Churches & Prison Ministry: There's nobody like that in my church! By Rev. Dr. Harold Dean Trulear - Guest Blogger

Progressive Prison Project

Innocent Spouse & Children Project

Greenwich I Weston I Bridgeport

Connecticut 

Churches & Prison Ministry: 
There's nobody like that in my church!

By Rev. Dr. Harold Dean Trulear 

- Guest Blogger 

Harold Dean Trulear and the Healing Communities team will be holding a workshop on March 28th, 9 am - 3 pm at the Holiday Inn, Bridgeport, CT. For info & tickets, contact: Rev. Aaron Best (203) 870-5914.  - Jeff

___________ 

"So far, so good..."

The sentiment echoed in the back of my mind constantly, as I surveyed the faces of others on my cell block. I felt enough shame for being a Christian in the jail. The fact that I had once pastored one of the largest churches in the county compounded the shame, and drove me to a suspicion of every other inmate as I tried to avoid an embarrassing encounter with someone who knew me.

It came crashing to a halt with one word. "Pastor."

I told the inquiring young man I did not know what he meant. The inquisition, however, had just begun.

"I used to play drums for your choir." I did not recognize him until he told me his mother's name. She had been on my staff.

"I am so glad you're here!" That made one of us.

"I told God that I wanted this experience to be a changing point in my life...and if that was to happen, he needed to send someone to guide me. Now here you are!"

I do not for a second believe God sent me to jail for any reason other than to save my life. But the young man's sentiment reflected two realities: first, that there are inmates who want to and will change if they have relationships with someone who believes in them and second, that there are a number of incarcerated people who are already connected to houses of worship.

"There's nobody like that in my church!" So respond more than a few Christians and church leaders when I explain to them that our ministry, Healing Communities, helps congregations minister to their own members affected by incarceration.

"We already have a prison ministry!" I often receive that response when I talk about how we need to connect our congregations with the prison populations.

Both responses reflect flawed thinking.

In the first case, it is virtually mathematically impossible for a congregation to be completely disconnected from the system of jails and prisons in our country. With over a million and a half men and women in state and federal prison, and another seven million churning through county jails annually, the odds are infinitesimal that a congregation does not have a family with an incarcerated son, daughter, grandchild or parent behind bars. While in the county jail, I met seven young men with connections to my former church. Had they been in the hospital, they would have received attention from the church as a whole. As prisoners, their religious support came from a handful of volunteers from another congregation.

This leads to the second flaw: if Matthew 25 lists both prisoners and sick people why does one group get pastoral and community support, while the other is only a matter of specialized outreach? Indeed, not only do we have men, women and teens with church connections already on the system, but their family members come to church Sabbath after Sabbath suffering with the shame and stigma of the secret: "my son/daughter/grandchild/etc. is locked up."

Healing Communities USA seeks to equip congregations to engage the prison population by beginning with the families in the church directly impacted by incarceration. We believe that the stigma and shame associated with prison and jail deter families from seeking the support they need in dealing with the pain of separation, sense of loss and/or betrayal, and changes to family dynamics caused by incarceration. By helping congregations create a culture of forgiveness, restoration and redemption, we can support people like the young man I encountered in my county jail, and support his family through the process of his and their ordeal. By engaging the real life experiences of inmates and their families, mass incarceration changes from a public issue "out there" to an amalgam of personal trials "in here." When we recognize that this reality is before us, we enhance our capacity to become advocates for system and policy change.

When preaching, I often do altar calls for families of the incarcerated. Many pastors show surprise at the numbers who come forward. Many members exhibit a new found empathy toward persons they know, but "did not know that" about them. "Never again," declared one pastor from his vaunted pulpit, "will a mother from this church have to endure the pain of her son's incarceration by herself." And as they walk with her, her son, and others in the congregation, their ministry of advocacy concerning mass incarceration grows, because now, it is personal.

