Prison Ministry That Changes Both Sides of the Bars

Blog by Unhurried Living Team

Prison ministry is not just something done for those who are incarcerated; it is something that happens with them, and the transformation runs in both directions. Heather Rice-Minus, President and CEO of Prison Fellowship, joined Gem Fadling on the Unhurried Living Podcast to share what 13 years of visiting prisoners has taught her about grace, leadership, and the invitation hidden inside Matthew 25. What she found inside those walls did not just clarify her calling; it reshaped how she understood the whole of her faith.

What Does Visiting Prisoners Actually Teach the Visitor?

Most people who think about visiting prisoners imagine the exchange running one way: the free person brings something to the one who is confined. That assumption dissolves quickly in Heather Rice-Minus's experience. During a fact-finding trip to Alabama's Julia Tutwiler Prison (a women's state facility with deep significance in Prison Fellowship's history), she was invited into a Bible study on women's death row by church partners from Church of the Highlands. She had braced herself for something somber. What she walked into was radiant.

Each woman was shackled when brought into the room, then unshackled to join the group. There was fruit on the table and Bibles in their hands. They made jokes with each other. They wept over Scripture together. When Heather asked what gave them hope, every answer was internally focused: being with Jesus one day, knowing I am forgiven. She walked out stunned by what the Lord was doing in people the outside world considered condemned and forgotten.

The language she reached for that night in her journal has since shaped Prison Fellowship's entire mission: you will never understand the depth of their devotion, but you get to reap the reward of their costly surrender. Visiting prisoners, she discovered, is not charity. It is encounter. It is the place where grace stops being a theological category and becomes something you can see on a human face.

The small, concrete practice worth sitting with: ask yourself where you are most insulated from need. Not to manufacture guilt, but to notice. People who understand the depth of their own need, as Heather observed in that Alabama chapel, tend to love more deeply and more freely.

If you are wondering whether there is more room in your life to move closer to what matters, explore it here.

How Does the Angel Tree Program Support Children of Incarcerated Parents?

One of the quietest costs of incarceration is what it costs the children left behind. Supporting children of incarcerated parents was one of the first issues Heather encountered when she joined Prison Fellowship, and it remains one of the most tangible ways the church outside prison walls can respond to the realities within.

The Angel Tree program was born inside Alabama's Julia Tutwiler Prison in the 1970s. A woman named Mary Kay Beard, who had been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list before her arrest, noticed how women in her unit would scrape together anything they could (commissary soap, small items pulled from next to nothing) just to send their children something at Christmas. Just to say: I have not forgotten you. Your mama loves you. After her release, Mary Kay turned that impulse into a program. Today, Angel Tree serves more than 270,000 children with an incarcerated parent every single year.

The way it works is simple and deeply human. A parent in prison signs up their child to receive a gift on their behalf. A note in the parent's own words is affixed to that gift, so the child knows where it came from. Volunteers in local churches deliver those gifts and say, plainly and personally, this is from your mom or your dad. For Heather and her family, participating in Angel Tree in their Washington DC neighborhood has meant not just delivering a gift but entering into an ongoing relationship with families who needed to know someone saw them.

Supporting children of incarcerated parents does not require expertise or proximity to a prison. It requires a willing church and a willingness to show up. Start with what is in reach.

When you are ready to explore how you might be accompanied in this kind of outward-facing life, find it here.

What Does Transformational Leadership Look Like Inside Prison Walls?

Transformational leadership is a phrase that gets used widely in ministry and organizational development circles, but Heather Rice-Minus has watched it take on specific and surprising shape inside correctional facilities. Prison Fellowship's Warden Exchange Program has been training prison wardens in transformational leadership for more than a decade. Currently, approximately 200 wardens move through each cohort together, exchanging ideas about what it actually looks like to lead in one of the most demanding institutional environments in the country.

What makes the program effective, Heather explained, is not that the leadership content is prison-specific. It is that the content is not. Transformational leadership principles drawn from outside the correctional context invite wardens to think differently about their own environment. They bring their distinct challenges to a shared framework, and they do it alongside peers who understand the particular pressures of that work. The suicide rate among corrections officers is significantly elevated. The health costs are real. Investing in these leaders is not a program feature; it is recognition that people cannot give what they do not have.

