COLUMBIA, S.C. (ABP) — Giving Rick Warren's best-selling The Purpose Driven Life to prisoners is nothing new for church volunteers.
In fact, O.J. Simpson reportedly received a copy of the inspirational book from ministers at Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, where he recently was incarcerated on armed robbery charges.
But St. Andrews Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C., is distributing the book on a much broader scale than most groups. On Sept. 25, church members gave a copy of The Purpose Driven Life to every prisoner in the South Carolina Department of Corrections. They gave away some 24,000 copies.
Greg Barr, pastor of St. Andrews, came up with the idea after his involvement with a 30-year-old bible study group at a prison in Columbia. They had studied another of Warren's books, 40 Days of Purpose, together and wanted to expand it.
And expand it they did. In a single day, prison workers and Baptist volunteers transported thousands of books to the state's 29 prisons.
“It was a surprise for some of our folks because in a lot of the prisons, they were expecting that we'd set up tables at the chapel and let inmates come to us, but it wasn't like that,” Barr said. “They just sent us out to the dorms. It wasn't a real sterile deal — you were out there just interacting with the guys.”
Barr's pet project had plenty of inside help. Leaders at the congregation Warren pastors, Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., sold the church special prison-tailored versions of the books for $1 a copy. South Carolina corrections officials, who normally limit the number of books inmates can have at a given time, agreed to waive the limit for 30 days so that Warren's book wouldn't count against it.
On the outside, volunteers from the two local Baptist associations and the South Carolina Baptist Convention worked with Prison Fellowship and Changing the Way, a group that helps ex-offenders readjust to life outside of prison. The groups have trained their volunteers to teach Bible studies based on the book, with the hope that prisoners will return to their cell blocks and lead additional studies there.
The connection between the Purpose Driven books and Prison Fellowship goes back some years. They're both tied in with the Celebrate Recovery program, founded by a Saddleback member in 1991 and now in 3,500 prisons worldwide.
The goal is to help men and women avoid becoming repeat offenders. In New Mexico, less than 10 percent of the people who went through the Celebrate Recovery program were back in jail a year later, according to a news release from Saddleback Church. The average recidivism rate for those not involved in Celebrate Recovery is between 65 and 75 percent after one year, according to Saddleback reports.
A former inmate who works for Changing the Way Ministries, Chris Batson, said he cared deeply about the book-delivery project because it impacted him so personally.
“While I was incarcerated, I was given a copy of The Purpose Driven Life, and it changed my life by reminding me that God had not given up on me, and that he still had a plan for my life,” he said.
Walter Andrews, a member at St. Andrews, said the experience even affected his prayer life — now he can “put faces to the needs that are there” on his list, he said.
“I must say I had mixed emotions about visiting the prison, especially after I realized we would actually go into the dorms and interact with the inmates,” he said. “It turned out to be a very positive experience for me.”
It's a project that will continue, if Barr has anything to do with it. His church has purchased 35,000 books so far, and his next plan is to send thousands of them to the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice and other county jails.
He's hoping the effort will “trigger something” in surrounding states, he said.
“I'm hoping people in other states will see this and think, ‘That's not very hard. I can do that,'” he said. “I'm hoping that someone in Kentucky will hear about it or someone in Arkansas will see this and say, ‘Our church can do that.'”
Barr said he knows of several inmates who have already responded positively to the book, and he anticipates “hearing some great stories in the days ahead.”
Simpson, for one, had ample time to digest Warren's message. Before his release on bail last month, he spent several days in a 98-square-foot cell under isolation for 20 hours a day — plenty of time to get some reading in.
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