Why Mentors Matter (Visit www.pfm.org to learn more)

Why Mentors Matter
Volunteer Dan Pearson on Filling the Father Gap for Ex-Prisoners

Alyson Quinn




Our Current Issue Includes:•Accountability: Helping Others Live Godly Lives

•Why Mentors Matter
•Unmasking Our Real Selves
View This Isssue“On Mother’s Day, there are tears shed at the prison. Father’s Day passes quietly. Most of these guys haven’t had a dad,” explains Dan Pearson, a Prison Fellowship volunteer and a 70-year-old grandfather from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Citing the absence of strong male role models in many prisoners’ pasts, Dan emphasizes the importance that mentors can have for their futures, especially upon release.



“I don’t think you and I can understand the pull of the world on these guys when they get out,” says Dan, “They are like children—giddy.” But after the thrill of freedom come the challenges of reintegration. Ex-prisoners can easily drift back to the places, friends, and habits that led to their incarceration.






Dan and Sondra PearsonThat’s when a mentor can make all the difference. “The recidivism rate is much lower for those who are Christians and have mentors,” Dan insists. Studies have linked involved mentors to significantly reduced rates of return to prison.


Mentors become even more important as states cut corrections budgets. In Michigan, where Dan has led in-prison Bible studies and mentored prisoners since 1996, the state Department of Corrections has decreased its inmate population by 6,500 since 2007, partially by increasing its parole approval rate. As more ex-prisoners reenter neighborhoods, “the answer,” says Dan,“is more mentors.”





“Whoa, I Think I’m a Mentor”
Dan’s path to long-term prisoner mentoring began when he met Prison Fellowship Founder Chuck Colson at a book signing.



When he first encountered the challenge to become involved in prison ministry, “it was love at first sight,” Dan recalls. He entered Prison Fellowship’s Volunteer-in-Prison (VIP) training in the spring of 1996 and soon entered prison for the first time at Deerfield Correctional Facility (ITF), a now-closed minimum-security prison in Ionia, Michigan.



Dan volunteered at Deerfield for 12 ½ years, but only after time, as men continued to call and write to him after their release, did Dan wake up one morning and say to himself, “Whoa, I think I’m a mentor.”



Dan’s mentor role has only increased. He and Sondra, his wife of 48 years, pray for 40 men released from Deerfield. They maintain contact with half of them, monitoring their tenuous progress on the path to a new life.





The Road to Reentry
“I need to find a job,” Dan’s mentees often tell him when they’re about to “ride out.”



“No, you don’t,” Dan responds, “You need to find a good church.”



Dan, a deacon at Heritage Baptist Church in Kentwood, Michigan, tries to first steer ex-offenders toward a healthy Christian fellowship—one that will embrace them and fit their needs—as a foundational step toward successful reentry. Through the church, ex-inmates can usually find jobs and eventually advance their education and careers. “Deacon Dan,” as he’s sometimes known to his mentees, practices what he preaches, introducing ex-prisoners to the pastor at his own church. Some attend services there and have even found employers and new mentors within the congregation.



But growth comes slowly.



A parole officer may call to say that one of Dan’s mentees is on the run. Or the mentees themselves may call with perplexing, or even “goofy,” questions. Dan remembers one ex-prisoner who planned to make a living shining shoes at a shopping center, failing to realize that in the 12 years since his incarceration, shoe-shine boys had become a thing of the past. But if tempted to impatience, Dan reminds himself, “They are asking you for help because they don’t have a dad.”



While he may not have all the answers to their problems, Dan offers his mentees the same vital lifeline any volunteer can offer: a listening ear, encouragement, and his faithful prayers in their behalf.





“We All Need Jesus”
Dan helps “his guys” learn to live and stay on the outside, but the process teaches him as much as it teaches them.



“As a volunteer, I’ve learned patience, understanding, and the importance of keeping myself in the Word. We all need Jesus, prayer, and the Word every day. If any mentor doesn’t stay strong spiritually, he will lose his desire to mentor, and eventually he’ll lose his effectiveness. The prisoners look to their mentor because they see something in them that they desire for their own lives.





“Honey, I’m Your Daddy”
With all his experience, Dan continues to grow as a volunteer. “As long as I’m a volunteer, I’ll keep learning,” he says. Part of his instruction comes from ongoing training through Prison Fellowship.



In 2009 Dan attended a Prison Fellowship conference at Calvin College that helped volunteers connect with other ministries to holistically address the needs of prisoners and their families. There, Dan encountered Forgiven Ministry, Inc., for the first time. On December 4, 2009, Forgiven Ministry and Prison Fellowship volunteers—including Dan—partnered to hold a One Day with God Camp at Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Center in Muskegon, Michigan. The warden and the chaplain selected 20 inmates to invite their children and their caregivers to come and spend a day of structured, spiritually based relationship building and fun with their fathers in the prison gymnasium.



