INSIDE THE WALLS: FAITH UNCHAINED Text and photos by Adam Klinker
The song is called “Chain Breaker” and its refrain is: “If you’ve got pain, He’s a pain taker. If you feel lost, He’s a way maker. If you need freedom or saving, He’s a prison-shaking Savior. If you got chains, He’s a chain breaker.”
An outside volunteer rests her hand on the back of an inmate during a prayer session at a Brothers in Blue (BiB) retreat at the North Central Correctional Facility in Rockwell City, Iowa. The ecumenical Christian ministry is organized at the prison by Paul Stone, pastor of Church of the Damascus Road at the North Central and Fort Dodge (Iowa) Correctional Facilities.
Those lyrics resonated this past October as they
echoed throughout the gym at the North Central Correctional Facility in Rockwell City, Iowa, where more than 40 inmates and 20 outside volunteers from churches across Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota took part in Brothers in Blue (BiB). The four-day program offered speakers, worship, prayers, personal sharing and meditation to help bring inmates into closer connection with the gospel and, in some cases, introduce them to Christianity. By the conclusion of day three, BiB participant
Patrill Ellis couldn’t contain his exuberance. “I hear that song starting and it does something to me I can’t
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explain,” said Ellis, who’s acclaimed by more than a few of his fellow Brothers in Blue as the best singer at the Rockwell prison. “I love what that song is about and it’s about love. That’s what this whole thing (BiB)has been about. A lot of us haven’t felt or known about love like that in a long time.” That heretofore unknown love is what leaves a
powerful impression in the more than 15 years BiB has been bringing an ecumenical Christian ministry biannually to the Rockwell prison and the Fort Dodge (Iowa) Correctional Facility. The project has roots in the 1970s when Lutheran pastors looked at modeling a prison ministry after such retreats as Cursillo in Roman
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