“In any other situation, those would have been fighting words, but God broke my heart,” Close says. “I wanted people to be able to tell. So from that point on, I tried to live my life so people can tell.”
Close was eventually transferred to Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility in Cañon City. One of the chaplains, Dan Matsche, played bass at Woodmen Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs. He would bring staff members and the worship team into the prison for special events and began to introduce them to Close. He wanted to make sure that if Close ever did get out, he’d have a home and somewhere to go.
After five years in Territorial, in 2011 the Colorado Supreme Court reviewed Close’s case and reduced his sentence. He went from thinking he was going to die in prison to sitting at home in six weeks. God cleared the way so that he was allowed to break normal parole protocol, and he began coordinating the prison ministry at Woodmen. On top of that, he is now associate chaplain at Limon, the very place where he spent the majority of his prison sentence. He’s been out of prison for eight years and has been spearheading statewide prison aftercare efforts ever since.
A NEW PRISON CAMPUS
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2018, volunteers from Woodmen held a worship service in the yard at Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in Ordway, led by Ron DeLorenzo. Close and others had been encouraging Woodmen lead pastor Josh Lindstrom to visit the prison, and for various reasons it hadn’t worked out. That day he was finally free to visit, and what he saw inspired him.
The following Sunday, Lindstrom got up on stage and told all 6,000 people watching the simulcast from Woodmen’s campuses, “It’s like we have a campus and a de facto campus pastor in the prison,” essentially putting the onus on Close and the prison ministry team to realize the vision of making Ark Valley an official campus.
“We began to ask ourselves, apart from these men being incarcerated, how different would they be from any of our other campuses?” Lindstrom says. “As our elders, staff and the men of Ark Valley prayed about it, it was clear to us that this was a step we all wanted to take.” Close spent the next several months working with the Colorado Department of Corrections and the ministry team inside the prison to make the dream a reality.
In August 2018, Ark Valley became an official campus under the umbrella of Woodmen Valley Chapel. On Saturdays, Close takes a team of volunteers to Ark Valley to worship with the inmates. Each of the Woodmen campuses has a unique field guide, and recently the 10 inmates on the Ark Valley lead team worked with the prison ministry staff at Woodmen to revamp their programming. They created prayer groups and pod-based community groups that often are better attended than the Saturday services. Close jokes that the Ark Valley inmate-led campus runs just like any other Woodmen campus except there’s no children’s ministry and no mission trips.
Since its launch, the new campus has already been bearing fruit. Around 500 men showed up for the Ark Valley campus launch event in the prison yard. Joe was one of them.
Joe was an ex-gang leader, covered in tattoos—including horns on his forehead. He doesn’t know why he went to the yard event launch, other than it was held outdoors on a sunny day. Lindstrom gave the benediction and said, “We’re going to be here every Saturday. We want you to belong to something. Society has thrown you out, but Christ doesn’t throw you out, and neither will we.”
“When Joe heard Josh preach and that the reason we were there was to create belonging and community, it resonated with him,” Close says.
Joe kept coming to events until he was released. One of the Woodmen prison staff began bringing Joe to church on Sundays, helping him fix his bicycle and surrounding him with Christian fellowship. Joe eventually came to Christ and started plugging in at Woodmen where he’s thriving.
“Joe was a success story of how Christ changes lives. He feels very much a part Woodmen. Woodmen is his home,” Close says. “Our campuses all roar when they hear about him. They love hearing his story.”
A RIPPLE OF CHANGE
Like Close, Stephen Wilson, pastor of prison ministries at Gateway Church based in Southlake, Texas, can speak to residents of prisons from the perspective of someone who has served time.
Wilson, formerly a teacher and coach, turned himself in to the police and served what he calls a 12-year sentence (one year in prison, one year on parole and 10 years registered as a sex offender) for attempted indecency with a child due to an inappropriate relationship with one of his high school students.
Wilson grew up in a Southern Baptist church, and had head knowledge of the Bible, but had never submitted his life to Christ. That changed when he went to the county prison to serve his time and saw fellow residents holding hands and praying in a prayer circle. “It blew me away. I’d never thought about those things happening in prison,” Wilson says. “So I just said, ‘OK, God, I get it. When I get out, I’m going to come back and reach those guys just like that.’”
After Wilson was released, he got an M.Div. at Liberty University and started a nonprofit called G3 Prison Ministries to reach prisoners with the Word of God. G3 partnered with Gateway to take volunteer teams into prisons in the state of Texas, focusing on strengthening the families of prisoners.
“It’s all about reentry and the ripple effect of guys who get out and change their families, churches and communities,” Wilson says. “It’s amazing to watch the ripple effect of guys who accept Christ in prison.”
DISCIPLING A ‘CAPTIVE AUDIENCE’
After seven years of partnership, Gateway brought G3 under its umbrella with the idea of planting a church inside the walls of the Coffield Unit prison in unincorporated Anderson County.
The Texas megachurch with multiple campuses has a robust volunteer training program and an endless stream of curriculum to draw upon. Wilson simply burned the training materials onto DVDs and used it to train residents of Coffield the same way he would train volunteers and ministry staff at any other Gateway campus. Wilson sees this as key: Making residents feel as if they’re a part of Gateway Church.