A Day in the Life of Prison Ministry (Sunday Edition)

A Day in the life of Prison Ministry (Sunday Edition)

The sun is up, and it’s time to rise and shine to get ready for another Sunday Church service at prison! After some quiet time in the Word and a devotional, we load up the car with equipment for the church service. This includes sound and technical equipment, mic stands and extension cords, cleaning supplies, pastoral care folders filled and organised with cards and writing utensils, fifty or so copies of the Good News Guide (a 21 day devotional), and administrative papers including our golden ticket to enter the prison: our security name list! We also squeeze into the car a pop up table and a traveling coffee station.

We pull up to the parking lot and serve hot chocolate, coffee, and tea for our team, and then start our Pre-Service Gathering to rally our team. Once circled up, we share upcoming announcements, have a quick security brief, and one of us will share a short encouragement and lead the team in prayer. We unpack the equipment from the car and together head into the prison center where we are serving. Sometimes, we load our equipment into a big “taxi” or 12 seater van. Other times, we walk several minutes carrying and trolleying heavy equipment including our two big speakers, the projector & screens and other boxes of equipment. We have to go through several security checkpoints. 

Pre-Service Gathering

In a typical church building you might greet people in a beautiful, brightly lit foyer that smells of ground espresso beans and freshly baked cookies with the sound of children laughing down the hallway, and parents dropping off their kids as they go into kids' church classrooms.

For us in prison ministry, it is quite a different experience…Slamming metal gates and concrete walls surround us. Instead of stained glass windows, there are gridded metal burglar bars on the outside of the window panes. You can use your imagination of what it smells like, but it’s definitely not cookies and coffee.

We try our best to mingle quietly as we sign in as a team. After a TSA style pat down, our next checkpoint is another form of a waiting area where we fill out security paperwork from the officer hosting us. Before we get to our designated service area which can be anything from a cafeteria, a large or small hall, a chapel/ church area, or a covered or uncovered courtyard. 

Our team goes straight into action unpacking our boxes of equipment. Cleaning and straightening chairs and benches. Plugging in the various cables to get our sound and tech equipment ready. Our worship team rehearses, and at any point during our set up time, a stream of either men wearing bright orange, or highlighter yellow; or women wearing highlighter yellow, or navy blue enter the service area. Many have serious grim faces, mixed with a few shy smiles, and a few brighter smiling faces who have been to our services before. Our team greets them and ushers the service guests to the rows of seats. Our pastoral care team converses with groups of people, writing down how we can pray for them or if there’s anything good that we can praise God for in their life.

At last, the worship leader gets everyone’s attention. And we collectively do corporate praise and worship. Especially at the women’s center, when you close your eyes for a moment, it sounds like a sneak peak of heaven— a choir of angels. Echoes of our worship song play, often birds in the rafters cooing along.

Our host comes up and welcomes everyone for the morning with us. Then we take up the tithes and offerings (KIDDING! Just checking if you’re still reading hahaha!). Next, our host takes the prayer requests and praise report cards and shares anonymously what some of the many prayer needs are; and what we can collectively praise God for what he is doing in our lives.

One of the best moments of our Sunday services is singing Happy Birthday for those celebrating their birthday that week. For the men we have them do push ups as we sing (with at least a couple of our male volunteers joining them). Then we honor the person bringing the word of God, and listen to a powerful and engaging sermon/ message together. 

As the word concludes, the preacher or host comes up to do an altar call. This is an important and significant moment where someone could for the very first time ever: invite God into their life and declare Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour over their life.

If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. - Romans 10:9 NLT

We offer the chance for whoever wants to step into a relationship with the Lord by lifting up their hands so we know who to pray for, or we invite them to come up to front for prayer.

We say a collective prayer and play a final song. In the final moments, individuals can come up to our team for prayer before they need to head out to their lunch time. We distribute the Good News Guides to those who gave their life to the Lord and to anyone else who would like a copy. And conclude our service. 

At the end, our team packs up our equipment and we exit the center together. We always make sure to thank and greet each officer we pass as we walk the long, sometimes winding hallways and courtyards to get to our exit. The Cape Town weather kisses our skin (which could be anything from pouring rain, to sunshine, to overcast, or strong winds) and we get a thrill of freedom from the slamming gates that are now behind us. At last, we head to the parking lot and circle up once more to debrief from the morning’s service. 

Especially for a volunteer’s first time experience it’s great to hear feedback. We always want to make sure that our volunteers do not take home anything weighty or spiritually hard with them. We leave it all in the parking lot and pray and thank God for the service and finally repack the car and everyone departs.

The best team ever!

Sometimes we host a post-service hangout with our team. We head home and unpack our car. And then race to cook an afternoon meal before we head to the evening church service as a family. 

After a service we have several reports we fill out for various departments across our church and HAF. By the end of a Sunday, our minds are full, our bodies are sore, but our spiritual cup is filled. We try to wrap our heads around all that we’ve witnessed on that day and every ministry moment that was impactful for those that we serve.

Sunday in, and Sunday out these church services behind bars have been a highlight for Marco and I for years, even since before we were married and leading the team, we've loved doing these Sundays together! Marco thrives when he is able to evangelize to so many people behind bars. I absolutely love organizing the logistics of it all. We couldn’t do any of it without our operations team and volunteer team. Everyone serves in different areas on a Sunday, but together, all of our gifts and strengths complement each other. God always gets the glory, and the impact that the church service has on individual lives is incredible to witness. For many men and women behind bars just a change of scenery and listening to stories about Jesus is so refreshing for them, and stirs something good within their soul that was previously weary and full of despair before they entered the room.

As we're headed into the fourth and final quarter of the year we're excited to share that so far in 2024 we've served 1,486 clients* (both male and female), hosted 25 church services, and witnessed 578 people commit their lives to Christ! These numbers are so significant because they represent a person, and each person represents a life and a story! (*This is all outside of our midweek programs, which we will update you with more stories and stats in the near future!)

Would you consider coming alongside our family financially? Your support enables our family to remain full time in ministry, fulfil our calling, and relieves financial burdens and stress so that our basic needs are met. Before December 2025 we are hoping to raise $200,000, which would allow us to privately buy the home we are living in, as well as purchase a larger vehicle for our ever growing family and ministry needs.

This amount is outside our basic family needs of rent, groceries, and other monthly living expenses which amounts to $5,420.00 per month.

Please consider joining our support team here! ⬇️

FOR TAX DEDUCTIBLE GIFTS:

1. DONATE ONLINE!

(USA & Int’l Cards accepted)

https://www.worldoutreach.org/975

2. MAIL CHECKS:

World Outreach Ministries, Inc.

P.O. Box B

Marietta, GA 30061

(designate for #975 Lodewyk)

3. BILL PAY: free option via your Online Banking

(use the same info for checks)

Coming up on the 9th of October, we’re hosting a Sisterhood event at the female prison, and invite you to pray with us in the lead up to the day for the women to feel valued and encouraged. We can't wait to share with you how it went!

With Love,

The Lodewyk Family

P.S.: Check out ways you can support us and pray alongside us on the Support Us tab above! And make sure you are subscribed to our blog to get the newest updates instantly in your inbox!