New Journey, The

Don't Follow Me

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Aaron Chancy (Host), Cleveland Houser

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Series Code: TNJ

Program Code: TNJ000013


00:01 The following program discusses sensitive issues.
00:03 Parents are cautioned that some material
00:05 may be too candid for younger children.
00:11 Welcome to "The New Journey,"
00:13 the program where we meet real life people
00:15 with real life testimonies,
00:16 with real life working ministries for Jesus.
00:19 Today, we'll meet a man that heads up a program entitled
00:21 "Don't follow me."
00:23 So many times in life we're caught following someone
00:25 or something which may or may not always lead us
00:28 in the right direction.
00:30 In today's program we'll uncover
00:32 the "who" of who we should spend our time
00:34 following and emulating
00:36 as well as how this relates to prison ministries.
00:38 I'm your host Aaron Chancy.
00:40 Come join us on The New Journey.
01:11 Welcome back to The New Journey.
01:13 Today, we have a guest
01:15 by the name of Dr. Cleveland Houser.
01:16 Dr. Cleveland Houser, we like to thank you
01:18 for being on the program.
01:19 It's my pleasure to be with you today.
01:21 Amen, amen.
01:22 We want to jump right into our programming for today.
01:26 You know, we talk about following people,
01:28 don't follow me or follow me, things like that.
01:30 In actual reality in life, who should we spend
01:33 most of our time following?
01:35 Of course without question, we should follow Jesus Christ.
01:37 Oh, yeah.
01:38 He is the way and if we follow Him,
01:41 certainly our path will be a lot smoother.
01:44 Oh, yeah.
01:45 And then we wouldn't fall into a lot of the pitfall
01:49 that we fall into...
01:50 Okay.
01:51 We won't get caught up in quagmires.
01:53 Amen. I like that word quagmires.
01:56 That's a good word.
01:57 Now, you've been involved in prison ministries for how long?
02:01 I worked for approximately 27 years I--
02:04 It wasn't really my desire to get into prison ministry
02:08 I have no intimation...
02:10 Okay.
02:11 Any reason to want to get into it.
02:14 Wow.
02:15 But after leaving the pastoral ministry,
02:18 I came to Nashville and I was looking for an employment
02:23 and of course every thing that I tried to get into,
02:27 seemed like the Lord closed the doors.
02:28 Okay.
02:29 And I went to the state employment office
02:32 and they had a position open called psychiatric chaplain 1.
02:37 Okay.
02:38 And I filled out an application and about two weeks later
02:42 the prison called me and set up an interview
02:48 and actually the interview process had been closed.
02:51 Okay.
02:52 Closed and so when the Lord opened it up for me,
02:59 I just have to say Him,
03:00 Lord and said in southern common vernacular,
03:03 Lord, You don't show it out again.
03:06 And so I knew that that job was for me
03:09 and very, very next day the senior chaplain called me
03:13 and told me that he'd like for me
03:15 to become a part of the chaplain's staff
03:18 in state prison.
03:19 Okay.
03:20 So how long were you involved with the,
03:22 as a chaplain in the TDOC
03:24 Tennessee Department of Correction.
03:25 I've spent 16 years as chaplain for TDOC
03:30 and after that I took an early retirement
03:33 because Elder J. Alfred Johnson,
03:36 the director of Adult Ministries
03:38 for North American division.
03:40 Okay.
03:41 Asked me to come and to be the prison ministry
03:44 training consultant, because he had absolutely no idea
03:48 of what to do.
03:50 And so I was happy for the privilege and it has opened up
03:54 doors for me to travel all across the United States,
03:57 and Canada and to teach people.
03:59 It's amazing where God will take you in His work.
04:00 It is. Oh, yeah.
04:02 It's very amazing.
04:03 Now working with the North American division
04:04 of Seventh-day Adventist, you said that you do
04:07 consulting and training.
04:08 What's all involved in this consulting and training?
04:10 Consulting and training involve teaching church members
04:15 how to work with prison inmates.
04:16 Okay.
04:18 How to set up transitional houses?
04:21 How to work with their families of inmates?
04:23 How to work with the children, the juveniles?
04:27 And also I do all underwriting and research
04:30 for prison ministry for the North American division.
04:34 So do you go to churches and you train people,
04:37 do you go to communities, what's the process?
04:40 Where do you go to train folks out?
04:41 I go churches and in fact I just came back from Hawaii.
04:45 Oh, wow.
04:46 I do training for prison ministry.
04:49 Okay.
04:50 So it's-- if it's a church or if it's a conference
04:53 or if it's some leadership seminars
04:57 or something of that nature,
04:59 then Elder Johnson sends me
05:02 to do to prison ministry training for them.
05:04 Okay, okay. Praise the Lord.
05:06 I want to talk a little bit about your program
05:08 "Don't Follow Me."
05:09 How and when was Don't Follow Me started?
05:13 Don't Follow Me was started in 1988.
05:17 Okay.
05:18 And the way that it got started,
05:21 when I look in our communities,
05:25 young people were getting involved
05:27 in so many acts of violence
05:29 and I was looking in juvenile detention,
05:32 you got 65,000 there, you have 2,200 in adult prisons.
05:39 You got 3,600 in adult jails and...
05:43 Okay.
05:44 And homicide, the leading cause of death
05:46 among young people between 5 and 15.
05:50 Wow.
05:51 And I said something got to be done
05:53 because the guys in prison,
05:55 they are trying to get out and the children...
05:57 They are going right in.
05:58 They're trying to tear the walls down to get inside.
06:00 Yeah.
06:02 And so I contemplated and the name came,
06:05 Don't Follow Me, I walked that way before.
06:08 Okay, okay.
06:09 So the purpose of your program was basically to prevent people
06:13 from getting incarcerated.
06:15 You chose the name, Don't Follow Me
06:17 because you didn't want people
06:18 to follow bad examples, correct?
06:20 That's correct.
06:21 Okay, now your employees per se are very interesting people.
06:25 I went on your website and I've looked
06:27 at some of your "employees."
06:30 Who do you use in this work in Don't Follow Me,
06:32 in the Don't Follow Me program?
06:34 Initially until 1999 I used primarily inmates
06:41 who are incarcerated.
06:42 Okay.
06:44 The warden, then the commissioner of correction
06:46 gave me the privilege to take inmates
06:49 all across the state of Tennessee.
06:51 Wow.
06:52 And sometimes I would have 15 inmates about myself,
06:55 we went to high schools, communities...
06:57 Were they still incarcerated at that time?
06:58 They were still incarcerated.
07:00 And they were following you throughout Tennessee...
07:02 They were following me throughout Tennessee.
07:03 That's amazing.
07:04 And thing about it, they protected the program.
07:07 They did not allow anyone to mess up the program
07:09 because it was a privilege.
07:11 Yeah, yeah.
07:12 For them to be able get out and to talk to people
07:15 and to try to keep them from following in their footsteps.
07:19 It's awesome program, but on the outside since 99,
07:23 I use ex-offenders.
07:25 And minimum I have about 11 in the base group.
07:30 Okay.
07:31 Six of them are Seventh-day Adventists
07:33 and they have joined the church, we have...
07:35 Through the prison ministries.
07:36 Through prison ministry. Okay.
07:38 And currently At Hillcrest they serve as deacons,
07:42 elders, director of Men's Ministry,
07:45 youth Sabbath school teachers,
07:46 they're doing a tremendous job...
07:49 And I call, what I call is
07:54 engage with the varsities.
07:57 Okay.
07:58 In which you allowed them to talk about their situation
08:01 through young people and is, and of course is totally
08:05 disclosing out themselves.
08:07 And telling everything about, and I say to them,
08:10 you have to totally disclose yourself
08:13 in order to help someone else.
08:15 And through this disclosure, it not only helps to cure
08:19 to those who are listening but it also helps them.
08:22 Because the more that they talk about it,
08:25 the more it gets out of their system
08:26 and they began to look at positive ways
08:29 in which to live and so far that's why in my base group
08:34 I have a 100% out of people who are involved
08:40 who have not gone back to prison.
08:42 Okay, that's good, very, very good statistics.
08:45 Now, have you noticed that in using, like before 1999,
08:50 using the current inmates
08:51 and after 1999 using ex-offenders,
08:54 have you seen a great success rate
08:56 in using them to speak out
08:58 to ones that have not been incarcerated before?
09:01 All right, I have, I've seen a great success rate.
09:04 And not only to speak out to those individuals,
09:08 but the thing that amazes me
09:12 is that USA Today stated
09:16 Don't Follow Me as one of the top ten drug busters
09:19 in the United States of America.
09:20 Wow. Amen.
09:21 The American Black Journal Association,
09:24 we won first place as the best news documentary.
09:29 The Frees Foundation said that we were the best
09:32 innovative group in middle Tennessee
09:34 in which we won a first place.
09:36 Okay.
09:37 And teachers say that we had a best program
09:39 that has ever entered a school system.
09:41 And thing that happens when we go into the school system,
09:45 no matter how tough the children try to be
09:48 that when we're there, they're quiet as a mouse.
09:51 Okay.
09:52 Now in a few seconds we're gonna get to the youth.
09:54 We're gonna transition into talking about the youth
09:56 in a few minutes.
09:57 I want to know, can people from other states
10:01 get involved with DFM, Don't Follow Me
10:04 or is it just a state wide thing?
10:07 Can they become a member? How does that work?
10:09 Well, people can become a member in a way,
10:12 so what I am suggesting is that
10:14 that Chapters of Don't Follow Me
10:16 be started all across the nation.
10:18 It's a program that can be replicated.
10:21 And if you follow our bylaws and guidelines
10:26 that we have set up then the program will vary,
10:29 so we believe that using ex-offenders
10:33 is the best way about this
10:37 is because ex-offenders really don't have to attend
10:40 pen state or you know University of Michigan,
10:44 they already have a PhD in the streets.
10:47 Yeah, that's true. That is true.
10:48 You know, if you talk about drug dealing,
10:50 they are street pharmacist.
10:51 Yeah. They know all of this stuff.
10:53 And so if you utilize people in that way,
10:57 then what we do is we stop, you know,
11:00 proliferation or recidivism among them
11:04 because, you know, it costs us right now,
11:06 it costs us between 22 and $ 60,000 a year
11:10 to keep one man locked up.
11:12 And think about the economic grain
11:14 that is happening to the community.
11:16 Your pocket book and my pocket book
11:18 because we're paying the taxes for them to be locked up.
11:21 Wow.
11:22 So it makes all the sense in the world to me
11:25 to use ex-offenders, to reach other ex-offenders
11:28 and to slowdown the proliferation of incarceration
11:33 among those who get out as well as to retard
11:37 the progress of young people who are trying to get in
11:40 by the lifestyle that they are living.
11:42 You know one thing that I find interesting,
11:43 little side note story of myself.
11:46 One time I was incarcerated when I was 17
11:48 and I got released and I went to check my mail one day
11:52 and in the mail was a bill for me staying in jail.
11:55 I was in jail for two and half months
11:56 and they sent me a bill for over $2,000
12:00 as if I needed to pay some rent for being in the county jail.
12:03 You know I didn't necessarily asked to be there
12:05 but I did deserved to be there.
12:07 You know what I want to do right now is transition over
12:10 to talking to the-- you're talking about the youth.
12:12 On your website you have some very interesting information
12:14 about the youth and you look around
12:16 at the young people today.
12:18 You know they are not interested in spiritual things.
12:20 They are mainly interested in anything
12:22 that's entertaining them.
12:23 What do you believe are some key factors
12:26 in keeping young people from ever entering the system?
12:29 And I think there are several factors.
12:32 One I think that relationship with God and attending church
12:37 and being involved in church
12:38 and youth activities that a church has.
12:42 I think a strong family ties with mom and dad in home.
12:47 It usually helps out a lot.
12:50 I think education is another key factor.
12:53 Okay.
12:54 Because what I have noticed in prison system is that
12:58 82% of the guys who are in prison are guys
13:02 who dropout of high school from a tenth grade batch.
13:05 And that's true.
13:06 So either person has to get an education,
13:09 if you don't plan to get an education,
13:11 then what you do, you plan to go to jail primarily
13:14 because you got to be able to support yourself.
13:17 Yeah, yeah.
13:18 And people just not giving jobs if you're not educated.
13:21 You got to have something to offer to bring to the table,
13:23 so I think education is a key thing
13:27 for young people staying out of prison.
13:29 Okay, you know, that's very true because you know
13:32 when I was younger, you know,
13:34 I was pretty much through a school after the tenth grade,
13:36 you know, I don't even really know how I made it
13:38 through the tenth grade because, you know,
13:39 I really hardly ever went to school.
13:41 And, you know, I was so involved in criminal activities
13:44 and things like that, that I wasn't thinking
13:46 about education at that point.
13:47 All I was thinking about was that mighty dollar,
13:49 that fast money, how quick I could get it.
13:51 And I sat back and I looked at, you know, people that will work
13:54 full time and they always just seem so stressed out
13:57 and, you know, it seems like you work two weeks for a check
14:00 and it's just never makes do.
14:02 And, you know, the fast money plays a big, big factor
14:05 to people, to young people especially,
14:07 we see it all the time.
14:09 What do you believe are some things that attract
14:12 the young people to that negative type of lifestyle?
14:15 Well, I think there are a number of things
14:18 that probably attract them.
14:22 Noticing fact that there is a culture
14:28 that they are trying to fit in
14:31 and if you notice that young people,
14:34 even as early as a third grade,
14:36 there's starting to be a shift especially in guys.
14:40 It seem like up to the third grade they would be embraced
14:43 by the teachers in preschool and in third grade,
14:48 fourth grade they start drifting
14:50 and they start staying out of school,
14:52 they get in trouble, they've been put in school suspension
14:56 and next thing you go to the principal office
14:58 and the next thing you expel and next thing
15:00 you go to the alternative school, alternative to work
15:04 and so then they got to find a way to survive.
15:08 So what do they start doing?
15:11 They look at people who, other kids who are wearing
15:13 designer tennis shoe, designer clothes
15:17 and so they're going to do whatever they can.
15:20 To get them so what do they get to do?
15:22 They get involved in gangs. Yeah.
15:24 They get involved in a drug culture, start selling drugs.
15:27 And all of these things, you know, play a...
15:32 Some key factors.
15:33 Important factor in when a person stays
15:35 straight come into the prison system.
15:38 Now what young people don't realize a lot of time
15:41 is that when people deal drug, and you look at a drug dealer
15:45 he is standing on the corner and dealing drugs now,
15:47 six months later where is he?
15:50 He is incarcerated or dead.
15:52 Yeah are dead, so you really when you only have two choices.
15:56 Yeah, that is true.
15:57 Either that's prison or a grave yard,
15:59 so which one is attractive to you?
16:00 So we try, you know, those are so many things
16:03 that young people face as factors.
16:06 Now their poverty...
16:09 Yeah, poverty. Socioeconomic factors.
16:12 These are things that cause young people to get in trouble
16:15 because they're trying to survive.
16:17 Yeah, yeah, that's true.
16:18 Then you have fathers who are locked up in prison.
16:22 Yeah, so there's no father at home.
16:24 No father in home to provide the guidance for them.
16:28 In fact and when I even look at black families,
16:32 62% of black families are run by single parents.
16:36 And so what happen is that the mom has to be androgynous.
16:39 Yeah, yeah.
16:40 That means she got to be both the mom and the dad.
16:43 Yeah.
16:44 And so in her trying to take care of the kids,
16:47 she may have to get out and work two jobs.
16:49 Yeah, two and three jobs, yeah.
16:50 But then who is there to give them guidance.
16:53 Right, at the end time, they have to raise themselves.
16:56 And so they start doing things that, you know,
16:59 a mom would not approve, I mean next day you know
17:01 they're in some deep water that they can't get out of.
17:05 And then you start looking at the environment
17:10 that they are in.
17:11 Where you got to do what you got to do to survive.
17:14 Yeah, get it how you live basically.
17:16 Right and if, you know, you got to fight, you got to fight.
17:19 Yeah. You got to do something.
17:21 You got to pack, then take a gun, you had to take a gun.
17:25 And, you know, and one of the things
17:27 that I didn't mentioned earlier, you know,
17:28 that kids take 270,000 guns to school every day.
17:34 Wow.
17:35 And so everybody basically have a gun so young people now
17:40 start to taking their turf, they have the macho image
17:44 that they got to take care of,
17:45 so if you step on the guy's toe,
17:48 you know, because of his image he may pull the gun out
17:51 and shoots you there.
17:52 Back in your day it might have been little hand scuffle
17:54 or something like that.
17:55 These days now, you know, young people pulling out guns
17:58 and not just little hand guns.
18:00 You know, I know people that have real big assault rifles
18:03 and things like that, that only the military
18:05 or the police are supposed to have.
18:07 And these young people have these things
18:09 and instead of fighting because they don't want to dirty up
18:12 their outfit or anything like that.
18:13 They see it's better just to, let me just end the life,
18:16 you know, which is not good at all.
18:18 You know, another key factor that I noticed
18:21 which there are many more music,
18:24 so many different things, but one I see is
18:26 well which was true of my life
18:27 was lack of goals in the life.
18:29 Lack of, lack of wanting to be somewhere.
18:32 You hear many people especially those that grow up
18:35 start playing in the NBA, NFL or whatever it may be,
18:38 they say, you know, there were lot of things
18:40 going on in my area, I grew up in a rough, rough area
18:43 inner city Chicago, whatever it may be.
18:46 But they say, you know, what, I had a focus,
18:48 I wanted to play ball, I wanted to get out of the ghetto.
18:50 I wanted to get my mom out of the ghetto.
18:52 I wanted to get my family out of ghetto,
18:54 and they held onto that focus.
18:56 But for me I know growing up,
18:58 I had the dreams of the basketball and the football
19:00 just like, you know, a lot of young African-American males
19:02 want to play sports, same thing for me.
19:05 And as soon as those goals got crushed,
19:08 it was like what else do I do?
19:10 You know what else is there in life to do?
19:11 I don't want to be a school teacher.
19:13 I don't want to be a firefighter.
19:14 Those things just had no appeal to me.
19:16 So the only other thing was to do was to resort to crime,
19:19 that was it.
19:20 And because of lack of goals many young people
19:23 are going that route as well.
19:25 Right.
19:26 You know how effective would you say your work has been
19:28 among the youth?
19:29 I think my work has been greatly effective among youth
19:33 and when I started looking at certain things
19:37 that has transpired in all of the accolades
19:40 that we have gotten, you know, for the work
19:42 that we do among youth and in fact
19:44 the governor cited me for being a leader
19:48 against the war on drugs in the state of Tennessee.
19:51 Okay.
19:52 But I know that we've done a lot of good things
19:55 to help the young people and especially
19:57 we went to a school once and there was a young person
19:59 that had half a kilo of cocaine.
20:02 And he said I am getting into the big time drug business.
20:05 Sure enough he would have a half a key, wow.
20:06 And so after we finished talking to him,
20:10 he flushed it all down the toilet of school.
20:13 And then he finished school.
20:16 Okay.
20:17 And went on to do well in his life.
20:18 That's great.
20:19 And we've had stories where kids will come up to us
20:22 in the malls, I remember you, you were, "Don't Follow Me."
