On Monday nights in Broward County, lengthy after most routines wind down, a small group of ladies trades consolation for dedication. They cross by steel detectors, locked doorways, and fluorescent-lit corridors on the Paul Rein Most Safety Detention Facility in Pompano Seashore. Their function is straightforward, however not straightforward: to point out up for girls the remainder of the world has largely written off.
That is Harvest Church’s jail ministry, considered one of a number of group outreach efforts the Coconut Creek–primarily based church helps throughout Broward County. Not like meals drives or vacation packages, this work occurs nearly completely out of sight. Every week, volunteers sit face-to-face with incarcerated girls—many biking by the system, some going through sentences that stretch many years into the long run. What they provide isn’t authorized recommendation or false guarantees. It’s consistency, dialog, and the reminder that somebody nonetheless sees them.
“We go into the ladies’s most safety and share the Phrase and ensure these of us don’t really feel forgotten,” says Randi Press, one of many ministry’s most energetic volunteers, who has been concerned for greater than 5 years. Participation requires fingerprinting and certification by the Broward Sheriff’s Workplace, together with strict protocols as soon as inside.
Immediately, roughly a dozen girls from Harvest Church constantly serve within the girls’s facility, with a males’s ministry launched this yr close by on the Joseph V. Conte Facility. The work is completely volunteer-based, making reliability important. “It takes a village to run these volunteer packages,” Press says. “It’s all about dedication and dedication.”
On a typical night time, volunteers arrive round 6:45 p.m. and don’t depart till after 8:30. That window contains safety screening, navigating a number of locked doorways, and spending time contained in the housing unit itself. Relying on turnover, they might meet with round 30 girls in a single night.
Conversations are deliberately structured. Volunteers aren’t allowed to ask why somebody is incarcerated or focus on private case particulars. Boundaries are vital. “Folks which can be on this setting might be well-mastered at being manipulative,” Press notes. “So it’s important to have a very good base of understanding the place boundaries are.”
Inside these limits, the main target is on dialogue, reflection, and rebuilding inside construction. “A number of them don’t know tips on how to pray, or they’ve been in there and so they’ve misplaced God for a short while and now they’re coming again,” Press says. “So, very first thing we discuss is getting a Bible. Second factor we discuss is studying it. After which third, we discuss prayer.”
For Press, the influence isn’t measured in attendance counts or weekly totals. “Truthfully, we’re simply attempting to carry one soul at a time,” she says. “If we will change any individual’s life one individual at a time, that’s big.”
She factors to 1 girl she noticed week after week throughout an prolonged keep attributable to court docket delays throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. When the lady was lastly sentenced and transferred, Press assumed their connection had ended. Years later, that very same girl reappeared at Harvest Church after being launched. “She’s now on an exterior program to maintain her clear and protected,” Press says. “She comes each week, and it’s the greatest feeling.”
Not each story ends that approach. Press has seen girls depart and return inside months. “The system just isn’t essentially constructed to make individuals profitable on the surface,” she says. She explains that there’s no clear, steady pathway from incarceration to rehabilitation packages to long-term stability—leaving many ladies susceptible to biking again into the system.
That actuality is why the ministry works alongside reentry packages like Sonrise Mission, which helps present construction and housing for individuals transitioning out of incarceration. The objective is continuity—not a one-time interplay.
Pastor Dave Benedict, Harvest Church’s founder, sees the jail ministry as a part of a broader dedication to group service reasonably than an remoted effort. “We simply consider that everyone deserves a second probability—typically a 3rd and fourth probability,” he says. “There are lots of hurting individuals, lots of people misdirected… by no means had a leg up.”
Past the detention services, Harvest companions with native police departments, sponsors youth-recognition packages, helps academics, and operates Mary’s Pantry, which supplies meals to households in want all through the realm. The widespread thread, Pastor Dave says, is exhibiting up the place assist is required—and staying there.
Press emphasizes that jail outreach isn’t restricted to 1 perception system. “It doesn’t essentially need to be Christian; it may be Catholic, it may be Jewish,” she says. “The jail ministry is for all issues.”
Contained in the partitions of Paul Rein, that distinction issues lower than presence. “They consider that the world has forgotten them,” Press says. “I be sure that I’m going… to ensure they know that there are individuals exterior that consider in them, that suppose they’re worthy, and that they aren’t alone in there.”
In a system outlined by isolation and interruption, the easy act of exhibiting up—repeatedly—is its personal quiet type of success.
