Christianity Explored Ministries (CEM) announced in June a major new link up with Prison Fellowship International (PFI) where the Christianity Explored course will form a key part of PFI’s strategy of taking the gospel to prisoners throughout the world, with two pilot projects launched in Nigeria and South Africa.
PFI was founded in 1979. Its network of 45,000 volunteers currently undertakes monthly prison ministry with 2million inmates in 3,700 prisons in 127 countries. There are an estimated 10 million inmates in 22,000 jails across the world. The Prisoner’s Journey, PFI’s new, three-strand evangelism programme (of which Christianity Explored is the core part) aims to reach 1 million of these prisoners with the gospel by 2020.
Nigeria
A total of 250 volunteers and chaplains were trained in two Nigerian locations, Abuja and Lagos, on how to run the course. Those who attended the training were very positive and realised the impact will be felt outside of the prison, as well as within. One minister enthused about the materials: ‘This programme is not just about the inmates. I have seen that some of the things we learnt we could use in our other church programmes and activities’.
South Africa
Another 60 volunteers and chaplains completed the leaders’ training in South Africa. One participant said afterwards: ‘It's very difficult to put into words what the course meant for me personally. I come from a family who went to church twice a year, made me do confirmation (because it's the right thing to do) and that’s it. We never ‘lived’ Christianity. So I have longed for a closer relationship with God for as long as I can remember, but never quite fitted in with the well-spoken people of the church – they always know how to pray, what to say at the right time, seem to have all the answers, and I had nothing. The (Christianity Explored) material we received has been teaching me a lot, and I'm so grateful for it’.
Journey with Jesus
The ‘Starting Out’ phase of The Prisoner’s Journey encourages participants to embark on a journey with Jesus Christ, emphasising that he, too, experienced much of what they feel now, including fear, loneliness, alienation and abandonment.
Prisoners wanting to learn more are invited to join the second phase of the programme, ‘Exploring Jesus’, where they go through the Christianity Explored materials in a group setting. This second phase is an eight week course which simply lets the gospel of Mark tell the gospel of Jesus. It focuses on who Christ is (his identity), what he came to do (his mission) and our response to him (his call).
The final phase, ‘Overcoming Obstacles’, seeks to engage prisoners with a real, personal relationship with Christ within the context of the church.
It is estimated that 9,000 prisoners will attend a welcome event for The Prisoner’s Journey in Nigeria and South Africa in the coming weeks and months. PFI anticipates that 3,000 of these will go on to complete the course in 15 prisons by the end of the year. Plans are well underway for another 15 countries to join the programme in 2015.
