After 35 years of ministry, there is probably enough material to make a pretty funny, inspiring, adventurous, dramatic, action-packed movie. There are countless guys in the ministry who would be delusional and claim that they should be played by Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. As for me, I want my part to be played by Adam Sandler but I digress.
I’m pretty sure that if we had to pick out an abandoned prison to do most of our filming, we would probably all agree on the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. That was the prison where “The Shawshank Redemption” was filmed.
The prison we visited today was Richland CI which is only a few hundred feet from the stone walls of the old historic Ohio State Reformatory. Seeing it up close was quite a sight. It was cool to appreciate the part it played in movie history but it was also cool to see all of the attention to detail that went into the building when it was built way back in 1886.
Once we got a good look at the old prison, we walked the opposite direction into the entryway of Richland CI. Once we arrived at the prison field, we got settled in and huddled up as a team. Our coach, Wes, told us that this was always a tough team to play against and that we needed to jump out to an early lead because the Richland teams were always really good on every Ohio Crusade that he had been on…and he was absolutely right…
We did manage to get out to a decent lead but we had trouble keeping up with their offense and found ourselves on the losing end of game one.
After our first game, Greg shared his testimony and Jimmy Cochran shared the Gospel. During the ministry time, I had an opportunity to talk to the chaplain on the bleachers. He told me how thankful he was that we had visited.
Right before our 2nd game, I received a response card from one of the men in the yard. The card indicated that he made a decision to follow the Lord. He took the field for game 2 before I could get to him. Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep up with their hitting and we dropped the 2nd game of the day. The other team had to leave the field because their yard time was over. I was able to find the man who gave me the response card and I was able to talk with him very quickly about the Gospel and the decision that he made. I think his decision was genuine and I’m glad that I could talk to him.
Overall on the day at Richland, we handed out 150 Gospels and had 5 men indicate that they wanted to follow the Lord.
We packed up our stuff and headed for the local Arby’s for a quick lunch. We were hopeful that some fast food roast beef and curly fries would wake up our offense but we were in for another challenge when we arrived at Mansfield CI for the second half of the day.
When we arrived at Mansfield, we were told that we couldn’t bring in our bats. We ended up using the same aluminum and wood bats that the inmate teams had to use. It was fun to hit with a wood bat but once again, we ran into another really good offensive team and lost our first game.
In between games, Zach Brown shared his testimony and Rob Fogel shared the Gospel.
I had an opportunity to discuss the Gospel with a guy off to the side of the field. I talked with him about why it was important that Jesus Christ had died and had risen again so that we could have our sins forgiven and know God forever. This guy was very polite and let me talk about the Lord but told me he wasn’t interested. I don’t know this guy’s name but please pray that God brings other people into his life to share the Gospel with him.
We played another game and well, we got beat again. Not only did we get beat, but our sound system quit working and our best outfielder went down with a pretty serious hamstring injury. It wasn’t the best day on the field for sure but we saw 7 men make professions of faith in the Lord. We also handed out 75 Gospels in the prison yard.
We made the trip back to the hotel and got cleaned up and went to a local BBQ place for dinner. This place was really good and we had a good time fellowshipping.
When we got back to the hotel, instead of doing a typical devotion, we prayed for one of our teammate’s who needed some prayer for his family. This wasn’t a typical Saints devotion but it was nice to have a moment where we could all be “real” and openly share a burden that was on a teammate’s heart.
One of the biggest blessings of this ministry is the friendships we have as teammates whether it is local or across the country. I know that there are times when we set out to draw the inmates closer to God but God ultimately uses the ministry to draw us closer to Him.
