America’s prisoners live in a culture that is significantly different from the culture outside prison.
Culture can be understood as “the characteristics by which people order their lives, interpret the world around them, evaluate behavior, and the things that it considers important.” For example, some value being on time, but other cultures are event-oriented.
The culture in prison is significantly different from the culture outside of prison, and in some ways is similar to a Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian culture. For example, outside culture is based on guilt/innocence, evaluating behavior in terms of right and wrong or whether someone is innocent or guilty. However, prison is based on shame/honor, which evaluates people and behaviors in terms of whether their words or actions bring honor or shame to an individual (or the group to which they belong). In prison, this is often talked about in terms of respect and disrespect. Disrespect causes shame, and in order to regain respect, a prisoner is culturally required to retaliate against the person who disrespected them.
Also, outside culture is egalitarian and interdependent, called low-power distance. Prison culture is based on high-power distance, where there is a clear hierarchy, especially in gangs. Prisoners are expected to follow orders without questioning people in power. There's a high degree of respect for older people in the prison culture, whereas outside culture values youth over age.
Prison culture is a collectivist culture, i.e. fitting in with a group, whether a gang or an ethnic group. Also, prisoners represent a group rather than themselves as individuals. For example, in prison, conversion is sometimes described as a change in “who the prisoner represents.” Conversely, outside culture tends to be individualistic. Also, prisoners are forced to live around one another 24 hours a day, seven days a week, making it difficult to hide one’s behaviors from the group. But on the outside, it is easy to carry on a pretense when people see each other at church only once or twice a week for a few minutes at a time.
The indigenous prison Church is equipped to evangelize and disciple in their prison context.
The process of communicating God’s truth in a culture is called “contextualization.” Jesus contextualized for Jewish people in the first century, and Paul contextualized for the Gentiles. Missionaries have contextualized the Gospel in unreached cultures until there local believers could lead the church because people from the outside will not be as effective communicating the truths of scripture as those living inside the culture. Consequently, contextualization doesn't leave the missionary coming in from the outside to shape and steer the process when there are local Christians who are indigenous to that culture.
In like manner, indigenous leadership in prison culture should be encouraged to govern themselves, not governed from a distance by foreign churches outside the culture. The indigenous Church can also reproduce without dependence from outside churches because indigenous leaders are best positioned to effectively contextualize the gospel. So the best use of energy for incarceration ministry is to develop indigenous disciple-makers.
When indigenous leadership is equipped, it allows ministry to continue during times like COVID, when everything was locked down from the outside. Even though there were no programs and no chapels, the life of the Church continued because they had leaders who continued to disciple people. They developed their own discipleship program in their church. It was entirely their design and their initiative.
There will always be important ways for the Church-outside to empower the indigenous church.
Because of the physical limitations of incarceration, the indigenous prison Church has is unable to freely collaborate with indigenous leaders in other prisons. But the Church-outside can help build a nationwide indigenous prison movement by sharing ideas among other prison ministries, and also bringing new ideas in from the outside. In this way, prison ministers can be catalysts and facilitators rather than evangelists and disciplers.
Another important role for the Church-outside is to bring in leadership training to the prison. This can be in the form of seminaries like World Impact’s Capstone Curriculum or Prison Seminaries Foundation. These programs recognize the centrality of pre-existing prison-led churches with indigenous leaders but recognize that these leaders can benefit from additional training and resources (e.g. commentaries, books on theology, biblical studies, language tools).
The process of re-entry from inside to outside culture is difficult.
When prisoners are released, they experience what missiologists call “reentry shock.” This happens to people who spend a lot of time overseas, then return home expecting it to feel normal, and find it is not normal. It's a second culture shock that is experienced when a person who has become accustomed to a new culture has to readjust back to their old culture. Returning citizens experience this on top of all of the stress of finding a job, housing, and reconnecting with family and friends. It can take 12-18 months before this cultural transition is complete.
This is related to the idea in missions called “a third culture kid,” when missionaries take young children to another culture. When they come back to their original culture, it feels strange. And they never really fully become reincorporated in their own culture, so now they're half in one culture and half in another. They have their foot in both worlds and never really feel entirely at home in either one. This is how some prisoners feel when they return to society. Therefore, the church-outside can be trained to come alongside former prisoners to make this transition easier.
Another role for the outside church is to create a house church that is specifically designed to be comfortable for those coming out of prison culture. For some, it is easier to step into a community of welcoming people who can all talk about what it was like in prison. This kind of church also creates opportunities for people who were leaders in prison to step into service more quickly than might be the case in other traditional churches, such as teaching, music, or hospitality.
The indigenous Church in prison is a rich source for Kingdom workers.
God loves to work through the least of these, the weak, the marginalized, the despised, and rejected. And God is growing the Church inside, which is impacting the yards and also affecting family members. They are effectively leading Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and satanists to Christ.
For those who are released to the free world, once they are helped in their 12-18 month transition during cultural re-entry, they can be valuable church members, bringing skills and vitality that the church-outside is lacking. As more refugees and immigrants are coming to America’s cities, these formerly-incarcerated disciple-makers can help a local church minister to the diaspora.
Not only that, but many people in prison will get deported to another country to spread the Gospel as a missionary or church planter. Therefore, the outside-Church can play a great role to promote, catalyze, encourage and empower prisoners to do the work of the Great Commission in prison, on the outside, and around the world.