Creative Jail Time

 

Jeff Freeman has been in jail for ten years, but he still goes home every night. He is a chaplain for Hennepin County in Minnesota, serving in the correctional facility in Plymouth.

Besides conducting Sunday services, Jeff ministers throughout the week. He teaches Trauma Healing classes as well as Bible studies in both the men’s and women’s sides of the facility. He serves under the auspices of the Good News Jail and Prison Ministry as well as his home church, Parker’s Lake Baptist.

Recently Jeff shared some of his experiences with the Golden Agers at Fourth Baptist Church. During the Trauma class the residents were asked to write their own laments based on Psalm 13. One of them wrote this lament to God. “How am I supposed to complain to you, when I am so obviously the problem? Will my pain ever go away? Would you so willingly take it from me when I know I deserve it? I wish I wasn’t such a failure. I wish you could change that for me.”

Those are some of the very reasons Jeff goes to jail every day. He is there to provide to residents the hope that God can indeed change them. “The residents I minister to are your neighbors and they will, within a year, be released back into our neighborhoods,” says Jeff. “Please pray for your neighbors.”

As you pray for Jeff, please remember something else he shared. “Believe it or not, correctional facilities can be boring places but when they’re not, they’re not, and it’s never a safe place, no matter how comfortable you might feel.”