The Cell Church (March 2, 2026)

We met Mark Walker and Quentin Valdois over 10 years ago when they were looking for a Bible training program for men and women in prison who were serving as leaders for the Church on the inside. Since then, they have become cherished partners with us at Completion Global, guiding and teaching us from their experience in prison ministry. When we wrote the Onesimus Workshop in 2018, they were the ones who reviewed our work for real-life accuracy, and helped us re-frame much of the material to make it even more helpful to returning citizens and their families.

No one we know is better at articulating the existence of the indigenous church in prison, which simply means that the church goes on inside the walls, even when volunteers and chaplains go home at night. Mark has presented a seminal work describing the incarcerated as their own culture, or in missiological terms, their own people group. Quentin (Q. as we call him) has become such a valuable influence to us that we asked him to serve as a special advisor to our Board.

Their work has become so fruitful in recent months that it has exceeded their capacity, so they have been reviewing their priorities to re-tool for the next season of work. A few weeks ago, we travelled to Denver to help them in this process, along with two elders (Patrick and Rich) from Fellowship Denver, a wonderful church that supports their ministry.

Here is what they do: they oversee TUMI training sites for leadership development in several Colorado locations (inside and outside of prisons); across America they write letters to mentor prison leaders and help them publish articles and produce music; in Denver Mark leads a Saturday worship service made up of formerly incarcerated individuals; and they collaborate nationally with other prison ministries as part of our Empowerment Network that we recently created. And they do all of this while working full-time jobs during the week. We are especially connected with Paco, one of their colleagues in the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility, where we have visited twice in the last year.

Their work is so exemplary, if we had our wish, we would replicate the work of The Cell Church in all 50 states. Please pray for Mark and Q as they grow their ministry of empowerment to those affected by incarceration. Pray that God would provide them more volunteers and funding so they can expand their effectiveness and reach more people.