20:26 And so, well, I was acting up in school,
20:29 but I have finished school.
20:31 Amen.
20:32 I got a job, you know, I am going to college
20:35 and when they tell us those things like that we know
20:38 that our job has been effective.
20:40 Okay, you know, that's very important what you said.
20:43 Many viewers may not understand drug terminology,
20:46 half a key or key or anything like that.
20:49 Because I spent time in a drug world, I know what that is.
20:51 And for a young person to flush that amount of drugs
20:54 which equals thousands of dollars,
20:56 that was big on his part,
20:58 that you had to make a very, very big impact
21:00 for that young man to be able to go ahead
21:02 and do that and flush that thousands of dollars
21:05 down the toilet.
21:06 That was really impactful.
21:08 Now, what I want to do is switch gears a little bit more.
21:10 On your website you talk about
21:12 getting involved in prison ministries.
21:15 For those who desire to get involved in prison ministries,
21:18 what are some of the do's and the don'ts of the work,
21:20 of going inside the prisons?
21:21 Okay, there're several don'ts and several do's.
21:24 Okay, talk about those?
21:26 Don'ts we suggest that
21:28 you don't carry anything into prison.
21:31 You don't carry anything out of the prison.
21:33 Okay.
21:35 No exchange of the money, no exchange of the telephones,
21:39 be yourself.
21:40 Okay.
21:41 Be honest, be frank and be fair.
21:44 Now, inmate doesn't care about you being frank with him
21:47 as long you're honest.
21:49 Don't compromise, don't promise something
21:51 that you can't do and you know that you can't do.
21:54 Follow the policy of the prison and if you are female
22:00 and you're working inside, avoid getting into
22:03 intimate relationships with the inmates.
22:07 Because when you're working in the prison ministry program,
22:11 if you get involved with the man in the prison,
22:16 then what it does,
22:18 it puts the prison ministry program in danger.
22:20 Yeah, it does. They can be scrapped.
22:22 So we suggest that if you are going to get involved
22:26 with someone, then please get off of the program.
22:29 And if they don't get off, we just tell the program leader
22:33 that you need to make sure that the person is dismissed
22:37 from the program so that it won't keep you from coming in.
22:39 Okay, you know, you said something very important.
22:42 You said don't bring anything into the prisons
22:44 that are not supposed to be there.
22:46 You know, I've seen so many and heard so many stories
22:48 of people that have brought drugs in for inmates,
22:51 different things like that.
22:52 And in turn while they are bringing things in,
22:54 they themselves may get caught and catch a charge themselves.
22:58 Right and case in point there was one gentleman
23:02 he had his mother bringing in drugs in pretty big baskets.
23:05 She hide it down into bottom of the chest,
23:08 ice and food in there
23:10 and she had drugs down underneath.
23:14 And so when she went out the gate,
23:16 well, before she got into the prison
23:19 they found the drugs in there,
23:21 so he called metro and she went to jail.
23:24 And I think it was really bad when a guy would
23:26 put his mother in that kind of position.
23:29 Yeah, yeah.
23:30 And of course, drugs get into prison in all kinds of ways,
23:32 the employees bring them in there
23:34 and they can put them in the baby diapers...
23:36 Yeah, that's true.
23:37 Cut cardboard boxes and put cocaine.
23:41 There is not a prison in United States
23:44 I don't care if he is trying to supermax of where it is,
23:48 guys on the inside gonna hold to drugs and alcohol.
23:53 And in fact at Tennessee State Prison there was a guy
23:57 who had a gun on death row.
24:00 Now, that's dangerous.
24:01 Yeah and I worked death row for,
24:03 you know, for about five years.
24:05 Sitting in the jail cell with some of the most
24:07 notorious killers in the state of Tennessee,
24:10 just studying the Bible, singing songs,
24:12 do a little seminars and different things with them.
24:16 Okay.
24:17 And so they enjoyed me doing that and in fact
24:19 I baptized a gentleman on death row
24:22 who's still an Adventist today.
24:24 Wow. Amen, amen.
24:25 With the ministry on there and so I've found that in working
24:29 with inmates in prison that if you treat them with dignity...
24:33 Yeah, yeah with respect.
24:34 Respect, they will respect you...
24:37 And that's why in 1985 they had a prison riot
24:41 and the inmates told me before--
24:43 they knew that they were gonna riot.
24:45 And they told me that look, you don't have to worry
24:48 about a thing.
24:49 If nobody else get out of this prison,
24:51 you're going to get out.
24:52 Wow.
24:53 I watched him tear up and burn up
24:54 and I stood on chapel steps
24:57 and then they walked me to the gates.
24:59 They held ten of my co-workers hostage.
25:01 So the inmates walked you to the gate.
25:03 They walked me to the gate. Wow.
25:05 They told me all the time we're gonna make sure
25:07 that you get out.
25:08 My thing in working with inmates and people
25:12 who are less fortunate in down front
25:14 is that at the end of the day when Jesus return,
25:19 I want to be saved into God's kingdom.
25:21 I don't want anything to hinder me from being saved.
25:25 Amen, true indeed, true indeed.
25:26 Now I want to ask you a real quick question.
25:30 You've taught people how to get involved in prison ministries
25:33 without ever going inside of the prisons.
25:35 Can you speak on that for few moments?
25:37 Sure, there are several ways to get involved, you know,
25:42 and a lot of people are scared to go inside of the prison
25:44 because they are scared of hearing those doors
25:47 hit that steel behind him real hard.
25:49 Yeah.
25:50 But you can get involved with van ministry
25:53 where you are transporting the families of men
25:57 who are locked up may be once a month.
26:00 Okay.
26:01 And you don't have to go inside the prison,
26:03 you just drop them off at the gate.
26:05 And you keep records and you have people to work
26:07 with toiletry ministries.
26:10 Lot of men and women don't have money to buy personal items.
26:15 Clothing ministry and all men have basically
26:18 when they are coming out of prison
26:19 it would be designer clothes which will have like
26:22 Tennessee Department of Correction on the back.
26:24 Okay. And they need clothes.
26:26 Transition housing that you can set up,
26:29 so they will have place to stay
26:30 when they get out outside of the prison.
26:33 Then you have children's ministry where you provide
26:37 things for inmate's families.
26:39 And children primarily and of course you have
26:42 support ministries where woman can come
26:45 and you can work with them and help them
26:49 to be able to make the transition during the time
26:53 that their loved ones are locked up
26:55 because when our loved one is locked up in prison,
26:58 also will be the family.
27:00 The family is on the time.
27:01 Yeah, family is on the time as well.
27:02 And those are just some, while there are several more
27:04 that they can do.
27:06 And it doesn't require you to go inside of the prison.
27:08 So that' why I say that there is no church,
27:11 nowhere under the sun that has an excuse
27:14 for not doing prison ministry.
27:15 Amen, amen.
27:16 At this point what I want you to do
27:18 is provide your website information,
27:20 provide your contact information.
27:22 So that people that are desiring
27:23 to get in prison ministries,
27:25 they can contact you and have you come to their church
27:27 and share this information with them.
27:29 Okay, if you desire for me to come to your church
27:32 and to teach you how to get involved in prison ministries,
27:38 please go to my website
27:40 www.dontfollowmeinc.org
27:46 And do you want to provide a phone number for the viewers?
27:49 If you want to call me, 615-818-9846.
27:55 Again that's 615-818-9846.
28:00 Amen, thank you so much Dr. Houser.
28:02 Viewer you've been watching The New Journey program.
28:05 You've learned some information,
28:07 maybe you want to get involved in prison ministries,
28:09 we encourage you to do so.
28:12 Check the website out, call the phone number,
28:14 have them come to your church and be trained.
28:16 Thank you for joining The New Journey.
28:18 Join us next time. Be blessed.


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Revised 2015-04-27