they re-endanger people in their communities.

NDCS reached a record-high number of staff vacancies in March 2021, with approximately 391 unfilled positions, according to the Department of Administrative Services.  By June, that figure had reached 527 total vacancies, out of approximately 2,300 total positions. At this time, Nebraska’s three largest prison complexes are under staffing emergencies. Staff continue to express concern for their safety, family lives, and mental and physical health as a result of significant overtime and stressful working conditions.

Recidivism, Through Transformation

There are a lot of contributing factors to overcrowding, some of which need legislative or judicial solutions, but one of which we can influence:  recidivism, through transformation.  There are many tools to reduce recidivism, such as job skills and education, but if transformation does not include love (of both myself and others) the chances of a repeated cycle of violence and incarceration are still high.  There are a lot of contributing factors to understaffing, including recruitment, but especially retaining trained staff.  There are surely lots of factors contributing to staff turnover, but at least one significant one has to be the environment inside prisons.

The state is severely limited in its ability to teach people to love.  Jesus reveals God to be love for all people, even people the world does not love, shining light in dark places, speaking life into death. This Good News inspires faith, which is humility, hope, trust, and courage, freeing people to live a new life of love and peace, the life God made us for in the first place, because we are no longer trapped by fear, thinking we have to take care of ourselves (over against our neighbors) because no one else is going to.

Jesus is God meeting us where we are, as one of us, experiencing our brokenness with us, but not leaving us there.  The Body of Christ is the community of Jesus’ disciples, learning who God in Jesus really is, nurturing a relationship with Jesus in community, and learning to say/do/be what Jesus says/does/is wherever they are – including prison!

This gives life in a broken world meaning and purpose, not just “even” in dark, lonely, and dangerous places, but especially there!  Followers of Christ seeks transformation in inmates, both reducing recidivism and improving the environment inside, by cultivating loving community and a sense of purpose.  Supporting the Nebraska Synod is supporting change in incarcerated people so they can escape the incarceration cycle, a change that comes from being loved by God through the Body of Christ and growing into the Body of Christ.