Taking God behind bars

By SHARON TUBBS

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 18, 2001

The reverend and his volunteer crusaders travel Florida from end to end, telling their locked-up audiences that Jesus is the key.

LARGO -- The towering bald man with thin-rimmed glasses sits silently in the white passenger van. Time for another pilgrimage behind bars.

Since founding Prison Crusade Ministries in 1976, the Rev. Abe Brown has traveled to Florida's 67 major and minor correctional facilities from Key West to Pensacola. He and his Christian volunteers -- dressed in heels, hats and pickings from their Sunday wardrobes -- visit prisons at least twice each month. The ministry's $230,000 annual budget comes from private donations.

Crusader Harvey Davis, left, lays his hand on inmate Roger Chapman as Chapman accepts Christ at the end of the service at Lake Correctional Institution in Clermont.

Last week, they traveled to Polk Correctional Institution, where Horace Jolly has a cell. When Jolly was a student at Blake High School in Tampa, Brown was the football coach, and Jolly was on the team. But in 1973, Jolly murdered a cabdriver. Brown went to the jail, talked about Jesus Christ. Other inmates circled to hear. It was three years before Brown started a formal ministry.

Today, he and his crusaders are off to the Largo Road Prison.

Mary Thomas and Marva Blue are teasing Emanuel James, who barely made it to the crusade's Tampa office before the van pulled off. Rennex Franklin steers along narrow 29th Street.

Brown finishes a Snickers bar, then opens his Bible to a page with more yellow and pink highlights than a worn college textbook. Franklin sings during much of the hourlong drive on I-275 in rush hour traffic: "So, forget about yourself, concentrate on him and worship him. Wo-o-orship him, Chri-i-ist the Lord."

A fence topped with barbed wire is a reminder of where this chapel is: Sumter Correctional Institution.

Mary Thomas, a 47-year-old mother of three, is asked why she gives her time to make these trips.

"I started when we had an old raggedy school bus, and I don't regret one of them. I love this ministry. This is where God wants me to be. I feel at home. I feel as though I'm doing something good."

Finally, the prison. The Largo Road Prison, a minimum security facility, looks from the road like nothing more than a spread of trailers. A uniformed man checks the crusaders' licenses. In all, 11 volunteers have come.

Sixteen prisoners file in, some in light blue outfits, others in white.

At 7:25 p.m., the usual order of service begins: singing, an inspiring testimony from a crusader, the preached word, an invitation for inmates to learn about Christ or to give their own testimonies.

"We come here to do one thing, and that's to lift up the name of the Lord!" crusader Harvey Davis says.

Phyllis Davis leads a choir in song during a service at the Largo Road Prison. Davis and her husband, Harvey, have been part of the prison ministry for six years.

Sporadic amens fill the room.

Someone pushes play on the tape machine. Emanuel James, holding a microphone with both hands, begins to sing. "If anyone should ever write my life story. . . . 'Cause Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Y'all like that?" James asks the rocking inmates.

They clap more loudly.

"He sounds like Ray Charles," Jerry Green says to a fellow inmate.

Soon bus driver Franklin steps forward, calling out, "Give me an H!" And so on, until he spells out "H-O-P-E." There's still some to go around, he says.

Franklin used to work for GTE and owned a $54,000 house. He wore a gun strapped over his shoulder and loved to party and talk smack, he says. "Then, I met this thing called crack cocaine."

During a service at Lowell Correction Institution (in Lowell), the inmates in the women's unit raise their hands in worship.

An addict for 15 years, he lost everything and spent 21/2 years in the Hillsborough County Jail. He joined the prison ministry in 1990.

"Hallelujah!" the inmates call out.

Some of these inmates have a while to go in prison. But for 11/2 hours, many drift back to the Sunday mornings when their mothers took them to church. The energy rises, and one inmate hands out paper towels for sweat wiping.

When the music stops, Brown stands with his Bible.

Even those doing God's work must pass through security checks at the prisons. Janice Smith searches a Bible for contraband at Lake Correctional Institution in Clermont. After that, the crusaders must pass through a metal detector.

"The Bible says there are two kinds of people in this world. There's a wise man and a fool. Both make mistakes. The difference is, a wise man profits from his mistakes. . . . He won't make the same mistake. It shouldn't take but one time for you to understand this isn't the way to live."

"Come on with it!" inmate Vito Wright says, holding his own Bible.

Brown continues: "You ought to hate what you're leaving so bad, you won't come back. . . . When you leave this place, you can help somebody else."

At Lowell Correctional's women's unit, Velisha Bowden, 19, bows her head in prayer. She is serving a sentence for robbery with a firearm.

Twenty minutes later, it's the inmates' turn to speak.

"This is a new thing for me," says Wright, a 28-year-old in and out of jail since 1990 -- in now for carrying a concealed weapon.

"I've been a fool in my life," he says. "But never in my life have I been a fool for the Lord. It feels good to be used."

Willie Williams, 44, tells the group he found the Lord behind bars, after hearing Brown in another prison service 10 years ago. Williams has a prison history spanning two decades. For his latest offense, selling drugs, he got 20 years. He could be released in 2003.

"If I come back, it'll be because he's called me to come back and share his word," he says.

Michael Simmons may be the kid of the bunch at 25, but he speaks with the cadence of a neophyte preacher.

"We have a testimony to give," says Simmons, who has 14 months left on a sentence for trafficking cocaine. "We know what's here," he says. "Maybe we can share it with somebody. That's our job for God."

About 9 p.m., the prison sergeant thanks the crusaders for coming. They hurriedly grab a few peanut butter cookies and climb back into the van. Franklin says he has to wake up at 4 a.m. for two hours of worship before going to work.

Abe Brown, founder of the prison ministry, delivers a sermon at Lowell's women's unit. His ministry's $230,000 annual budget comes from private donations.

Brown resumes his thoughtful silence.

Blue thinks back to the inmates' words. "That testimony service," she says, "you could barely keep a dry eye."

Thomas nods in agreement. "So, next Thursday, we have Zephyrhills, right?"

Blue: "Right."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.