Chapter Three - Shepherding and Submission

I have learned over the years that the Shepherding Movement of the 1970's produced much division and misuse of authority in some circles. Fortunately, that was not the case in Cons for Christ!

In the 70's, we were receiving quite a lot of teaching from the leaders of Christian Growth Ministries – Don Basham, Derek Prince, Ern Baxter, John Poole, Charles Simpson, and my personal favorite, Bob Mumford. We regularly received tape messages and had a free subscription to New Wine magazine. Since none of the groups that came into the prison ever got into any depth of teaching (they mostly spent time on salvation and basic Christian Living), we craved the teachings we were given like starving men.

We, like the Bereans of old, devoured the teachings and discussed them, studied them, and matched them with the Word of God. Then we discussed them more. We tried, as much as possible, to practice the Word that was revealed to us.

As stated in Chapter One, during this time, we were given much teaching on the structure and leadership of the local church and the various ministries, local and trans-local, that were given to the church. It was about this time that we restructured Cons for Christ to the New Testament pattern of the local church. We eliminated the “club” officers, and elected a board of elders, developing a plurality of leaders. We determined that we would do nothing – even if it meant cancelling the weekly meeting – without unanimity in our decisions. Only by that, we felt, would we be sure to have the “Mind of Christ” in our decisions.

There were a couple of times that we actually came close to cancelling the weekly service, but the Lord came through at the last minute and we carried on, in unity! It was an exciting experiment of trusting God for every move we made. God blessed, and because we were obedient, we ended up with so many that wanted to give up their weekly movie and worship with us, that the prison put a limit of ten percent of the population as a maximum attendance on us. We had the enviable position of having a church with a six plus month waiting list!

By this time, the Head Chaplain was Father George Koerber, the Catholic Priest, and I worked directly under him. He had a heart for ministry, but was frustrated by trying various therapy models to try to effect change in the inmates. Then, he took some time off to attend a Corrections Chaplaincy workshop in Chicago.

The clerks knew right away when he returned that something wonderful had happened to him – he was virtually floating off the floor when he returned! One of the speakers at the conference was Father Francis MacNutt, the Charismatic Priest that had such a dynamic healing ministry in the 70's. It was during this conference that Father George (as we called him) discovered that he didn’t have to be the healer – all he had to do was pray and let the Holy Spirit do the work! Father George even admitted that he received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and spoke in tongues!

Father Koerber took his vacation shortly after that and went to Father MacNutt’s New Jersey Healing Seminar. It was the beginning of a much greater ability for us to minister to the other inmates.

During the time an inmate was on the waiting list, he was expected to attend a Foundational Class at the Chaplain’s Office, taught by Cons for Christ Elders. We took our teachings from Hebrews 6:1-2, which the Bible calls a foundation that needs to be learned before the Christian can go on to maturity. As the waiting list got longer, we added a second class after the Foundations class, dealing with the five-fold ministry gifts and how that brought about complete local leadership in the church. Derek Prince’s teachings were invaluable in this area.

It wasn’t long before the Cons for Christ eldership was teaching over 20 hours a week in addition to visiting ministries from the area! There wasn’t one morning or afternoon that didn’t have at least one Bible study – more likely two or three. God moved mightily at OSR. It was more like a Bible College than a prison.

Because much of our teaching was from tapes by Prince, Mumford, or one of the others, we got the idea that a proper sermon had to be at least 90 minutes long. So, our services were about one hour of worship, praise, and intercessory prayer, followed by a 90 minute sermon. One thing this did, however, is it gave us the opportunity to develop teaching series that were pretty much in-depth on a subject.

Because of our influences, we did a series on “Hearing Under Authority” in which we went through the various areas that we are to be in submission to. One of the messages I was permitted to give was from Romans 13. I brought out the fact that the prison officials were “ministers of God” to bring us to “righteousness” and we were commanded of the Lord to submit to their authority.

We had at least one guard in our meetings for security purposes, and you might guess that the teaching really confused him! After the meeting, he came up to us and asked, “Just what are you guys trying to pull? You don’t really believe that, do you?”

We responded that, yes, we believed that, and we weren’t trying to “pull” anything – just trying to follow God’s Word! I doubt if he ever believed that we were serious about it. He kept thinking it was some kind of “code” to get our “real” message to the group!

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, we were absolutely “sold” on the “Shepherding Movement” and it’s biblical application. I didn’t even know there was a “controversy” until after I was released in 1976. I still have strong feelings about our response to biblical authority, and holiness. But, that’s for another chapter.