Something happened Sunday at First Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga that has happened more than 1,000 times in the church’s 176 year history: new members were received into the fellowship. What made this particular Sunday different from all those which preceded it was that three of the new members who joined are men presently serving life sentences at Walker State Faith and Character Based Prison in Rock Spring.
While this isn’t the first time that prisoners who are serving sentences are welcomed into a congregation as members in good standing while still incarcerated, it is the first time it has happened at First Presbyterian Church. Mark Casson, an elder at First Presbyterian who also serves as the denomination’s director of Prison Ministry, and himself a former prisoner, says, “I hope that what has been happening at First Presbyterian Church over the past four years as it pertains to prisoners becomes a model for mercy to prisoners throughout the land.”
The three men who were welcomed into membership have been long-time mentoring partners with three men from First Pres. In late 2011, the church, at the request of prison officials, created the all-volunteer Community Mentoring Ministry with a view to raise mentors to walk “life-on-life” with every prisoner desiring a mentor relationship. Mentoring began in June of 2012 when the first 12 men began visiting prisoners about the time the prison was transitioning over to a Faith and Character Based facility, the first and only one of its kind in Georgia. Today, there are 130 mentor-mentee pairs at Walker State involving mentors from 42 different churches in the greater Chattanooga area.
Mentors meet their mentoring partners for nearly two hours every other week. Some of these relationships have been on-going for four years now. It was through this intentional ministry to prisoners that the prisoners began to search out if they could go through membership classes and be received as members of First Presbyterian Church.
The Session, or elders, of First Presbyterian Church met to decide whether it was within its denominational and church policy to allow prisoners into membership. They voted unanimously to allow the prisoners to join. They completed the same training that any new member would complete. They were examined for membership the same way other new members are examined, and they were received right alongside the other new members. The only difference last Sunday was that the mentors stood in the place of the prisoners at the front of the church during the service.
The response from the congregation has been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging, said church officials.