Making the Case (June 30, 2025)

Each year on the anniversary of Completion Global, we select an annual theme. This year, it is “Making the Case” in 4 arenas.

Across America, there are thousands of mature believers discipling fellow prisoners. For a long time, America’s prisons were an unreached mission field, but we now have what is called an “indigenous church.” This means there are healthy churches, being led by prisoners, where disciples are being made in the context of prison culture. While God is doing this amazing work, it is sometimes overlooked, even by the prisoners themselves. Many of them still feel dependent on people from the outside and they need to be inspired to take on this new identity. So we’ll go into prisons to help them understand their role as assets to the Kingdom of God, right now.

Also, scattered across the country, there are colleagues from prison ministries who are moving beyond traditional evangelism and discipleship (ministering TO prisoners) to a new level of coaching (doing ministry WITH prisoners). They have a heart to empower effective disciplemakers in the prison church, but they often feel alone. So we have assembled these practitioners into a learning community called The Empowerment Network, and we will make the case for the indigenous church by inviting more practitioners to join the Network.

The third arena is church leaders. While prisoners are effective in the context of prison culture, life on the outside is very different. In fact, we wrote the book Climbing Up to help prisoners make the cultural shift to life on the outside, but re-integration works only when there is an army of welcoming churches who are equipped to walk with them, especially for the first 12-18 months after release. So we’ll make the case with church leaders as well.

Finally, we will make the case with leaders of missions organizations, telling them that prisoners are now part of the world missions force and worthy of investment. This is because prisoners are engaging people from Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu backgrounds, and can be further equipped for more effective world mission right in their prisons. For example, Cathy has recruited a missions agency to train prisoners to tell Bible stories in their location, which is training that is typically reserved for people overseas. Training like this is even more important when we consider that some prisoners will take the gospel to other countries as they are deported.