“You can imagine the emotions,” says Dan, recalling the scene. “Thirty kids in that gym going to play with their fathers. But one little five-year-old girl just stood there on the side, watching. The volunteers urged her to go and find her father. But she couldn’t. She had never seen him before. Finally, a prisoner got down on one knee in front of her and said, ‘Honey, I’m your daddy.’”



Scenes like these encourage Dan to continue as a mentor. He’s spurring redeemed ex-prisoners on to rebuild their lives as responsible parents and members of the community, replacing cycles of alienation and despair with connection and hope.

What to do with 520 hours?

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, I recently changed jobs. Along with that, my commute has decreased by 2 hours per day. Considered in the long view, that's 10 hours per work week, and 520 hours per year. That's 21 days of my life back! I think I feel younger. Any thoughts on how I should use my redeemed time?

~ AlyRose

She Speaks Writing Conference

http://www.shespeaksconference.com/index.htm

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She Speaks Writing Conference

"The prayer just goes out of you," says that woman in front of me, trying to explain her depletion.




The second day has almost ended. I am in the prayer room for Cebu. Andrey, the Field Office Director, is here, and so is Gary Haugen, and several dozen GPG participants. We are tired now, fighting hard to pray with the same intensity we had this morning. I pray with my eyes open, lest I doze off. I feel more than usual sumpathy for the disciples who, tasked to watch with Jesus in the garden, instead feel asleep.



Why is intercession such a fierce exertion? Perhaps because, though seated, we strain to the utmost the muscle of our faith in our desire to move Heaven. What glad work it is to labor along with those who have come far and ask no pay! How sweet a reward to know that whatever we ask in His name and according to His will, we must receive! May He grant us all wisdom to ask rightly.

For me, a four-year IJM staff member, the Global Prayer Gathering starts here: 5 o'clock on Friday night, shivering in the stiff breeze outside of the Sheraton Premiere. IJM staff from across North America, Europe and the developing world congregate in the sunken garden for a brief meeting. Dressed all alike in immaculate black suits, the IJM uniform, we are also united in some degree of exhaustion. Long, exacting hours of preparation for the GPG have brought us to this point: cold, tired, and standing on the brink of a weekend of yet more work.


But in defiance of the sobriety of our dress and the numbing tiredness of our bodies, the meeting is charged, surprisingly, with joy. Laughter ripples through the throng of us. We cheer, clap and smile at the leaders who lead us in the litany of final details. Why should such gladness infuse us today, when the hours of preparation have led only to this: a Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the job?

For one thing, the GPG is our family reunion. The staff, many of whom labor in distant countries or in lone-ranger outposts, come together again. Our community rejoices in the fulness of its numbers.
But there is another reason behind the lightness of our spirits.

The reason lies in the nature of the work that we undertake this weekend. Our work will be the labor of prayer.

Make no mistake. Prayer is work of the hardest kind. Starting tomorrow morning, during the prayer room rotations, we will expose ourselves to the depth and breadth of depravity worked against the poor, and in prayer we will saturate our own hearts with God's sorrow over injustice. This work will bend our bodies to the floor with the weight of sin and our own incapacity to circumvent suffering. This work will wring the tears from our eyes and sap our strength and sleep.
But it is also true that this weekend, we will remember the extent of our Father's power, the brightness of His glory and the prodigality of His love. In return for our tears, we will have His smiles, as we believe that He exists and rewards those who earnestly pursue him. In return for our exhaustion, we will unleash His omnipotence on behalf of the widow and the orphan. Though lowered to the floor, we will glimpse His exaltation amidst the pain and oppression we decry.

So why do we laugh on the eve of our hearts' breaking? We laugh in anticipation of this work, this scandalously unequal exchange of poverty for riches. For to us this weekend falls the work of remembrance, the work of joy - the unrivalled and holy work of prayer.

Easter from an Ancient

THE PASCHAL SERMON OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM




EARLY CHURCH FATHER 347AD – 407AD









If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast.



If any man be a wise servant, let him enter rejoicing into the joy of his Lord.



If any have labored long in fasting, let him now receive his recompense.



If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward.



If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast.



If any have arrived the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings, because he shall in no wise be deprived.



If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing.



If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him also be not alarmed at his tardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last even as the first; he gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has worked from the first hour.



And he shows mercy upon the last, and cares for the first; and to the one he gives, and upon the other he bestows gifts.



And he both accepts the deeds, and welcomes the intention, and honors the acts and praises the offering.



Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord, and receive your reward, both the first and likewise the second.



You rich and poor together, hold high festival. You sober and you heedless, honor the day.



Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast. The table is fully laden; feast sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away. Enjoy the feast of faith; receive all the riches of loving-kindness.



Let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.



Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shone forth from the grave.



Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free: he that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.



By descending into hell, he made hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of his flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, cried: “Hell was embittered when it encountered thee in the lower regions.”



It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked.



It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown.



It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.



It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered heaven.



It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.



O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?



Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.



Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns.



Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.



For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages.