What God Is Doing
Stories from inside the walls.
Ten years ago, a small effort to train inmate believers with simple biblical tools began
inside the Texas prison system. Today, entire prison cultures are being transformed by the
power of the Gospel — and it has already started moving up the West Coast.
Texas · Coffield Unit
The largest prison in Texas
Once one of the most dangerous maximum-security prisons in the country — where officers
feared for their lives and inmates begged not to be transferred — God began to move.
Within two years, more than 1,000 men were baptized and over 300 inmate-led churches were
meeting weekly in nearly every living area of the prison.
Texas · Death Row
A song at 5:00 a.m.
Two trained inmate believers began sharing the Gospel on Texas Death Row. Today six
inmate-led churches meet daily, and over 150 of the roughly 200 men there are
Spirit-filled believers.
Every morning at 5:00 a.m., the sound of Amazing Grace echoes through the
chambers. Of the last 30 men executed, 25 died as Spirit-filled disciple makers who had
come to know Christ.
Texas · Solitary Confinement
Darkness into light
In another Texas prison, 100 men in solitary confinement were baptized in just nine months.
One man — who spent 18 years in solitary, describing it as "darkness inside of darkness" —
is now thriving in Christ and helping lead a residential training center inside the prison,
despite a life sentence.
An Aryan Nation white supremacist, his body covered with tattoos of racial hatred, stepped
into the water. The man baptizing him was a Black brother who had led him to Christ. When
he came up, the two embraced — a living picture of the ministry of reconciliation.
West Coast · Oregon
The Church of Conviction
A Catholic MMA fighter named John Mance sat in an Oregon county jail with
calluses on his knees from praying on concrete. No program found him. One free-world
volunteer requested his name, listened to him, and handed him a vision.
Within months, guards who had not allowed a baptism since before COVID carried tubs of
water into the yard and let him baptize fifteen men. He commissioned them as a church —
the Church of Conviction — then trained his successor through an air vent
before being transferred to the largest prison in Oregon, where he is planting again.
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Men baptized
In Texas prisons over ten years.
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Churches in one unit
Meeting weekly, led by inmates.
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Believers on Death Row
Of roughly 200 men held there.
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Inmates with tablet access
The training is already on them.
