I owe a huge debt to prison chaplains. My
whole nation does. Richard Johnson and Samuel Marsden were foundational figures
in the history of Australia. Johnson came out on the First Fleet in 1788, and
Marsden followed him. They were evangelical ministers, and they were prison
chaplains. That’s because the whole colony of New South Wales was a prison. Apart
from the original owners of the land which became known as New South Wales,
everyone was involved in the correctional system in some way: either as a customer,
or as a service provider. As the colony was being set up, mission-minded
evangelicals in England knew that this new prison needed the gospel of Jesus
Christ. So they made sure that the position of chaplain was included in the
colony, and they provided gospel ministers to fill it. For the chaplains
themselves, it was a hard, debilitating, and largely thankless task. They’re
still routinely mocked by modern historians. But through these prison chaplains
and others, the gospel was proclaimed to the early colony. It continues to be
heard and believed today, and it changes lives now, as it did then. Prison
ministry is still very important, because people in prisons still matter to God.
I have ministry colleagues involved in prison ministry. We need more. A friend
of mine who works for an organisation that helps to provide chaplains for
prisons tells me that there are many positions open, especially for women, but
also for men. So speaking as a teacher at a Sydney theological college, here’s a
recruiting message for you: “Come to Moore
College so we can send you to prison”. What do you think?

Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney

Of course, there’s something you need to
realise about prison ministry (in case you hadn’t worked it out already): it’s
not about preaching a gospel of moralism. That is, prison ministry isn’t about
telling people to be good, upstanding citizens so that God will be happy with
them and let them into heaven. Now that’s a message you should never preach,
but it’s a particularly ridiculous message to preach in a prison context. Rather,
prison ministry (like any ministry) is about preaching the gospel of Jesus
Christ. It’s about lovingly and prayerfully sharing God’s grace through Christ:
a message of sins forgiven and hope assured for all those who believe in him. This
gospel does make a real difference in people’s lives. Many current and ex-prisoners
can testify to that truth. I know some of them; I’ve seen how God’s grace has gripped
them, given them hope, and changed their lives, their families and their wider
relationships.

In this verse in Ephesians, we see Paul
(himself a prisoner at the time) preaching the gospel to criminals. To be
precise, he’s preaching the gospel to thieves:

The one who steals should steal no longer; rather, he should labour, doing good work with his own hands, so that he might have something to share with those in need.Ephesians 4:28

Clearly, from Paul’s words here, thieves
were the kind of people who became Christians in the first century. Not all of
these thieves had been caught by the authorities. But they had all, in some way
or another, broken the eighth commandment: “You shall not steal” (Exodus
20:15). Paul obviously has this commandment in mind here. But he doesn’t just