Prison Fellowship also works from the bottom up through its LEAD program, equipping graduates of its Academy and Grow programs to become change agents from within. These individuals are not waiting for release to make a difference. They are building communities of service, practicing theological formation, and demonstrating that transformation is possible where you are, not only after you leave.

The through line in all of this is the Unhurried Living conviction Gem Fadling named during the conversation: transformational leadership is not about pace; it is about presence. Heather's own leadership story (including the 2020 moment when her husband told her plainly that she had a problem with rest, and the mentor who called at exactly the right time to invite her into a rhythm of annual retreat) reflects what happens when a leader finally stops performing sustainability and starts practicing it.

Take one step today: identify one rhythm in your week, however small, that exists for the sole purpose of receiving rather than producing.

How Does the Unhurried Living Podcast Approach Prison Ministry and Burnout Together?

A Connection Worth Making, Wherever You Are

Unhurried Living serves Christian leaders across the country and around the world (pastors, ministry directors, nonprofit executives, and quietly depleted leaders who are doing good work but running on empty). The themes in this conversation with Heather Rice-Minus speak directly to that reality. The leaders most prone to skipping rest are often the ones most convinced their work is too important to pause. Heather named it plainly: it is easy to tell yourself you are doing it for the Lord. That story can keep you moving long past the point where you have anything left to give. Whether you are leading a congregation, a justice organization, or a small team, the invitation in this episode is the same. Proximity to the forgotten has a way of returning you to what is true about grace, need, and the God who is already present where you are afraid to go.

The Presence That Changes Everything

Heather Rice-Minus has spent more than 13 years inside prison walls, in policy rooms on Capitol Hill, and at the dinner table with her family on a Sabbath she is still learning to protect. What she has found in each of those places is the same thing: the grace that is most visible to people who have lost everything has a way of renewing the faith of everyone who gets close enough to witness it. Visiting prisoners is not an obligation. It is, as Heather came to understand, an invitation to encounter Christ in a place you might never have thought to look.

You do not have to figure this out alone; sign up here for the Unhurried Living weekly email and receive ongoing encouragement for the kind of leadership that begins in the soul.

Start with a 40-day devotional practice designed to slow you down from the inside out; get started here with the Unhurried Daily Email.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does Matthew 25 mean about visiting those in prison? A: Matthew 25 contains Jesus' teaching that when his followers visit the imprisoned, they are in some sense visiting him. Heather Rice-Minus describes how her understanding of this passage moved through three stages: duty, then calling, then invitation. The invitation framing sees proximity to the incarcerated not as a burden but as an opportunity to encounter Christ in an unexpected place.

Q: How do I volunteer in prison ministry? A: Prison Fellowship offers volunteer opportunities across the country, including inside prison programs and through the Angel Tree initiative, which delivers Christmas gifts to children of incarcerated parents on behalf of their mom or dad. You can also serve as a justice ambassador by advocating for fair legislation at the federal and state level. Visiting the Prison Fellowship website at prisonfellowship.org is the best starting point for finding an opportunity near you.

Q: How can I help children of incarcerated parents? A: The Angel Tree program is one of the most accessible entry points. A parent in prison signs up their child, provides a personal note, and volunteers from local churches deliver the gift directly to the child. This creates relationship, not just transaction. Prison Fellowship coordinates Angel Tree participation nationwide and can connect your church with children in your area who need someone to show up for them.

Q: What is the connection between Sabbath rest and sustainable ministry leadership? A: Heather Rice-Minus described a 2020 breaking point when her husband named her inability to stop working, even with a newborn in the home. What followed (counseling, an annual women's retreat, a sacred family dinner table, and a committed Sabbath practice) reflects what Unhurried Living teaches consistently: rest is not the reward for finished work. It is the condition that makes good work possible over a lifetime.

Q: What is Prison Fellowship's Warden Exchange Program? A: The Warden Exchange Program is a multi-phase leadership development initiative that trains correctional facility wardens in transformational leadership. Currently running cohorts of approximately 200 wardens at a time, the program combines online learning, peer exchange among correctional leaders from different states, and a vision-planning phase supported by an advisory panel of retired corrections executives. The program reflects Prison Fellowship's conviction that lasting change in prison culture must be addressed from both the top down and the bottom up.