With the Department of Corrections scrambling for funds, Freedom Ministries is being asked to do more.
In his 20th year, Tom Bevard, founder and face of Freedom Ministries, told the Register in addition to pop-in two-hour services, Department of Corrections officials are encouraging more, including multi-day revivals.
From the start and for many years, freshly grilled hamburgers were a part of visits. Those have been shelved, Bevard said, because prison staffing no longer is sufficient for guards to carefully inspect the large truck Freedom Ministries brought to carry food and equipment. Hence the picnic was reduced to drinks and snacks.
“That also gives us more of the two hours we’re allotted for service time,” Bevard said, that being his mission.
“We always can use more funding, but we’re getting along well enough” to meet greater demands being made by DOC, he said in an interview from the group’s new office at 204 S. State St.
In state prisons programming has been cut as the number of inmates has increased, often without compensatory infusions of financial support from Topeka.
Only in the past week were guards given what officials characterized as a long overdue 10 percent raise. The increase came in light of significant turnover among guards, including 47 percent annually at the El Dorado prison.
Annual average cost of keeping an inmate housed and fed is about $25,000.
Headcount is nearly 10,000 statewide, an increase of well over 1,200 in the past two years.
“The prisons have been cut to the bone,” Bevard said. “The inmates aren’t as busy and they look forward to volunteers coming.”
Bevard is eager to accommodate requests for revivals and other events.
Unrest at the El Dorado facility, brought about in large measure by fewer daily activities, in Bevard’s estimation, has been exacerbated by it being temporarily closed to volunteers and what they offer to break monotony of prison life. Whether higher pay for guards will be a salve is yet to be seen.
In efforts to cope with funding concerns, DOC realigned its population, moving most male inmates 18 to 25 to the Larned facility.
“We are going to Larned Sept. 8,” at DOC’s invitation, and then to Norton and Hutchinson, Bevard said. In October, he and his crew will entertain, with gospel songs, and have services in Oswego, once a boot camp and now a satellite of the El Dorado prison.
FREEDOM MINISTRIES visits have a residual effect.
Many inmates now are attending daily and weekly services, Bevard said, with meetings organized and performed by inmates.
The in-prison services mostly are eclectic, but, said the Rev. Steve Traw, a board member and helpmate of Bevard’s, elderly prisoners — 55 and older — have taken a hand in raising the level of Christian experiences in prisons.
They also have established more than a cursory relationship with Bevard and his volunteers, some helping out what Freedom Ministries does.“They want to know how I’m doing,” said Traw, when he and others arrive for a visit.
Preaching the gospel, he said, “until it works” is among his mission as a volunteer, a role that fell almost exclusively to Bevard, since he began the ministry in the late 1990s.
Inmates who attend Freedom Ministries visits aren’t limited to Christians. Some have no religious moorings, others are from other faiths.
“We had a group of five Muslims at a service,” Bevard recalled. “They listened very closely to the message. Afterward, one said he wanted to learn more about Christianity.”
Another time an inmate told Bevard he had “heard me for over 15 years and that if I believed that strongly to keep coming back, what I had must be worth having.”
Bevard doesn’t dwell on statistics — of those who attend services or who “come forward” to profess faith — but “the number of those who have been won to Christ has been greater, including more than 400 this year.”
“Jailhouse conversions” often are belittled by cynics, but Bevard is confident that his message of “the good word” touches many.
TRAW, having had a presence in the local Christian community for 30 years, is eager to praise Bevard, his staying power in following his evangelical calling for 20 years and having had an impact on an untold number of inmates.
“The name (Freedom Ministries) points to its purpose in delivering hope to the many,” Traw observed. “His guidance and leadership earns my appreciation and attention.
“The response among our incarcerated populace of some 10,000 has never been greater. Wardens take notice, stating the atmosphere among their charges improves greatly for weeks if not months,” after a Freedom Ministries visit. “The question often follows: ‘When can you return.’”
He appealed for local support, noting snacks alone for the remainder of the year will cost $1,000, perhaps more.
He encouraged churches, groups, even individuals, to get “greater insight into ‘our’ Iola-based statewide work. Invite Pastor Bevard and/or myself to share this exciting and fast expanding opportunity.”
