International (MNN) – When Greg Von Tobel was just six months into his walk with the Lord, someone at church approached him with a Bible Study invite. In conversation, it came out that the group would meet at a prison.
“At the time, I didn’t want any part of that,” Von Tobel recalls. “I was very pleasant to the man and said, ‘Thank you very much, but I’m not sure that’s something for me.’”
Fast forward another six months. A second church member approached Von Tobel with a different Bible Study invite. This one convened at a similar location: the county jail.
“I was not so nice to this man as I was to the first man,” Von Tobel laughs. “I just said, ‘I have no idea why you’d be interested in taking the Gospel to the inmates that have done so much wrong.’”
Then God employed what Von Tobel calls a spiritual two-by-four. During a pulpit interview, his pastor discussed a singular topic: prison ministry. That third prompting from the Lord, along with a nudge from his wife, finally did it.
Von Tobel was off to jail.
“I was arguing with the Lord as I was driving down to the King County jail about why I was doing this,” he says. “What do I have in common with individuals that have much wrong and are incarcerated?”
That night, Von Tobel says he saw the Holy Spirit fall afresh. About twenty prisoners attended the study, and several came forward during the altar call.
Von Tobel never stopped returning to prisons. Thirty-five years ago, he left the brokerage industry and stepped with his wife into full time ministry, founding Prisoners for Christ.
To Christians who face a wall of judgment, fear, or lack of commonality with inmates, Von Tobel has an invitation:
“Come and see. Come and taste what jail and prison ministry is all about. Some of our longest standing volunteers all took that step of faith at one time or another to say, ‘Ok, Lord. I have no idea why I’m doing this except that you’re nudging me to do this.’”
Before COVID-19, PFC was active in Washington State at about 40 institutions, with others in Arizona and Idaho. The pandemic closed almost every prison, and Von Tobel says it took about three years for them to reopen.
“In some states, those doors are still not open, but we continue to travail in prayer and intercession to get our volunteers back,” he says.
PFC has 3300 volunteers in 35 countries around the world. Because restrictions tend to be highest in the US, Von Tobel says opportunities in other countries’ prison systems are more abundant.
“We never want to give up on our homeland or the prison ministry here in the United States, but the opportunities in third world prisons dwarf what the opportunities are here.”
He and his team take international trips each year to preach the Gospel to prisoners and host training sessions about prison ministry for nationals.
“We’re training those on the ground because we believe that those on the ground have the best opportunity to minister to those they’re in front of,” Von Tobel says.
Here in the states, that looks like everything from intercessory teams to pen pals and volunteers helping distribute resources to prison chaplains.
Please pray for the ministry of Prisoners for Christ: that inmates would experience sincere heart transformation by the Word of God, and that many lives would be changed as a result.
If you feel led to join the effort, click here to learn about volunteer involvement, or consider donating to PFC.
“If God can use me,” Von Tobel says, “he can certainly use other believers that have no experience in this arena.”
Courtesy of Alan Bowman via Unsplash.
Header image courtesy of Pixabay.
