Serving Christ While Serving Time

Louisiana’s Angola Prison—known as “The Farm”—is the largest maximum-security prison in America. All of the prisoners are murderers, rapists, armed robbers, or habitual felons. The average sentence is 88 years, with 3,200 people in one place serving life sentences; ninety percent of the inmates will die behind those bars.

Yet in what should be one of the most hopeless places in the country, something remarkable is occurring :

For those who know prison culture from the inside, this place is astonishing. On a campus of 18,000 acres, which is mainly farm land, the prisoners raise virtually all their food and eat three meals for a total cost of $1.45 each. The fish and crawdads that we ate were from “the Farm.”

There is a local extension of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the prison and about 140 prisoners are enrolled. There are six churches in the prison and they train their own pastors. They send trained “missionaries” to other prisons to plant churches. They do this without using any tax money . . . .

Violence in the prison is rare. Courtesy and respect is pronounced. The ministry team of women who were visiting at the same time we were said they were treated with more respect from prisoners here, than in many places on the “outside.” Public profanity is not allowed.

The 42-inch church bell hangs high over the chapel in a prisoner-built tower. They rescued the bell from storage where it had been put after falling and killing a man. Some of the prisoners say: The bell killed a man and we killed a man, but now the bell and we serve the Lord Jesus.