Article About Shekinah- Published in The Daily Times-Call
By: Ben Ready
(1/19/2007)
Publish Date: 1/19/2007
Prisoners with hope
Longmont ministry seeks those who've gone astray
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Prison is a familiar sight for Pablo Sanchez. However, instead of being locked up, like he was in the mid-1980s, he and 180 active volunteers with Shekinah Christian Ministries donate their time and money to spread the word of God within the confines of prison walls, youth detention centers, halfway houses, rehab centers and nursing homes.
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By Ben Ready
The Daily Times-Call
STERLING — He duct-taped a blade to each wrist and approached the group of prisoners who, rumor had it, wanted to kill him.
“OK, who’s ready? I’m not afraid of anyone. I’m not afraid to die. Let’s go,” Pablo Sanchez said.
He was 22 then, just beginning a five-year sentence at Territorial Prison in Cańon City for assault. Drugs, gangs, weapons and fighting had been his life. So, he figured, they would be his death. But not that day.
“No, Pablo, man. We ain’t got no problem with you,” the other prisoners told him.
When Sanchez entered the system in 1985, a prison chaplain named Potter reminded him almost daily that God loved him, that God had a plan for him.
Through the Preacher's Eyes
A Slide Show
by the Daily Times-Call Photographers
“I said, ‘Get out of my face, you punk cop, you holy roller. Your boys can’t do time, so they need Jesus. You weak,’” Sanchez, now 43, recalled with a smile. “But he kept loving on me and loving on me.”
For the past seven years, the muscular, tattooed ex-con with a beard and shaved head has opened locked prison gates with bar-coded visitor passes. Jesus finally found him while he was an inmate, Sanchez says, and has since guided every one of his ministry trips back inside.
Saturday found Sanchez, fellow Christian ex-convict Patrick Medina and apprenticing prison minister Gordon Potter in Colorado’s largest prison, the Sterling Correctional Facility. With almost 2,500 beds, Sterling houses a population of low- to high-risk felons. The 17 men wearing prison greens at Saturday’s ministry are the most serious offenders who can still be around other prisoners. Their felonies vary, but their single faith in Christ binds them together for a weekend — an oasis within an isolated prison society of intimidation and aggression that few outsiders can fathom, they say.
Sanchez and company pass through metal detectors, pat-downs and seven locked doors before reaching their destination.
Sanchez bounds back and forth while preaching inside a prison classroom with one small, barred window, never missing a beat as “Praise God!” “Preach, brother!” “Thank you, Jesus!” “Mmm, hmm, you touched me!” and “Hallelujahs” erupt sporadically from every corner of the room.
“We can all be saved, no matter who we are or what we have done! He took us from a life that was full of junk and brought us to a life that is full of purpose. What purpose?” Sanchez asks.
“His purpose!” a prisoner shouts. “Amen.”
The three volunteers — who pay their own travel, lodging and food expenses — come from Longmont’s Shekinah Christian Ministries, a nonprofit that has brought the word of God to Colorado’s prisoners, parolees and elderly for the past 27 years. The two-day weekend service at Sterling combined life testimonials from prisoners with Christian music, Bible study, and group and individual prayer.
Halfway through his presentation on how repentance and belief — not righteous behavior — will open the gates of heaven, Medina stops speaking suddenly and walks toward a mustached prisoner in a stocking cap who’s slouching in his chair.
“Is your name John?” Medina asks. When the man replies yes, Medina asks him if he had a twin brother. Manuel, the man affirms.
“How would I know that if not for the spirit? ... I’m trembling,” Medina says, touching the man’s shoulder.
Like Sanchez, Medina, 38, grew up in a dysfunctional family in which drugs and alcohol ruled. His tattoo-covered body offers testimony to Longmont gang days not so long gone. Medina served two prison terms for assault, the second from an incident in Dacono in which he tried to take a police officer’s gun from him. He decided to give his life to God just before starting his second sentence, calling the Delta Correctional Center his Bible college.
And where would he be if a Christ-driven life and the last four meaningful years serving in the prison ministry had eluded him?
“I’d be dead, in prison or smoking a joint somewhere,” said Medina, who now lives in Loveland.
Medina and Sanchez may make the high road look easy, but of the 17 Christian seekers in Sterling’s 2,500-man facility — those who chose to spend their weekend with Shekinah — Medina estimates that only two will remain reformed after their release. Without a strong faith community to hold them accountable to a Christian life, Medina said, most will return to the life they knew: hustling, dealing and robbing.
One attendee, referred to as Brother Dawayne but who introduced himself as Lazarus, told the group he’s broken more promises to God than he can count. A former Denver gang-banger and drug dealer who still has bullets lodged in his body, Dawayne said God has protected him from being murdered both in and out of prison.
“Lord, I’m going to live for you from this point on. You let me up out of this; I’m going to change my name from Trouble to Lazarus,” Dawayne prayed.
With gray-haired Brother Melvin on the keyboards and two backup vocalists singing the chorus “I got the spirit of the most high God inside, I will rise, I will rise,” Dawayne rapped for the group: “I’m still here though ya’ll wanted me dead. I’m still here because Jesus Christ rose from the dead, yo.”
An inmate named Randy said he had an answer for those who mock criminals for waiting until they’re behind bars to find God. “We’re overwhelmed at home, with family, with work and say we have no time for God. We’ve made mistakes. Now we have a sentence. God is saying, ‘Now spend some time with me.’”
Sanchez said that of Shekinah’s 180 active volunteers, only he and Medina are ex-convicts. Having fought the same battles in the ’hood and in prison as their inmate congregations earns the two instant credibility.
“It’s easy to preach, ‘You’re not supposed to do this; resist those feelings,’ but unless you’ve been in this environment, you don’t know,” Randy said. “They’ve walked in our shoes.”
Inmate Jimmy Vasquez said that for him, “reformation” carries meaning only for the soul. After being convicted of two murders, Vasquez beat the death penalty in 2002 in exchange for a natural life sentence. He will never set foot outside a prison. Only the Bible and spiritual rebirth through prison ministries can set him free, he said.
“This gives me sanity to look for a better day. I look to Jesus. I live for him,” he said.
Shekinah Christian Ministries
Shekinah is at 2040 Terry St., Suite 106, Longmont. For more information, call 303-682-9593.
Accomplished in 2006:
• Ministered to more than 9,500 inmates, ex-offenders, youth and elderly.
• Gave 47 seminars, 34 church services in prisons, 240 Bible studies at Boulder and Weld county jails, 192 Bible studies at halfway houses in Longmont and Greeley, 648 church services, and Bible studies at youth detention centers, rehab centers and nursing homes.
Ben Ready can be reached at 303-684-5326, or by e-mail at bready@times-call.com.
