Of course, this tactic does not mean that every recipient of practical mercy will respond with faith. Some will despise kindness. Some will exploit generosity. Some will take the food and reject the Gospel. That is their responsibility before God, not ours. “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head” (Romans 12:20). The heaping of coals is God’s business, who will require an answer of men who treated His elect so poorly, even though those believers had treated them well. Our business is to do good—wisely, prudently, generously, and without surrendering our discernment to sentimentality.

Practical Duties and Remedies

Build a supply chain, not an occasional charity. Whole-person ministry requires sustained logistics: who will buy the food? Who will deliver it? Who will purchase books, medicine, hygiene products, and writing materials? Who will pay for phone access? Who will help the inmate’s wife afford the bus fare to visit? If no one asks these questions, practical mercy will remain admirable but intermittent—and intermittent mercy, in a prison measured in years, is barely mercy at all.

Budget for concrete prison mercy. Churches should establish a dedicated budget line item for prison support that covers informal economy purchases, books, hygiene kits, medicine, legal copying, transport for visitors, and emergency assistance for families. Doing so is not optional benevolence; it is obedience to James 2:15-16.

Think in terms of the whole person. Visitors should carry a mental checklist: spiritual condition, reading material, food, health, communication, family strain, and temptations requiring sober counsel. The inmate who is physically starving will not absorb your theology. The inmate who is intellectually starving will not retain your exhortation. Address the whole man.

Provide intellectual resources. Books, notebooks, writing materials, even language courses, and serious reading matter are not luxuries. They are instruments of mental preservation in an environment designed to destroy the mind. A prisoner with a good book is a prisoner who has been given a weapon against despair.

Use every legitimate instrument of fellowship. Meals, chess, conversation, shared work, educational classes, music, language study—anything that creates genuine human connection in an environment of manufactured isolation is doing the work of God, whether or not it carries an explicitly religious label. The man who sits across a chessboard from you for an hour has been treated as a human being, and that treatment is itself a form of ministry. The same will be true if you can teach him English when he only speaks Spanish, or any other language pair one might imagine around the world.

Exercise charity with discernment. Know the men you serve. Understand the informal economy of the prison. Direct resources toward genuine need, not manufactured sympathy. Do not fund drug habits in the name of Christian generosity. Do not arm manipulators with resources they will use to exploit others. Prudence is not the enemy of love; it is its guardian.

Action Steps

Assess the practical needs of one incarcerated person this month. Do not assume his needs are exclusively spiritual. Ask about his food, his health, his family, his reading material, his legal situation, and his daily routine. Let his answers shape your ministry rather than imposing a pre-formed agenda. You will have to do that anyway to begin with, as you evaluate and adapt to the educational level of each new disciple or group that you inherit.

Organize a book drive for a local prison. Collect serious works of theology, history, biography, and literature—not merely devotional pamphlets. Include Bibles, certainly, but include also the kind of reading material that treats the inmate as a thinking person worthy of intellectual engagement. Unfortunately, in my experience, even getting an inmate to read five verses from his Bible is a chore, but there will be exceptional inmates who are accustomed to reading and will benefit from the books. Remember, too, that some Pentecostal sects decry reading any books but the Bible, and that indoctrination will emerge as baggage left over in the minds of your students.

Establish a recurring meal program for inmates who lack outside support. Coordinate with existing visitors to bring additional food or fund the purchase of kiosk items for unsupported prisoners. Even a single shared meal per week can lay the relational foundation for deeper ministry.

Identify one non-verbal instrument of ministry—chess, card games, educational tutoring, language instruction, woodworking, or any constructive activity—and offer it consistently. Not every man will respond to preaching. Some will respond to a game, a conversation, or a shared project. Meet men where they are, not where you wish they were.

Calculate the actual cost of supporting one prisoner for one year. Include informal economy funds, food, books, hygiene products, phone access, legal fees, family transportation, and miscellaneous expenses. Present the number to your church leadership and ask them to adopt one prisoner as part of your congregational ministry. The number will be smaller than most people expect, and the impact greater than most people imagine.

Discussion Questions

How does Peter’s concept of “doing good” (1 Peter 2:19-20) extend beyond verbal proclamation to include practical beneficence, truthful action, and whole-person care? What are the implications for how we structure prison ministry?

In what ways does incarceration assault the “whole person”—body, mind, emotions, relationships, and identity? How should whole-person ministry address each of these dimensions?

The chapter describes shared meals as one of the most effective instruments of ministry in prison. Why is the shared meal so powerful in this context? What New Testament precedents support the use of table fellowship as a ministry tool?

How does the example of chess as ministry challenge the assumption that effective ministry must always be explicitly verbal or theological? What other “non-religious” activities might serve similar purposes in a prison context?

Paul commands Christians to do good to enemies (Romans 12:20) while also exercising discernment. How do you balance generosity with prudence in an environment where lying, manipulation, and exploitation are common? What principles should guide the distribution of practical resources in prison?

The chapter notes that kiosk prices can be artificially inflated in private Chilean prisons, while many inmates have no outside financial support. What is the church’s obligation to address this economic reality? How can churches build sustainable financial support systems for prisoners and their families?