Harold Dean Trulear serves as Associate Professor of Applied Theology at Howard University School of Divinity. He is also National Director of the Healing Communities USA Prison and Prisoner Reentry Ministry. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Morehouse College, he completed his Ph.D. Degree with distinction at Drew University. He also serves as a Fellow at the Center for Public Justice in Washington DC, and is a member of the Executive Session on Community Corrections at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Dr. Trulear serves on the pastoral staff of Praise and Glory Tabernacle in Southwest Philadelphia, and has served in pastoral and youth ministries in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for close to forty years. His columns and features on religion and criminal justice have appeared in The Crime Report of John Jay School of Criminal Justice, Prism Magazine, The Living Pulpit and The Capital Commentary, and he has written over one hundred scholarly articles, book chapters, field reports and book reviews. He is a contributing editor to: Ministry with Prisoners and Families: The Way Forward (Judson Press, 2011), George Kelsey: Unsung Hero (Andover Newton Theological School, 1996).

Named by the Center for American Progress as one of fourteen Faith Leaders to Watch in 2014, Dr. Trulear has helped to organize chapters of Healing Communities USA in over thirty cities across the country, and in partnership with several denominations. He can be reached at hdtrulear@msn.com, (202) 806-0640

___________

Rev. Jeff Grant, JD, M Div, Minister/Director
jgrant@prisonist.org

(o) 203-769-1096

(m) 203-339-5887

Twitter
Facebook
Linked In
Pinterest
Google+ Tumblr

Lynn Springer, Founding Advocate, Innocent Spouse & Children Project
lspringer@prisonist.org 

(203) 536-5508

George Bresnan, Advocate, Ex-Pats
gbresnan@prisonist.org
(203) 609-5088

Jim Gabal, Development
jgabal@prisonist.org
(203) 858-2865

Babz Rawls Ivy, Media Contact
mediababz@gmail.com
(203) 645-9278   

__________

Donations

We are grateful for donations from individuals, religious groups, charities, foundations and the like. Donations can be made by credit card/PayPal or by sending your check payable to: “Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc.” P.O. Box 1232, Weston, Connecticut 06883. Progressive Prison Project/Innocent Spouse & Children Project are missions of Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc. We are a CT Religious Corp. with 501c3 status - all donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. Thank you for your support and generosity.

If transformation and redemption matter to you, a friend or a family member with a white-collar or nonviolent incarceration issue, please contact us and we will promptly send you an information package by mail, email or via Dropbox. The darkest days of a person's life can be a time of renewal and hope.

Songs From The Inside, Volume One: Soothed

-->

A song about God, a woman, compulsions or perhaps my anima. 

soothed

everything's the same

but everything has changed

 i see you standing there

i'm calling out your name

but the words won't come

 no the words won't come

 no the words won't come

soothed by the sound of your voice

soothed by the sound of your name

obsessed i made the wrong choice

i used your sweet name in vain

everything has changed

but everything's the same

you see me sitting here

you're calling out my name

but the words won't come

no the words won't come

no the words won't come

soothed by the sound of your voice

soothed by the sound of your name

possessed i make the wrong choice

i use your good name in vain

and as the days turn into years

your face softens in the glow

of long forgotten tears

over things you will never know

soothed by the sound of your voice

soothed by the sound of your name

obsessed i made the wrong choice

my unfinished symphony of pain

jeff grant

2007

Excerpt from The Art of Surviving Prison  Copyright 2013, all rights reserved Jeff Grant, Progressive Prison Project jgrant3074@icloud.com 15 E. Putnam Ave. #370
Greenwich, Connecticut 06830 (203) 339-5887 

Songs From The Inside, Volume One: I Call Again

-->

A song about God, a woman, compulsions or perhaps my anima. 

i call again
 

i try to get close, you push me away
i can't say i blame you but i want you to stay
that's all there is to it

i wander around, living day by day
with unanswered questions and endless delays
why can't we get through it?

i call up to see you, you always say yes
but when's the next time its anybody's guess
how much longer can i do it?

