Once an inmate, Southern Baptist chaplain Stacey Smith now serves woman incarcerated at Arkansas' McPherson Unit. Smith guides women through PAL, an openly Christian re- habilitation approach she credits with helping her turn her life around through faith in Christ.
almost 20 years ago. “I remember feeling nothing when I got here. I was dead inside,” Smith recalls as she walks the halls, “Who would’ve ever thought I’d come back to life in prison?” She pauses for a moment. “Sometimes His best blessings start out looking like
life’s greatest curses.” Life’s curses were something Smith had become all too familiar with prior to her time in prison. Her child- hood did not portend prison: stable parents, straight-A student, star athlete.
“I can trace the beginning all back to one bad
relationship,” Smith recalls. “The choices were my own but that one person introduced me to a darkness that changed the entire course of my life.” From that point forward her life took a turn. Her
next years consisted of five abortions, one failed marriage and five unsuccessful stints in rehab. “My whole life was marked by destruction at that point. I would go to bed at night wishing that I would never wake up again.” At her lowest point, Stacey found herself alone,
strung out and nearing rock bottom in a Houston hotel room. She looked in the mirror and uttered a small prayer: “If there’s a God, help me.” Two days later she was arrested for drug trafficking and sentenced to 60 years in prison. “The Lord had protection around me when He sent me to this unit. I just didn’t know it at the time.” In 1998, just five years into her sentence Smith became a Christian. She did so with Chaplain Dewitt by her side, sitting in the same office they now share. She began an 18-month biblical training program under chaplain Dewitt’s tutelage before teaching PAL courses herself.
“Stacey was so full of joy at the time,” Dewitt recalls.
“She was a living example of how the truth of God’s righ- teousness can change the entire direction of a life.” In 2004, Stacey was released on parole. She spent only 11 months away from the facility before Chaplain Dewitt invited her to return, this time as a volunteer and, eventually, a chaplain and PAL teacher. She has worked diligently to see the women enrolled in PAL experience the same life-changing truth that set her free years ago. “The PAL program is unlike any other,” Smith ex-
plains. “We are walking daily with these women to help them understand the Word of God and live it out for the rest of their lives, even if that’s in prison.” Currently 100 inmates are enrolled in PAL. These women spend their days in Bible classes led by chap- lains, visiting speakers and even fellow inmates. These women have begun branching out, volunteering to work in other areas of the prison in an effort to better the community and share Christ with other inmates. PAL has been so successful it’s being used as the blueprint for programs in other prisons. The North American Mission Board is the endorsing entity for more than 3,600 Southern Baptist chaplains, including those serving in hospitals, prisons, the U.S. military and dozens of other set- tings. “A lot of people were curious as to why I would want to come back to this place,” Stacey says. “For me this isn’t a prison—this is a calling. And I intend to see it through to the end.” OM
Sara Shelton is associate editor for On Mission.
ACTION ITEM
For more information and resources on Stacey
Smith and the PAL program, visit
prisontopurpose.com. To explore opportunities in chaplaincy, visit
namb.net/ chaplaincy.
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