Grace in 30

Our criminal justice system is broken.  We lock up way too many people in awful conditions; we generally don’t help them rehabilitate and heal; our prisons seem to drain the life out of inmates and train them in new forms of criminal behavior; and the majority of those released commit more crimes and return to prison.  James Ackerman, the President and CEO of Prison Fellowship, joins us to continue our conversation about improving the lives and futures of prisoners, former prisoners, and their families.  Prison Fellowship is active in 449 U.S. prisons and jails, and offers intensive year-long programs in 76 of those facilities across 23 states.  The non-profit estimates that it serves 25,000 prisoners each month, and impacts 200,000 unique inmates per year.  Prison Fellowship also operates the Angel Tree program where volunteers purchase and deliver Christmas gifts on behalf of parents who are incarcerated, providing gifts to 291,000 children last year alone.

Our criminal justice system is broken.  We lock up way too many people in awful conditions; we generally don’t help them rehabilitate and heal; our prisons seem to drain the life out of inmates and train them in new forms of criminal behavior; and the majority of those released commit more crimes and return to prison.  Today we're joined by James Ackerman, the President and CEO of Prison Fellowship – the nation’s largest outreach working to improve the lives and futures of prisoners, former prisoners, and their families.  Prison Fellowship is active in 449 U.S. prisons and jails and offers intensive year-long programs in 76 of those facilities across 23 states.  The non-profit estimates that it serves 25,000 prisoners each month, and impacts 200,000 unique inmates per year.  Prison Fellowship also operates the Angel Tree program where volunteers purchase and deliver Christmas gifts on behalf of parents who are incarcerated, providing gifts to 291,000 children last year alone.

Imagine going on a mission trip for one month to a place like Thailand to work with young women rescued from sex trade, or to Honduras to work with children in an orphanage.  Now imagine doing that in 11 countries back-to-back for 11 months.  Today we’re hosting Jade Zaharoff, a young woman who felt called to do just that in 2014 as part of something called the World Race.  According to their Website, the World Race is a journey to serve “the least of these” while embedded in real and raw community.  It’s a unique mission trip that challenges young adults to abandon worldly possessions and a traditional lifestyle in exchange for an understanding that it's not about them; it's about the Kingdom.  Jade joins us to talk about her World Race experiences as well as work she did with Syrian refugees in 2016 after they landed on the shores of Greece. 

Cancer is a terrible thing to face, especially when it afflicts a child.  Ellen Blair watched her daughter battle neuroblastoma for four-and-a-half years, and eventually succumb to the disease at age eight.  Ellen joins us to talk about The Catherine Elizabeth Blair Memorial Foundation that she and her husband created in their daughter’s honor, which has raised $147,000 to-date to fund research to help children fighting the same disease.  She also reads stories from a book she and her husband wrote during Catherine’s final 15 months of life.  Ellen is joined by her son, John. 

Ask people how to wage war, and they will easily give you an answer.  Ask them how to wage peace, though, and they will probably pause to think.  Waging peace, it turns out, requires as much work and energy as waging war.  It also requires a local presence and familiarity, and the willingness to sit down with people on the “other side” and really listen to and get to know them.  Today we’re joined by Reverend Doctor Clement M. Aapengnuo and Tim Sample, the co-Founders of 72 Africa, an organization committed to waging peace throughout Africa.  They join us to talk about their recent success facilitating peaceful elections in Ghana, their plans to do the same in other African nations, and the peacekeeping principles they have learned which could easily be applied to tear down walls and build bridges in the United States.