“And I was in prison and you visited me “ . . .David Valentine, the pastor of First Baptist, Huntsville, Texas, along with a couple of other pastors who were visiting in the Texas Prison began the Welcome Back Ministry in 2002. Welcome Back Ministry http://www.thewelcomeback.org/about.php is a process of helping an offender prior to his or her release from prison to connect them and their families with a church in their own community.
Building on the Welcome Back Ministry, Rickie Bradshaw, the Director of Street Talk, an Urban Hip Hop Church Planting Network http://www.baptistsites.net/wwwstreettalk.org and David Valentine began training all the Texas prison chaplains on how to use Neil Cole’s Life Transformation Groups. Then, David met with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice this year and received permission to saturate the Texas prisons with 150,000 LTG’s ( A Life Transformation Group Cards). Now, every new inmate,50,000 will be provided with an LTG card and encourage to meet with the Chaplain. Rickie and David did not want to stop with training only the Chaplains on how to start LTG’s They, along with church planters of the Street Talk Network trained 200 prisoners in the Carol Vance unit in Richmond, Texas on how on how to start Life Transformation Groups.
A Life Transformation Group (LTG) http://cmaresources.org/cmaproducts/Store/tabid/303/CategoryID/4/List/0/Level/1/ProductID/50/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName%2cProductName is made up of two or three people of the same gender who meet weekly, to discuss their daily Bible reading, to ask each other character-building questions and to pray for pre-Christian family and friends.” Since November 2007, there have been 40 LTG’s groups begun in the Carol Vance Prison Unit and 10 LTG's groups in the Harris County Jail. When these men are released, they will be practicing LTG in their spheres of influence across Texas. Rickie Bradshaw and the church planters of Street Talk Church Planting Network will be their mentor and coaches to start new organic churches. They are going from being prisoners to becoming organic church planters.
Margaret W. Slusher is the Director for Church Planting Leadership Communities for Leadership Network.
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