yet, 

i call again, i always call again
i do
i call again, i always call again
even though we both know
its the wrong thing
to do

we go to the mall, i wash your clothes
when you have a cold i blow your nose
its a crying shame

you spend your life, searching for the perfect match
and here i sit waiting for your scraps
its a sad sad game

the truth of it all, is that you can't see
no matter what i do this is me, this is me
it remains the same

yet,
i call again, i always call again
i do
i call again, i always call again
even though we both know
its the wrong thing
to do

 

i call again, i always call again
i do
i call again, i always call again
even though we both know
its the wrong thing
to do

jeff grant 

2007

Excerpt from The Art of Surviving Prison 
Copyright 2013, all rights reserved
Jeff Grant, Progressive Prison Project
jgrant3074@icloud.com
15 E. Putnam Ave. #370
Greenwich, Connecticut 06830
(203) 339-5887

Mourning My Father Part Two: The French Chairs

Progressive Prison Project

Greenwich, Connecticut

This originally appeared as one of my Practically Religion columns in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Mourning My Father Part Two: The French Chairs
by Jeff Grant

I prayed this morning.  I got up early but instead of my usual early morning ritual of pot o’ coffee and a couple of hours of writing, I went to church.  The chapel at the Second Congregational Church here in Greenwich is glorious, especially in the wee hours as daybreak first streams in.  It reminds me that it is a holy place.  Since my father died this past December, I feel lost.  It is a strange and uncomfortable sensation, especially since my father and I were not especially close.  The legacy he left is only first beginning to emerge.  This morning I prayed for guidance and for healing; healing for me and for my family.  I received a reply.

_________________________

About twenty years ago, my ex and I were in Paris shopping in the flea market at Clignancourt when we happened upon the most beautiful chairs, in such interesting shapes and sizes.   They were bent wood, art deco, and definitely not for everybody.  They had been designed for a hotel in Barbados that had gone out of business.  The dealer in Paris bought up the entire inventory of the hotel and shipped it back to be sold off piece by piece.  My ex spotted one of her interior designer heroes, Rose Tarlow, and her entourage making a beeline for the chairs.  Rose knew exactly what she wanted and ordered four of the chairs on the spot.  I guess that was the tipping point for us because as soon as Rose completed her transaction, we bought two of the French Chairs and had them shipped to us back in the States.

The French Chairs were beautiful but were very uncomfortable, and we really never knew what to do with them.  In truth, they were more like objets d’ art, or maybe huge doorstops, that we lugged around from home to home.  When my ex and I split up, I guess it wasn’t much of a surprise that I got the French Chairs; after all in our baseball-card game of need it/got it… they came in close to last.  Yet, even after I remarried and Lynn and I made a home here in Greenwich, the French Chairs sat majestically in our living room: a tribute to days and dreams gone by (and probably our inability to see the madness of dedicating thirty percent of our living space to chairs that we couldn’t possibly sit in).  Nonetheless, they were a part of the family.

My daughter and her husband are presently selling their house in Greenwich, and are making their way up to the hinterlands of Fairfield.  I called my daughter and told her that our time as custodians of the French Chairs was thus drawing to a close.   Upon hearing about the availability of her beloved French Chairs, she waxed poetic and drove right over to pick them up.  After all, to her these were way more than chairs; they contained the memories of her childhood and were markers of those nostalgic times (even if those times had to be spent on the floor in front of the chairs and not on the chairs themselves). 

After the French Chairs had been safely passed on to the next generation, Lynn and I wasted no time in filling the void with a pair of Crate & Barrel upholstered chairs that we bought used at Consign It on Mason Street.  It was nice to be able to finally use that side of our living room; we found out that we actually have a sliver-view of the Sound.  

________________________________

Today I am emailing a copy of this column to my entire family along an invitation to join me for dinner at my favorite restaurant on Thursday evening at 6pm.  There are only two things on the agenda (although I admit these things usually take on a life of their own).  The first is to pay tribute to my father, Stanley Grant.  The second is to celebrate our family, in whatever shape and size, no matter how beautiful or uncomfortable, despite how much space we take up, no matter where we reside, or how much it makes us think about our yesterdays or our tomorrows.   To sit and get to know each other as we are.  To mend fences, make amends, and cherish the little time we have left together on this planet.  To tell stories, laugh, shout, sing and listen to our hearts.
I miss my Dad and I wish he could be at dinner to join us.  I waited too long to invite him.  I won’t make the same mistake again.

Jeff Grant, JD, M Div

Progressive Prison Project

Assoc. Minister / Director of Prison Ministries  

The First Baptist Church of Bridgeport

126 Washington Avenue

Bridgeport, Connecticut 06604 

jgrant3074@icloud.com

203.339.5887

Mourning My Father, Warts and All (Part One)

Progressive Prison Project

Greenwich, Connecticut

This is an excerpt from my book, The Art of Surviving Prison, awaiting publication. It originally appeared as one of my Practically Religion columns in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Mourning My father, Warts And All (Part One)

By Jeff Grant

My Dad grew up in Brooklyn at a time when it seemed everybody was from Brooklyn.  He was tall, smart, good looking - he joined the Navy and then went to Pace University.  He was the captain of the tennis team, and went on to enroll at the Columbia University Business School.  His own family business beckoned before he could complete school, a successful handbag company, and as the heir apparent Dad was to take it to unprecedented heights.  He met my Mom, a beautiful Brooklyn girl seven years younger, and they married at the Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York City, where the General Motors Building now stands across from Central Park.  Shortly after their marriage, the handbag business folded and my parents decided to move to Boston to put some distance between them and Dad’s family.

In the 1950’s, Boston was not a city known for being overly hospitable to Jews, so my Dad sent out two groups of resumes: one group with his family name, Goldberg, and the other with a name he had gotten out of the phonebook, Grant.  The story goes that he received five times the amount of replies under the name Grant than Goldberg, accepted a job, and had his and my mother’s name changed to Grant.  I was born in Boston less than two years later; my brother and sister were born in the Boston suburbs in obligatory two-year intervals. But Boston proved no Promised Land and in 1961 the family moved to Merrick, Long Island looking for a fresh start.

Merrick was a culture of second and third generation Jews escaping Brooklyn, all moved en masse to their version the good life.  Somehow, this entire generation collectively decided to become some sort of holocaust deniers. The war and the holocaust were never mentioned to any of us even though the war had ended less than ten years before many of we baby boomers were born.  We all grew up without any real sense of history or family.  South Merrick, where we lived, was a brand new town on the South Shore of Long Island, built on dirt and garbage dredged from the bottom of the East Bay.  Merrick was pretty much like every other town that we would pass on those rare occasions that my Dad would take me into the city with him.  Or later when I would go with my friends to a Mets game.  We would hop on the Long Island Rail Road, the “largest commuter railroad in the country;” it was a sea of dads each morning going off to their brave new worlds in New York City.  Or, perhaps, like mine, escaping their families. 

Dad had taken out a V.A. loan in 1961 and we moved into our house in South Merrick.  Ours was the only house on our street.  The street would not be paved for a year or two, and the other houses were being built all around ours, like dinosaurs rising up out of the dunes.  The roar of trucks and barges dredging was everywhere. Every kid in the neighborhood who moved into the neighborhood was about the same age, and had a brother or sister exactly two years older or younger. It was a kids’ paradise.  The Dads took off early in the morning, and the Moms did whatever Moms did. We really didn’t know, because none of us ever saw our parents. It was a town completely devoid of history and rules; we had to make them up as we went along.

