The Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola, is a massive prison. Its grounds are roughly the size of Manhattan, and it is currently home to over 4,200 inmates. Ninety percent of the inmates housed here will never leave; 54 of them have been sentenced to die.
We had set out to meet with 11 of these condemned men. No, I wasn’t convicted of any crime, but my friend Mike Broyles and I had been sent to death row by Valencia Hills Community Church, and Lifeline Global Ministries, to sit in on a Malachi Dads Bible study. This is a study where they will learn how to be godly men and godly fathers.
It turns out, many of these men have children — children who are seven times more likely to end up behind bars themselves, and we were here to sit in on a class where these men would learn how to break that cycle.
Make no mistake about it, they have done heinous things and deserve to be here, but it turns out that not even these inmates are too far gone to be outside of the reach of God’s redemptive love.
We arrived on death row, and were greeted by handshakes and thank-yous. An inmate pastor had come in to lead the class, and Mike and I sat in as they discussed God’s love, and different strategies on godly parenting. These men were thoughtful, they were engaged, and they knew their scripture. They worked each question in the book on a deep level, and they brought in outside verses that went above and beyond what the questions were even asking. Ten of the 11 death row inmates actively participated in answering or reading scripture out loud. The 11th leaned in and listened intently to what was being discussed. This was no passive study.
This program offers these men hope beyond the walls of their confinement, and instruction on how to share that hope with their children, a hope that will hopefully break the cycle of incarceration. These men will never see the other side of these of these prison walls, but if this program does what it is intended to do, we can hope their children won’t share that fate.
Bruce Tracy
Castaic
