Ministry Leader: Imprisoned Women a Field Ripe for Harvest, but Neglected
by Mary Rettig
November 14, 2005
(AgapePress) - - The director of a pro-family organization says the Church needs to reach out to women in prison -- a group in need of the message of hope in Christ. Karen Kristopher is with the Centers for Decency in Houston, Texas. Her experience with imprisoned women gives her insight to their lives not known by many Christians. Kristopher says most jailed women were sexually assaulted as girls and act out to cover the pain, getting involved in drugs and prostitution.
She says it is unfortunate, but the body of Christ lacks in its efforts to harvest that fertile field. "I know that some days I feel like I've failed [in efforts to reach out] and I haven't done enough," she says, "because God has allowed me to see the bowels of hell in that jail."
The ministry leader confesses that had she not witnessed women in prison from that perspective, she would likely be "pointing a finger" and wondering what the women did wrong to deserve incarceration. "But that isn't the question," she states. "The question is: is the body of Christ reaching out?"
According to Kristopher, many imprisoned women believe that both society and God have given up on them. That is why it is so important that believers go into the jail to minister, she says.
"Jail is a pressure cooker," she says, "and it develops the person. But in the jail, the lady ministers that would come in to visit would often tell the inmates that, yes, the jail is like a prison and they're held captive -- but that there are more captives on the outside of jail really than there are inside of jail."
Kristopher says Christians need to shake off the chains that are preventing them from ministering to an audience desperate for the hope of Christ. And imprisoned women in particular, she shares, need to know that God has not given up on them -- and that in Christ they can be set free from their pain.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
