Prison chaplains find prison visits even more urgent and rewarding in wake of pandemic – Episcopal News Service

[Diocese of Los Angeles] For Prism staff and volunteers, the need to be companions and share communion with those in local jails and detention centers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has never been as urgent or as rewarding.

“People are intimidated by the issue of incarceration, but that’s not what we’re doing,” says Ann Noble, program coordinator for Prism, the Department of Restorative Justice for the Diocese of Los Angeles. Often, she says, “it’s just one human being talking to another human being and sharing a story. So that’s the biggest problem, and yet it’s not a big problem. I feel like it takes so much and all it takes is the greatest gift you have, which is your presence, and anyone can give that.

When visiting people confined to the Twin Towers, Men’s Central Jail and Century Regional Detention Center in Lynwood can seem scary, “an encounter can be sitting one-on-one with a person,” he said. she declared. “It can also be participating in a small service, a mass, just a small group of people in a circle.

“We don’t preach to them, we share. So it feels a lot more communal. We don’t stand on a podium to talk to them, we sit with them. With the Eucharist, she says, “there is an opportunity to share bread, an opportunity to anoint with oil, an opportunity to sit down and discuss.”

Continued COVID restrictions have limited Sunday gatherings to around 10 people, and “that’s really reducing our numbers,” according to Prism director Sharon Crandall. But as soon as the prisons reopened to visits, Prism was back, she said, because “it’s about the people we serve.”

Prism recently moved its base of operations to All Saints Church in Pasadena, a move the Reverend Mike Kinman called a “natural partnership.”

“One of the first things I did when I got here, before I officially became rector in October 2016, I went to a Prism fundraiser and learned about the ministry,” he said. declared. “Literally the next day I called [the Rev.] Dennis Gibbs and said, this is something I feel I have to do, especially as a congregation that skews the wealthiest and most privileged.

Since then, former directors of Prism Gibbs and Reverend Greta Ronnigen, co-founders of the Community of Divine Love, have moved their monastery to the San Luis Obispo area. After their departure, Noble and Crandall, who were long-time volunteers, took on leadership roles.

“If we really want to be God’s beloved community, we need to be actively involved in the places where some of the less privileged members of our society are,” Kinman said. “And not in terms of ‘we have to go help them,’ but because that’s where Jesus is.

“I hope it’s a ministry that draws our congregation more and more to those places where Jesus lives,” he added. “It’s also a ministry of the Diocese of Los Angeles and any way All Saints Church can reach out and help the mission and ministry of the diocese, it’s something we need to do, because we’re all in the same boat.”

Crandall said having a home base was important, both logistically and spiritually. “When we do a church service and we talk about community and we share the bread that was consecrated that morning in church, it means something to those we visit. I think we underestimate the power of this type of connection for incarcerated people.

For example, “a man named George, who was baptized in prison, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. We baptized him in prison. He just lights up when he shows people that baptism certificate and tells people he’s a church member.

“It’s important for someone like George, who knows he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison, to feel connected to a larger spiritual community.”

Crandall added: “Now, without the monastery, we need this support. It’s not necessarily an easy job to do. When I go to the prisons I am alone most of the time during the week and it is nice to feel that you have this supportive community behind you.

Episcopal Ministry Elevates LGBTQ+ Inmates

All Saints parishioner and Prism volunteer Tim Hartley says his experience in prisons helped him make his decision to seek ordination.

“It’s an amazing and fulfilling ministry,” Hartley said. “People coming to the service seemed moved, and I was changed by it.”

For many incarcerated people, especially the LGBTQ+ community, Prism brings “really good news, because there are a lot of organizations that will go as chaplains to prisons to convert people to their faith or their faith. particular faith, with the idea of ​​saving souls,” he said.

“Prism is one of the few organizations to send chaplains to the LGBTQ floor of the Twin Towers.”

He recalls a county-run training session for volunteers, where potential chaplains were hesitant to call inmates by their preferred pronouns, especially if those pronouns “may differ from their appearance or the prison they are in. One even asked if they could just call them by their inmate number.

“All this to say that the work that Prism does truly brings the good news that we are meant to bring as Christians.”

Prism volunteer Jonathan Stoner, 40, who is also a City of Hope chaplain, agreed, saying he jumped at the chance to return to prisons once COVID restrictions were lifted.

“How cool to be part of a ministry to the least of them that even other churches don’t want to do. Those experiences, doing services with LGBTQ+ people in prisons, were really meaningful.

“People coming to services are so hungry, so open, so involved and serious. They are engaged in reading. They ask great questions and bring their own knowledge of Scripture and their own experiences into the conversations. »

Social justice and the ministry of Prism are “part of the DNA of All Saints,” added Stoner. With Crandall and Noble as leaders, and with Mike Kinman leading All Saints, “Prism is going to be championed and hopefully we can get more people involved and even expand to other prisons and other prison systems,” he said.

“We can continue to reimagine what this ministry might look like and what the Spirit might move us in this pandemic season.

Serving those in prison “feels like a sacred obligation, a calling”, he said. “It reminds me that each of us has our dignity as human beings. Everyone has their value as a child of God, no matter what we have done or will do. We are all worthy of love and deserve a second chance, a third, a fifth chance.

“There’s this feeling that this is where I need to be on Sundays, with the people Jesus would hang out with.”