I did not see my wife or any friends for over seventeen months during the Covid-19 quarantine. Seventeen months. No face-to-face contact with anyone from my former life. No touch, no embrace, no shared meal, no eye contact with a person who knew me as something other than a reo. The isolation was not merely lonely—it was erosive, wearing away at the foundations of identity and hope like water on limestone. When I wrote to the Historic Baptists outside the walls asking them to remember me, I was echoing the Apostle Paul’s plea in Colossians 4:18: “Remember my bonds.” That plea is not a polite request. It is a cry for survival.

The church outside the prison walls has an obligation to the church inside them. It is not optional. It is not a specialty ministry for those with a particular calling. It is a basic requirement of Christian love, commanded by Christ Himself: “I was in prison, and ye came unto me” (Matthew 25:36). Yet in my experience—and in the experience of virtually every incarcerated Christian I have spoken with—the church largely fails this obligation. This chapter is an attempt to explain what actually helps, what does not, and how the body of Christ can do better.

What Outside Visitors and Churches Do Wrong

Let me speak plainly, because the incarcerated do not have the luxury of diplomatic evasion. Oftentimes, they are at a loss for words when trying to explain their needs to other believers.

They come once or twice and then disappear. The most common pattern I observed was the initial burst of concern—a flurry of visits, letters, and prayers in the weeks following an arrest—followed by a gradual silence that was more devastating than the incarceration itself. The imprisoned man learns to expect abandonment. He has been abandoned by the state, the media, his neighbors, and his colleagues. When the church abandons him, too, the message is unmistakable: you are forgotten.

They come with platitudes instead of presence. “God has a plan for you.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “Just trust the Lord.” These statements are theologically true, but they are pastorally useless when delivered by someone who will drive home to a warm house, eat dinner with his family, and sleep in his own bed with his own wife tonight. What the inmate needs is not just another sermon. He needs someone who will sit across from him in the visiting room and simply be there—who will listen to his frustrations, ask about his legal case, remember his children’s names, and come back next week.

They do not understand the practical needs. Churches frequently send Bibles. Bibles are important. But the man who has no toothpaste, no soap, no money for the kiosk, no stamps for letters (or a cell phone to send emails and messages), and no warm clothing—that man needs more than a Bible. He needs the church to function as a body, meeting both physical and spiritual needs. “If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?” (James 2:15-16).

They judge rather than serve. Many Christians, upon learning that a brother is in prison, immediately ask, “What did he do?” The implication is clear: if he is guilty, he deserves what he got, and the church’s obligation is diminished. But even if he is guilty—and many incarcerated Christians are guilty of genuine offenses—the church’s obligation is not diminished. The Gospel is for sinners. If the church only visits the innocent, it has misunderstood the mission of Christ, who came to call sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32), not to reward the righteous.

What Actually Helps

Allow me to reverse the list and describe, from the perspective of a man who spent five years, five months behind bars, what actually sustained me.

Consistency. My wife visited regularly, other than when the state prison guards forbade her because she did not get a single Covid-19 vaccination. Eighteen friends visited when they could, which is well above average. And there were visits that transcended the category of “support” and entered the realm of ministry itself. When Miami—the inmate who had been my most selfless companion, the one person I could count on to think of someone other than himself—returned to visit me in Casablanca after his own release, we embraced with joy. He had painted and washed clothes during his imprisonment, inscribing the message that men should “treasure their beautiful moments, thank God, and enjoy their existence in this world, doing good to their neighbors.” The fact that a former inmate would come back through those gates voluntarily, not because he had to but because he wanted to see a friend still behind the walls, communicated something about the nature of Christian community that no theological treatise could articulate. These consistent presences were the anchors that kept me tethered to reality. The impact of being forgotten is devastating; the impact of being remembered is life-giving. I do not exaggerate when I say that the reliable appearance of a familiar face on visitation day was the difference between hope and despair during certain seasons.

Informal economy support. Money. I know this might sound unspiritual, but the imprisoned man needs money. He needs it for food (the institutional fare is inadequate and unhealthy), for hygiene products (the institution provides almost nothing), for phone access (communication with lawyers and family requires payment), for books, and for the small comforts that make the difference between surviving and crumbling. My wife and co-Pastor Valentín regularly brought food bags—complete meals that lasted for days—and often included special orders for my cellmates. Friends provided the funds they needed to purchase the food for the three to ten men that I shared it with and me. The practical generosity cost money, but it opened doors for ministry that no amount of preaching alone could have opened.

Early on, each visitor was allowed to give up to fifty thousand pesos (about 58 USD) to an inmate during visitation. That figure doubled by the time I left. For many inmates who had no visitors at all, this money simply did not exist. The disparity between inmates with outside support and those without was stark and cruel. The church can bridge this gap by establishing informal economy funds for Christian inmates without family support—a simple, practical act of love that costs little and means everything.

Legal support. The legal system is the mechanism by which Satan and the state destroy lives (Revelation 2:10), and navigating it from inside prison is nearly impossible without outside help. My rightist, activist friend Pablo helped my public image, creating tweets and videos proving that I was neither a racist nor a white supremacist—outrageous lies widely circulated in the media. He helped raise money for legal fees. Other friends researched lawyers, coordinated with my legal team, and provided the external advocacy that is simply impossible to conduct from a cell.

Churches should establish legal referral networks. Not every congregation has a lawyer in its membership, but many do, and those lawyers can provide pro bono consultations, recommend competent criminal defense attorneys, courier documents, and review legal documents that the imprisoned person cannot properly evaluate from behind bars.

Letters. I wrote extensively to my children and friends, sharing my daily life and misfortunes, usually by email and WhatsApp, except for the eighteen (or so) months I did not have a cell phone. The letters I received in return—especially those that were substantive, personal, and consistent—were treasures. A letter from a brother in Christ that references a shared memory, asks a specific question, quotes a relevant Scripture, and promises to write again next week is worth more than a hundred impersonal devotional cards.

What not to write: do not write letters filled with detailed news about how wonderful your life is. Do not describe your vacation, your promotion, or your new house. The imprisoned man is happy for you, but every reminder of the life he has lost is a knife in the wound. Write about spiritual things and your emotional attachment to and care for him. Write about the church. Write about the man’s family if you have access to them. Write about anything that connects him to the body of Christ and assures him that he is not forgotten.

Spiritual support. The Historic Baptists’ Zoom meetings on Thursday and Sunday evenings were a lifeline. They connected me to the broader body of Christ, allowed me to exercise my gifts of teaching and preaching, and reminded me that the church extended beyond the walls of my módulo. Outside believers who organized these connections, who ensured that my participation was possible (through the smuggled phone that made it technically feasible), and who prayed for me by name—these people sustained my ministry and my faith.

How Churches Can Build Sustainable Programs

The keyword is sustainable. A prison ministry program that depends on the enthusiasm of a single volunteer will collapse when that volunteer burns out, moves away, or loses interest. Sustainable programs require institutional commitment from the church—a line item in the budget, a designated team of trained volunteers, and pastoral leadership that treats prison ministry as a core function of the church rather than a peripheral activity. Here is what a sustainable program looks like: