Violence is the Sound that Pain Makes
/A Conversation with Stacey Campbell,
Prison Fellowship Canada President & CEO
(To watch or listen click these links or the ones at the end of the blog)
NORM Welcome to another of our very occasional and sporadic “On Further Reflections with Norm Allen.” Today I’m delighted to have Stacey Campbell with me - CEO of Prison Fellowship Canada. She and I have been friends for most of the ten years that she’s been the CEO of Prison Fellowship Canada, and as many of you know, I have been a friend of Prison Fellowship, both in Canada and internationally for much of Touchstone’s life, since 1984. Through my friendship with Ron Nikkel, the former president of Prison Fellowship International, I’ve developed a deep affinity to the work and the people of Prison Fellowship, both in Canada and in other parts of the world.
There’s an interesting side to Prison Fellowship and my connection with it, because I knew that my job was to help those who were in leadership, and dealing with the loneliness and brokenness of leadership; but at the same time, somehow, I was drawn to have a significant part of our work to be with people who work with those who are on what I would call ‘the other side of the street.’ So, Rick Tobias at Yonge Street Mission, Ron at Prison Fellowship, Greg Paul at Sanctuary, Dion Oxford at The Gateway, and some of the people who were Stacey’s predecessors – and wonderfully - that now Stacey at this stage, and at my age - I am seeing her fulfill some of the dreams some of us had years ago for what Prison Fellowship Canada could become. That it could be a respected organization in the criminal justice system, that it could have wide national impact. For years and years, it did good work – but it just struggled. I would say that the thing I am thrilled about with Stacey, is that there has been significant growth, both numerically, but more importantly, in breadth and depth of the quality of the work that they do.
So: welcome Stacey! It’s nice to have you. So - just tell a little about yourself and how you and I have been ragging at each other over the years, and we’ll continue the conversation.
STACEY Iron sharpens iron, Norm - it’s right there in the Bible! So that’s very good. Thanks very much for having me on, it’s a pleasure to be with you today.
We have intersected on some of those - some of the celebrations, but also some of the difficulties of building Prison Fellowship up over the last ten years, and getting that into the provincial system, federal system - getting it coast to coast, and all the things that come with - all the pains, and like I said, all the celebrations that come with leadership, as we’re growing up leadership across the country, and at the local level in the different provinces. So, I really have appreciated our friendship and our time together.
NORM Now, you have been on quite a journey, because when I think I first met you, you were running a direct mail marketing business - you were the CEO/owner, and at the same time, you were volunteering for Prison Fellowship, but you were on a spiritual journey and an intellectual journey, getting your master’s degree in NGO or charitable management. And then you subsequently got a doctorate. It’s interesting: you’ve been on this journey, and somewhere along the line, 10 years ago or a little more, you felt called to be the leader of Prison Fellowship Canada, and to serve prisoners and their families and the victims of crime in our country. So, talk a little bit about what that process is - what was that inner thing in you that caused you to end up going in this direction.
STACEY Yes, so - it’s been an exciting journey, a bumpy journey at times for sure. It was when I started - really what happened, as you said: I was running a direct-mail marketing company in Ontario, and I had a nice, robust staff, and a big operation, and I enjoyed it. But if I could say - I was a little bored after a number of years. By the time I left, I had been there for 25 years, and I was a little bored, and had a little bit of time. We had done some mergers and acquisitions, and that was exciting; I just loved the business. But, I just wanted something that was meaningful. I think it was around my forties when that started to kind of inkle in me. I looked at two different routes. Going back to school and pursuing a Master of Law, or pursuing a Master of Divinity - and I chose Divinity, thinking it would be less of a struggle.
NORM We make a lot of those kind of mistakes along the way. We underestimate what a mess this world can be in theological ministry.
STACEY That’s right: Fallacy #1. So, I went into that and really thought that I was going to keep my business and be part of ministry and it was all going to come together so nicely. I was going to be like Paul the tent-maker - and my business was just going to flow into the ministry, and this would be so great. Of course, that is a whole other story, but that is not at all what happened.
But the prison ministry - it wasn’t something that I pursued. I would say it’s something that pursued me, and I really didn’t see the connection. God laid it on my heart, every time - and what that looks like, what calling - somebody says they got a ‘calling’ - well what’s a calling? Does the phone ring? It doesn’t. But for me what happened was - I’d get into conversations, and then all of a sudden it would be, “I wonder what this would be like to share in a prison?” or I would take a course, and - “This would be so good in our Canadian prison system. It’s so broken.” It was just relentless - this idea of prison kept chasing me and I kept saying, “No. No. No. No. No. I am corner office, not corner cell.” And really, it chased me for 6 years, until God does what God does, and put me in the belly of a whale, then I said, “Fine. I will travel with a group of prisoners for one year, through Bible Study. And will commit to that as a volunteer.” So that’s how I came into Prison Fellowship. Wasn’t happy about doing it.
NORM Here’s a question: What did those prisoners teach you that year? You were there as the teacher, but what did they teach you, do you think?
STACEY That’s a really great question. My first session, you go in with all these ideas of who the prisoners are, and they deserve to be there, and I got what I - I pay my taxes; I do what I’m supposed to do, I get what I deserve, and they get what they deserve. One of the first things that I learned, that was an absolute fallacy. But what was interesting is this group, this first group that I got - my first question was, “Who is God?” - that was my first question when I walked in. I had never met these people - had a class - and that was my question. They just took off, and I was gob-smacked, really, to hear them talk about Jesus was their Saviour, Jesus was their companion, here’s a copy of their prayer journal, and they took it out and showed me all their conversations. Every single one around the table professed a life-giving relationship with Jesus Christ. And I thought: “What are you doing here?” But as time unfolded, what I learned was that was God’s grace to me, because I couldn’t handle anything else. Coming from my narrow, theological underpinnings and all the rest of it. And I will tell you - I have never met a group like that again.
NORM So - a lot of challenges when one starts to come with assumptions about who we’re dealing with. We have just come out of the COVID thing, and a lot of people have said, “I feel like I’ve been in prison.” Having been in a few prisons in various parts of the world, I often don’t say anything, but as you know, sometimes I can’t avoid it, and it’s just so far from reality, that even the most restricted of us - with masks and whatever other mandates - have no idea what it is like to be a prisoner in the Canadian system.
So, could you describe a bit what the experience is for a prisoner? That’s a big question, and for every one of them there is a different story, but in general, talk about what they lose, what they feel.
STACEY There’s this movement that happens as you journey into a prison, and through a prison, and of course you come, having been built up, sometimes by a lawyer, to say “Don’t say this - say this. This is your story…” and so you can come in with a very distorted idea of what your story is. Because before you even got there, your story has been repackaged and edited, and you have been left on the cutting floor. So that is how people typically come in: with this real confusion, and then come into this abrupt place where you lose all autonomy. You lose privacy - you lose physical privacy; you lose any privacy when you are talking on the phone or writing a letter - all that gets reviewed by somebody else. And there’s a lot of clipboards walking around, watching, and assessing your behaviour. And all of a sudden, you’re under a microscope. Any one of us who would be put under that - somebody could come up with a false pathology about any one of us, when you’re put into that kind of a situation. So then, there is a lot of anger building, there’s a lot of frustration building - as you are losing your autonomy, you’re losing your story, you’re sitting in a place of confusion anyway. And then - you’re bad. You’re bad. You’re just bad. You are always bad; you are always wrong. There is no redeeming that - we need to just keep slamming you and pounding you: that you are wrong, you did this, you did this, you did this. And so now you need to go figure out this with the prison psychologist, or you need to go find this out, and you need to write this, and if you don’t write this, you are not going to get parole. So, it’s a profound loss of self and identity that happens.
NORM I have visited a few times up at Beaver Creek, a minimum security north of Toronto, visiting a friend a few times. I had great credentials from then-Deputy Director of Corrections Canada, our good friend Pierre Allard, one of the wonderful figures in prison ministry in Canada. So, I had a pretty open door, but boy, I was under somebody else’s power the moment I went into that place, and my friend who I was visiting - he had no power whatsoever; they could do to him whatever they wanted, just because they could. And it often was that case. So - talk about what your experience has been now, over 10 years of trying to figure out - what helps these folks? What is going to serve their needs, as opposed to what is our need to say something? What are you hearing about the heartbeat - the things that they are saying to you: Boy - that was helpful to me?
STACEY It’s so simple. People need to be heard. People need an opportunity to have a safe space, a safe place, that’s the one thing, whether it’s Prison Fellowship or another organization that goes in: we don’t carry clipboards. Our power is neutral - we don’t have any power over them, we don’t have any power over the institution, we don’t report back what gets said in a program. And so, you can provide this wonderful space where you make a covenant of how you are going to treat one another, how you are going to talk to one another - it becomes this safe space where you can ask the most absurd question, of: “What were your needs when you got arrested?” There is no one in the world asking the question, “What were your needs at the moment you got arrested?” But they need to talk. That needs to come out before they can ever come close to any kind of victim empathy in their discussion on victim empathy. And that has been a big “Aha,” because typically you go in, you’re a Christian organization, you go in and you do Bible Studies - and that’s all very good. And we do that. But there are precursors to that, that need to happen, and that is building that trust in the relationship, proving that you actually can build a safe space for someone to take a look at - What happened? - without judgement. Without any judgement. Let’s just pull this piece of the story out and look at it. Because crime itself serves a need. It meets a need. So, what was the need at the moment the crime was committed?
So, being able to offer that, and being able to, in yourself, as a volunteer or as a staff member going in - being able to legitimately not judge - it’s a sacred thing. It really affirms a calling to do it. I never would have ascribed this work to me, or to my personality before going in, but somehow - it happens.
NORM And where do you think that comes from? Your sensitivity to the brokenness of others, and the desire not to judge?
STACEY I think it comes from two places. I think it comes from my own brokenness. I think it comes from my own story of brokenness. And I think it comes from a real, earnest desire to see redemption, to see people on that journey and, to play a part in that journey. It’s easy to judge people we’ve never seen. And that was my immediate experience the first time that I went in. Right from Day 1, Norm - from Day 1 of going in the prison - they were so not who I thought, who I expected to meet when I went in the prison. They were you and me. And with different circumstances and different choices - they were you and me.
NORM Now, in this 10 years as CEO and seeing unbelievable growth - I forget the numbers while we were at lunch, but it was something like… Well, actually, I have the numbers written down in front of me, so that I can actually know them - but when you took over in 2013, there were 9 prisons where work was going on, 67 volunteers, 3 staff and 18 churches; and subsequently, now, 10 years later, you have ministries in 141 prisons, you have 2300 volunteers nearly, and 17 staff, and you have relationship with 500 churches. While you were doing all that, you were married and had two kids who were adolescents and are now adults, one of whom is a psychotherapist and one who is working on his engineering education - what in the wide world of sports - how did you do all of that, while you are supposedly also doing all these other things that take a lot of time?
STACEY So - certainly a very supportive family, and one of the things at Prison Fellowship that we did too, was that we got rid of this idea of 9 to 5; that everything had to be 9 to 5, and that everything had to work in rows and orders, because the people we serve don’t work in …
NORM Yes - you’ve changed it from 6 in the morning until 10 o’clock at night! That’s what you did!
STACEY Maybe - but maybe with gaps in between, where you were also doing stuff as well. One of the things that I love, is that even though I have led a very intense work life, for sure, all the way through from my first job until now, I’ve also been able to spend every March Break with my kids, spend every Christmas with my kids, spend every PA day with the kids when they were younger, I was pizza mom on Fridays. So I took a look at the people that were here and myself, and I said, “Okay, we have this whole life to live, and we do have these key deliverables, and we do have things that we have to get done, but we have a whole life to live. How do we live our lives and make it all work?” So, there has been a lot of flexibility for me, and there has been a lot of flexibility for others while we get this done. No mistaking - ministry, doing any kind of ministry work - if anyone is out there thinking they would like to go into ministry: it’s intense! For sure, there’s an intensity to the scheduling and getting things done, but you know, I didn’t do it all alone, either. Sometimes the leader gets the credit, and that’s not necessarily fair. I have had an outstanding team, and been really, really blessed with the people that have come alongside and just the breadth, the capacity and the compassion that this whole team has - that is how it got done.
NORM Now, I don’t know if it’s a year ago, you invited me to come and participate in a filming session where we were to talk about forgiveness, and I was going to tell my story about Edmonton Max, which at some point I am going to get a recording of from you, so that I will be able to share it with my constituents - but you were creating something called the ‘Forgiveness Journey,’ it that right?
STACEY That is correct, yes.
NORM So that is a significant program that is applicable to federal, provincial people who are… Talk a bit about why you ended up landing on something called the Forgiveness Journey as a key educational resource for what you do.
STACEY The beginning of it actually was that we did not have a program apart from Angel Tree, we didn’t have a formal program. We were always borrowing other literature, studies, what-not, and running one offs. One of the things I wanted to see in Prison Fellowship is that our programming would match our mission, what we were actually doing. It actually did not begin as the Forgiveness Journey; it began as something that another colleague here at Prison Fellowship and I sat down to write. It was kind of “What do people need to know about the theological journey?” There were all these different subjects that we looked at, and as we were going through it, getting it close to the end, I invited Ron Nikkel to come edit it, and beef it up, turn it into a fully-fledged curriculum. But as I prayed about it, what was coming to me was: You need to do the whole thing, from the perspective of forgiveness. Keep the subjects but do it from the perspective of forgiveness. So, I called Ron because he had already started on the project, and I was kind of a little nervous to say, “We’re going to do a U-turn here – we’re going to do the whole thing from the perspective of forgiveness.” And he said, “You know - that really resonates with me.”
NORM When you are talking about ‘forgiveness,’ - I mean that means a lot to different people. So, we’re talking about being forgiven, forgiving others, forgiving yourself, forgiveness from God. As I learned that one time in Edmonton, I had 5 days to teach, you know, the normal evangelical teaching back in the day. I’m almost embarrassed to remember that’s what I taught: you know, Day 1 was God and Sin, and there’s a gap between humanity and God, and Day 2 is Jesus and the Cross, the Bridge, I forget what Day 3 was, but Day 4 was: the implications of all of this are reconciliation and forgiveness. Everybody was fine. “Oh yeah, Jesus is the bridge and whatever…” Then the minute I said, “Forgiveness and reconciliation are implications of you becoming a follower of Jesus,” the thing blew up in my face - they said, “You don’t know what in the wide world of sports you’re talking about.” It was the trigger for the great learning for all of us in that room over the next 24 hours or whatever it was. It was interesting to me that if you want to get people upset, say: Well, forgiveness and reconciliation is your expectation. It’s not extraordinary, it’s just normal.
STACEY Right. Yes.
NORM And none of us are really good at that, right?
STACEY That’s right. If you took a group of prisoners and asked them what they wanted to work on for the next year, what subject do you want us to teach or journey together around, they would say: Forgiveness. And when those 52 weeks are up, if you said to them: Now where do you want to go? They’ll tell you: Let’s talk about forgiveness. It’s inexhaustible. In a prison. I found this after a number of years - after probably 8, 9 years of going in, Norm - we talk about forgiveness from the perspective of who we need to forgive, we talk about … being forgiven by God, being forgiven by others, but we don’t teach self-forgiveness; we teach self-acceptance. Self-forgiveness, by far, has been the hardest barrier to meet, and on top of it, we go weekly, as a staff, we all go weekly - independently - but we each go weekly into the prison, so we do spend a lot of time in the prison. I have journeyed with people who have come to a place of saying: Yes - they forgive themselves, and three months later, they’re walking the halls, they’re downcast, they don’t forgive themselves - what about? what about? what about? And so, when you think about it: Can you really forgive yourself? Does the victim - does the offender ever become the victim?
Now I know that there are offenders who are also victims. I am saying in the same thing: do you actually become the victim? In that you forgive yourself? Or do you always remain the offender who needs the forgiveness of others? So, you may get that forgiveness; you may not get that forgiveness - and you so hoped you were up here, but the reality is: you are a sinner like everyone else, in need of grace, like everyone else. So, is it that we have to accept that that is where we are? Can you actually forgive yourself?
NORM It’s interesting. I was reading a book by Charles Williams, one of the Inklings. It’s a booklet written in the early 1940’s while the Second World War was on. Hatred of Germany was a significant part of what was the British culture - that would be easy to say. Anyway, he gets into this thing around forgiveness and reconciliation. One of the points he makes is that it has to do with memory. That God’s forgiveness is synonymous with forgetting. That if we are going to forgive someone else or forgive ourselves, then we must have memories that get washed away. You know, if we can never forget what we did, then we are always going to keep accusing ourselves.
STACEY And the word, ‘forget,’ if you look at the origin of the word ‘forget,’ it doesn’t mean that it goes out of our memory for a bit, but that it’s obliterated. When God forgets, He obliterates. Which is why, conversely, the Israelites would often say, “Don’t forget us.” “Don’t obliterate us!” is what they were saying. The word ‘remember’ in reverse, invokes a covenant. It’s a covenant word: to remember someone is to remember - with God, when we are talking about remembering, it is to remember the covenant. So, I love what you have described perfectly. And I love when we get together, Norm because, you understand this word ‘friend’ the way that Jesus understood this word ‘friend.’ It’s not this sentimental, chummy, chummy thing. But it’s this friend - it’s being a real friend. I love how you have described that.
NORM You and I talked about a conversation one time that I created with Eileen Henderson, our dear friend who used to be in the Circles of Support business. She was on the front lines too, she and I, with her organization, hosted a breakfast down at the National Club. We had a couple of hundred people at the breakfast, and we had a famous celebrity speaker; but I also wanted to interview Eileen, so I said to her, “Tell this group of two hundred Bay Street people why you should be helping released sexual offenders, giving them circles of support, and why should these people care about this? They probably think, lock them up and throw away the key.” She said, “Well, the easy answer is: in God’s economy, there are no throwaways, but…“ she said, “What you in the audience need to know is that if you want to protect your children and grandchildren, you want me doing what I am doing. Because it is for your benefit that we are serving these folks with the particular needs that they have.”
Now, take a wider look at the criminal justice system: What is it that you’re bringing to the table, that people who are going to read this might not understand? That we create barriers to helping people, either in re-entry, or what kind of pressure we put on our politicians regarding criminal justice issues - how do you deal with that sort of thing?
STACEY I would echo her words: you want us doing this work. That is for sure. I think it starts where we were earlier in our conversation: providing that safe space so that you can actually get to the root causes and root wounds that cause the crime or the violence to happen in the first place. I don’t like little cliché sayings at all, but: Violence is the sound that pain makes - has very much been a true learning that I have seen as we have unpacked hundreds, if not thousands of stories of prisoners over the last ten years.
NORM Let me just get you to expand on that a little bit. That sounds like what a lot of people would start rolling their eyes at, right there. Like, we will say: there is a lot of crime, but you’ve gotta go: what are the causes of that crime? Which I happen to agree with. I believe that crime is something that is the result of a lot of our social injustice. There are a lot of other reasons for it too, just because rich people are crooks, also. But just expand a little bit on that, because I don’t want us to misunderstand what you are saying. Because this business of “Crime is the noise, or what you hear because of the pain that is further down the scale.” Talk about that a little more.
STACEY So, people who are not hurt - and I’m not - you know it’s easy for people probably to assume that I side - “Well, you are very sympathetic toward prisoners, you’re very this,” – I’m a person who lives in the public as well, and I want public safety as much as anybody wants public safety. But there are a lot of things that get ignored. There are a lot of injustices that happen that cause profound pain. I could take a particular crime and unpack that crime (if it weren’t for privacy legislation) - I could take some real headliners, and unpack those crimes, and show you a whole other world of something that’s been happening for 20 years. Does it excuse, or give license for someone to commit a crime? Absolutely not. But that pain has to go somewhere. Violence is typically where it goes. Sometimes, it hits the criminal level, the criminal threshold; and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it hits the criminal threshold, and it’s caught; and sometimes it hits the criminal threshold, and it’s not caught. So – that’s the reality. Having programs that give the space to unpack that, to hear someone, to affirm that what has happened to them is wrong, and to find a way forward - is really how you are going to bring somebody into what we call, “wholeness and holiness.” That’s the goal of the programs that - our tagline is: “A Pathway to Change”. A pathway to change what? Where are you going? The goal is wholeness and holiness. But you cannot get there without unpacking all the pain.
NORM In our culture, the tribe out of which I came, which is considered evangelical - have often been, “Hang ‘em high and throw away the key,” crowd. Capital punishment would have been maybe more acceptable in my tribe than in some others. How does the gospel, how does Jesus, how does the character of God, shape our understanding of what we call justice? I was raised with a concept where justice was: you get what you deserved. Yes, we believed in justification by faith, and we believed in grace, but we really believed, you know: “God’s gonna get you. If you do X, He will do Y.” We then take that to the criminal justice system. So talk a bit about what your understanding of ‘justice’ is, as it comes to this question.
STACEY So - what you are describing is an ethic of punishment, in my opinion - not justice. If I were to succinctly and quickly define “justice,” I would say that God takes what is fallen over, and stands it up straight. That’s what justice is. And so, his first act of mercy is really the catching of us, in our sin, in our crime: it’s an act of mercy. Because it stops it. It puts it to a dead stop. That there is an opportunity for an encounter, to redeem that, to turn that around, to have that stood back up straight.
NORM Expand on that a little bit more. What does than then mean to us in terms of how we view what we should be saying to our politicians, what we should be saying in our churches, saying when we are out having a beer with a friend, and they are going, “Well, there is just too much…” you know?
STACEY Yes - and it’s relentless, right? Every time we go out - I don’t know how often you get together with friends or whatever, but every time you go out, there is a whole new collection of crimes to talk about. And we have this paradoxical relationship, too, with crime: we are against it - lock them up and throw away the key. But we lust for violence. We absolutely lust for violence. If you look at our TV programming, our movie programming - how many crime shows are out there…
NORM We wouldn’t have life if we weren’t watching mystery TV, so… Our lives would have no meaning if there were no Agatha Christie.
STACEY We have to take a look at ourselves in that relationship that we have with violence and justice ourselves. But certainly when we talk to politicians - and we do advocacy work. We don’t do activism - there is a difference between activism and advocacy…
NORM That’s right. I will come for your tax number if you do activism…
STACEY That’s right. We are guests in the institution. We didn’t get into 141 institutions by being activists. So, we do advocacy work, and we do work with the government now. It’s wonderful to be able to be invited into those conversations. It’s really taking a look at - we are not against incarceration at Prison Fellowship. We are not abolitionists; we are not against incarceration. But what happens to a person once they get there? That’s where our interest lies. Our advocacy work is working with the government to help them understand what role they play, what role we play, and how they complement one another and work together, so that we actually can bring somebody out of a prison, help them to reintegrate safely - for themselves and for the public. Our statistics and our Bridge Care program, we have about a 7% recidivism rate - very, very different from the prison system alone.
NORM What is bridge care?
STACEY Bridge Care is a program of Prison Fellowship whereby we identify somebody 4 - 6 months before they are getting out of the prison. They want to join our program, and what the program offers, is a mentorship and friendship circle - typically two people who will journey with that person, for about 18 - 24 months after they leave prison. Before they may assimilate into a church community, or the community at large. We recognize that somebody who might be guilty of armed robbery one day, and they are released from prison and sitting on a church pew the next day - there is a lot to unpack, and a lot that must happen for that to be successful. And in our experience, that kind of a transition is not successful.
NORM It is beyond my comprehension what it would be like to go from being institutionalized for a long period of time, and suddenly be stuck in something that has its own institutional environment, but…
STACEY You have to ask to get dressed, you have to ask to go to the washroom, you have to ask to walk from here to ten feet over there, you are not allowed to do this, you are not allowed to do that. And then all of a sudden, you are sitting in a church, and someone catches wind, and then they want to put you up at the front, and tell your testimony, you know, a week later the individual is back to drugs, and falls apart. Recognizing that this is a very, very vulnerable person leaving an institution, who needs to unpack this, two tasks at a time instead of 2000 tasks at once. `
NORM So, just as we wrap up - one of the things that I was pleased to see… You invited a few of us to participate in an event down at Vanier Women’s Jail [aka Vanier Centre for Women], it was quite a remarkable experience, we played a table game about what the barriers and difficulties are of re-entry society, and these were ‘two-years-less-a-day’ people. We had one of the offenders at our table - a very sharp young woman. Our table was a complete failure, because most of the time we failed to listen to what she suggested we should do to keep from blowing up… And anyway - what was interesting to me was that the social worker, the deputy director of the prison, her superior, who I would guess would be an assistant deputy minister - but you had the respect of people of the system, while at the same time, maintaining a clear identity of your own. That to me is a great test of the work that you’ve been doing. Do you see that happening more and more in prisons in other parts of the country?
STACEY Yes, absolutely. You know, our point person is always the chaplain, that’s kind of our Golden Rule, if you will, that we don’t do run-arounds on the chaplain, but that we work through the chaplain, we work with the chaplain, because our programming all falls under that. But we are interested not just in restoring prisoners, but restoring prisons. We also build up relationships, and build up a scaffolding, if you will, within the prison, and try to have relationships with wardens, superintendents, and correctional officers, as well.
NORM So, just as we wrap up: what are one or two things that you wish I had asked, and just make a couple of summarizing comments about.
STACEY One thing that I will - and that is our need for the Canadian Christian community. So, this work - you have a certain staff that we have here at the office, but you’ve got 164 prisons in Canada, 141 that we are in, and the geography of Canada is very vast. We need the Canadian church community to step in to this work. Our mission, of course, is to equip and mobilize that community to respond to justice. For those who are listening - if prison ministry isn’t part of your church, it is never going to be something that overtakes your church. Not everybody is called to prison ministry; but neither is there nobody called to prison ministry. So - two, four people from a church - we would just love for you to connect with us in this work. Yes.
NORM There is another program, Angel Tree, which we didn’t talk about, but you mentioned it. My understanding is that several thousand children of prisoners have over the past year received gifts, support, communication between parent and child, camping experiences; like a whole infrastructure of people who are the children and the families of inmates, who are receiving care. Which is a big part of your mandate as well.
The world is huge that you are in, and it is a great work that you do. And I am grateful for the friendship we have. Thanks for joining me on this little conversation. Maybe with some magic editing it will come out more intelligent than I am normally capable of producing.
So - thanks a lot, Stacey.
I am just going to close with a prayer that we say from one of our retreat programs, just as a way of closing:
Oh Jesus, you sat at a table with the betrayed and rejected of Palestine -
We pray for those today who do not feel welcomed in their daily lives.
Oh Jesus, you were an inmate, and you were naked, and you had no place to lay your head -
We pray for the thousands of homeless men and women, old and young, in our towns and in our cities.
Oh Jesus, you belonged to a refugee family -
We pray for the millions of displaced people in our world, and for the opening of borders to the nationless
Oh Jesus, you cared for your companions and for the little ones who surrounded you -
We pray for the dependent ones whom God has given us to care for.
Oh Jesus, you who walked with the wounded along the road of our world’s suffering -
seek your grace of healing for the broken people and places of our world.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Thank you for taking the time to read about Stacey Campbell’s important ministry
at Prison Fellowship Canada. Click here to learn more:
