RRSpin - Jailhouse salvation: Ministers reach out to inmates

Friday, 11 September 2015 15:02

Jailhouse salvation: Ministers reach out to inmates ^Featured

Written by Lance Martin

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Hendricks prepares to baptize Smallwood.

Pastor Lawrence Hendricks doesn't judge the intentions.

He only follows the commands of the scriptures to minister to all — including those incarcerated.

Today he was at the Halifax County Detention Center with his portable baptismal pool in the sally port, gospel music playing on a boombox and a few lay people with him for the baptism of Melek Smallwood, a 17-year-old charged with robbery with a dangerous weapon in the Premier Boulevard Subway heist in December.

The pastor of Weldon Bible College, Hendricks began his jailhouse ministry about two years ago and is one of a group of five who regularly visit the county jail.

“My reward for the service is the joy I get out of seeing the guys accept Christ,” said Hendricks, who before moving back to Halifax County was a longtime minister in New York. “There's nothing else and the difference it makes. There's more rejoicing when one sinner is saved than 99 righteous people.”

Hendricks takes Matthew 25 literally. “Jesus said when you visit prisons you're visiting me.”

The pastor says it's hard to judge sincerity when an inmate accepts the teachings of scriptures. “Only God knows the heart. If a person answers the call for God to come into their heart, we baptize them.”

Hendricks goes through the cellblocks and whoever is touched to talk to him he visits. “The first thing is I preach Christ. The next thing is baptism. It's what Jesus commands us to do.”

Many prisoners simply have no hope left, he says. “When you look at it, you've got 17-year-olds charged with murder in here. The Bible gives them hope, not to drop the charges, but because Christ's death on the cross gives us hope.”

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There is no particular conversion that sticks out in the two years he has been ministering. “When any young man comes to accept Christ, that's my joy.”

For Smallwood, who agreed to be interviewed and photographed per a request by rrspin.com made through the Halifax County Sheriff's Office, being baptized was something he believed he needed to do. “I wanted to change. Everything ain't like people think. I wasn't living good. I got kicked out of my mama's house.”

He says his decision to get baptized has nothing to do with his case, for which he is scheduled to appear in court in January. “I wasn't even thinking about the judge.”

At the time of the robbery he was trying to complete the requirements for his general equivalency diploma. He says he realizes that will be his first goal when court proceedings are over. “I want to talk to kids. It's always been my dream. I know I will have to go back to school.”

Smallwood said when he saw the minister making his weekly rounds, he felt compelled to talk to him. “I just wanted to hear what he had to say.”

Sheriff Wes Tripp is continuing the detention center ministry program which was started by former Sheriff Jeff Frazier. This was the sixth baptism held in the sally port. There were five last month.

“The inmates ask for the ministers,” Tripp said. “We and the ministers don't force anything. It's part of the services we provide.”

The sheriff, like Hendricks, doesn't judge the intentions of the inmates who want baptism. “No one is perfect. There was only one perfect person that walked this earth well over 2,000 years ago and that was Jesus Christ. I am not the judge of anyone who seeks forgiveness. I believe all sins can be forgiven except when you deny Christ.”

Read 6722 times Last modified on Friday, 11 September 2015 15:29