Letter-Writing Campaign Comes to Churches

Last Sunday, David Dickerson told his story of being behind bars for more than 20 years and getting very little mail and only one visitor for much of that time.

Speaking to an adult Sunday school class at Hope Christian Reformed Church in Grandville, Mich., Dickerson said his mother was alive for the first part of his sentence and would write and visit him. After she died, he said, he had no communication from the outside.

“Like me, there are a lot of guys in prison for a long time, and they tell the same story. They have no one,” said Dickerson, who has been out of prison since 2011. “Reaching out and helping prisoners is a critical thing.”

Dickerson came to the church at the invitation of Pastor Dale Fopma to talk about a project that encourages church members to take up a letter-writing ministry to inmates.

Fopma said his church regularly runs a small advertisement in the Grand Rapids Press, inviting readers to attend Hope CRC. Over the past couple of years, the strongest response they have received regarding the ad is from prisoners who have seen it and write to ask if someone might want to correspond with them.

“There’s a lady in our church who was responding to the letters, and we wanted to learn more about this project and perhaps what the boundaries are and the best way to go about writing to prisoners,” said Fopma.

For this ministry project, Dickerson has joined with Rev. Vern Hoffman, a retired Reformed Church in America pastor, and James Tuinstra, a member of Brookside CRC in Grand Rapids, Mich. Tuinstra is also an elder for the newly establish Celebration Fellowship, a CRC congregation meeting at two correctional facilities in Ionia, Mich.

So far, the project is just getting off the ground and doesn’t have a name yet, but the organizers have already begun sharing their vision in churches from several denominations, said Hoffman.

They have also discussed their work with the Micah Center, a West Michigan advocacy group.

“Our idea is to be a bridge to social justice, to get people in the churches aware of the plight of prisoners and to develop relationships with them,” said Hoffman. “Jesus says to visit the prisoners, and a card or letter is a visitor.”

As part of their project, he said, they want to help churches navigate the prison system and learn how to follow the rules about ways in which to connect with prisoners. Down the road, they hope to work with other groups in encouraging churches to get involved in helping prisoners once they are released.

Tuinstra noted that a number of CRC members, including teachers and administrators at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary, have been involved in working with prisoners in the Ionia correctional facilities.

The cards and letters project is an effort by a few interested people to expand on that ministry.

“We want to help these guys in whatever ways we can,” said Tuinstra. “They are up against so many things, so many rules.”

Ben Rosa, a case worker at Criminal Justice Chaplaincy, a Grand Rapids area outreach to prisoners begun by a CRC congregation, said he strongly supports the letter-writing effort and whatever else the group can do to help men and women when they come out of prison.

“We want to educate churches about what prisoners face and to help them become aware of what prisoners have to deal with on reentry into society,” he said. “We also want to be able to train those people in churches who want to work with inmates when they get out.”

After he was released from prison, Dickerson went through a terrible time, he said, living in the woods of a Grand Rapids park, attempting suicide, trying unsuccessfully to find work and a decent place to stay, and then coming down with cancer.

Fortunately, he said, he was able to meet Hoffman through a series of circumstances and join with him to begin this new ministry of letter-writing.

“We’re grateful that we’ve been able to help David and to get him reestablished into a community of believers,” said Hoffman.

“With what we are doing, we hope we’ll find churches that will have at least a small cluster of people [interested and thus] will become stations of hope and healing communities for those who are in and are coming out of prison.”

Anyone interested in the letter-writing program can call Hoffman at 616-249-9263.

For information on another ministry working with prisoners, visit Crossroads Prison Ministries.