Like his father before him, my Dad had a business failure in his early forties that was a turning point and changed the fabric of our family.  It proved to be a piece of prophecy and prescience that would haunt me for the rest of my life.  My Dad had a business in Manhattan that had one huge claim to fame: it was the world’s first marketing agency.  Back in the early sixties, when his eventual partner Sam and he both worked at Loft’s Candy Corp. in Long Island City, nobody even used the word “marketing.”  But Sam and my Dad did the marketing for Loft’s, and built it into a powerhouse of early franchising.  They left together with Loft’s as their first client, and then built a marketing agency that specialized in franchising.  As a kid, I remember going to store openings for all sorts of companies whose jingles were on television or the radio; and, of course, we always had free stuff from them all over the house.  But my Dad’s fame came from the fact that he was the marketing guy for Carvel Ice Cream.  Our freezer was always stuffed with Brown Bonnets, Flying Saucers and Lollapaloozas.  

Dad’s office on East 55^th Street in Manhattan was set up with a glass top desk, wrap around sofa, and Barcelona chairs - for Dad, image was everything.  On one of the few days that Dad took me into his office, I was sitting on the sofa when Tom Carvel called in.  Tom Carvel was a very famous guy in New York back in the 60’ and 70’s. He was a cultural icon, as he appeared daily in hundreds of Carvel Ice Cream ads on television.  He had a very distinctive low raspy voice.  I’m certain that my Dad meant to impress me, and asked me to pick up the phone extension next to the sofa at the same time he picked up his phone on the desk.

“Stan, it’s Tom.  How the hell are ya?”
“Great Tom.  What’s doing?”  Dad was proud, beaming.
“Hey, why don’t you hop in your car and drive up to Yonkers [Carvel’s headquarters], I’ll get us some hookers.’’
Dad’s face looked ashen, as he waived his arms for me to put down the phone. 

The shit was all pretty much hitting the fan anyway.   My father’s huffing and puffing was intolerable to my Mom, to his partner Sam, and to almost everyone around him.  It wasn’t that he was arrogant; he was just full of a certain type of self-deception meets impunity meets righteous indignation, in which he thought that he could do things better than other people, but never quite delivered on his own promises.  With business doing well, Dad marched into his partner Sam’s office and announced that he needed a better split of the profits since he was responsible for most of the sales.  Sam calmly told him that a business needs a front room guy and a backroom guy, and that without both of them it would be closed within a year. Unimpressed, Dad pushed the issue. Sam left and, sure enough, the business collapsed.   Dad soon started having health problems, perhaps coincident to when he found out that my Mom had been having an affair with his biggest client. 

The last memory I have of my Dad in the Merrick house was him banging on the front door to be let in one night.  My bedroom window was in front of the house, and as I stuck my head out the window to see what was going on, my Mom came up behind me and pulled me back in.   She told me that my Dad didn’t live there anymore.   There’s more to the story of how I became the adult of the family, and how this paradigm defines the eldest child’s life in these situations.  I have never reconciled these issues with my brother or sister, both of whom were probably affected in ways I will never fully realize.  Nonetheless, when my opportunity came to get out of Merrick, I jumped at the chance and never looked back.

Excerpted from Jeff Grant’s book, The Art of Surviving Prison, awaiting publication. 

For Information Please Contact:

Jeff Grant, JD, M Div

Progressive Prison Project

Assoc. Minister / Director of Prison Ministries The First Baptist Church of Bridgeport

126 Washington Avenue

Bridgeport, Connecticut 06604 

jgrant3074@icloud.com

203.339.5887

White Collar Ministry 2 - News & Content Link

Progressive Prison Project

Greenwich, Connecticut 

We curate useful news and information content daily on the Progressive Prison Project Facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/progressiveprisonproject 

Gratefully, 

Jeff

Jeff Grant, JD, M Div

Director, Progressive Prison Project 

Greenwich, Connecticut

Assoc. Minister/ Director of Prison Ministries

First Baptist Church of Bridgeport

Bridgeport, Connecticut

jgrant@progressiveprisonproject.org

jgrant3074@columbia.edu

(203) 339-5887

Experienced and Compassionate support of families affected by incarceration issues on all ends of the social and economic spectrum.