In the jail ministry, we often feel we have trouble conveying to others the real, almost secret, nature of the Jail ministry. For some time I’ve had this idea that it’s hard to convey the power of the jail ministry to people who do not work with KJM, and to where people can understand. But lately I have realized that the answer is actually simple:
Sheer joy.
If we imitate Christ, we will have His mind (Phil 2:5) and his joy (Neh 8:10; Ps 16:11).
We have a new volunteer, Jeff Kimmel, from CenterPoint Church. On his second day of training, he and I had just finished on the wing Jeff will be assigned to permanently for KJM when finished with training. We were walking down the hall to the KJM office underneath the jail, talking about the time on the floor with the inmates, and out of the blue, Jeff said:
“I feel euphoric.”
Service to the poorest, giving oneself to the inmates, as a servant, and wanting to sacrifice self to them (John 15:13), brings euphoria in Christ. More specifically, this is what I am saying:
Jail ministry that makes extra efforts to be purely Biblically based–no changing the Word in even the slightest way–serving the inmates as prisoners for Christ (Philemon 1:1; Eph 1:1), one becomes euphoric.
I have noticed this from my very first days of jail ministry, and I see it in all the volunteers of our team. I have refrained from discussing this too much in jail ministry, because I just assumed people would not believe what I am saying is real. What we are saying is this:
Serving the poorest, as Christ served the lepers, brings the ecstasy of Christ.
Becoming nothing (Galatians 6:3), of no reputation (Phil 2:7), viewing all others as better than self (Phil 2:3), to serve the poorest, who are those which have the Kingdom of GOD (see Luke 6:20), brings euphoria: being high on Jesus.
