Correctional Chaplaincy

In my role as the Mustard Seed’s Community Correctional Chaplain, I have the weekly privilege of meeting with inmates at an Edmonton area minimum-security prison.  Many of the men I meet are finishing their prison sentences and preparing to return to community life.  This transition can be tough, full of difficult questions and emotions. 

On a recent visit, I spoke with ‘Pete’, a man who about to undergo this transition.  Fortunately, Pete meets each week with a Mustard Seed mentor.  He and his mentor are able to explore some of the reasons why he ended up in prison, and they can talk through the anxieties, frustrations, and fears that inevitably come with leaving prison. 

Pete told me that, by sharing his journey with his mentor, he has been able to heal some of his own wounds that ultimately led to prison, and feels prepared to start healing the wounds caused by his crime.  Not only that, but Pete has begun regularly attending a local church with The Mustard Seed, where he feels welcomed by a life-giving Christian community and by the God it worships. 

As Pete updated me on his life, I was struck by the unexpected way that God operates in the world.  The mentor’s simple act of listening to someone – someone who had been told he was not worth listening to – is helping turn a cycle of wrong-doing and violence into healing and restoration. 

At the Mustard Seed, we hope to be a community where healing can happen, where folks who find themselves on our city’s street or in our country’s prisons can be welcomed as people bearing Christ’s image - no longer simply people with addictions or prison records or without a home, but “dear brothers and sisters in the Lord” (Philemon 16).

- Jonathan