by carolyn curtis

Radically changed describes the effect of the gospel on young Bill. His combination of wild hair, torn jeans, shoeless feet and tie-dyed T-shirt testifies to how recent was his conversion to Christianity.

One Sunday soon after his conversion, Bill attended the local college church, filled weekly with well-dressed and conservative members.

Picture the scene as Bill enters. He has no shoes. Hes clad in his jeans and T-shirt. The service has already started, and Bill ambles down the aisle looking for a seat. The pews are full, so he keeps walking. By now, people are a bit uncomfortable, but no one says anything. When he realizes there are no seats, he simply sits on the floor. No one had ever done that at this church before.

The tension thickens when an elderly deacon rises from his seat and slowly makes his way toward Bill. Hes known as a godly man, elegant, dignified and courtly; his gait is aided by a finely crafted cane. As the deacon walks toward Bill, many are thinking, You cant blame him for what hes going to do. How can a man of his age and background understand some college kid?

It takes a long time for the deacon to reach Bill. Silence reigns. All eyes focus upon him, and people are thinking, The minister cant even preach the sermon until the deacon does what he has to do.

Suddenly, he drops his cane to the floor. With great difficulty he lowers himself and sits next to Bill. When the pastor regains his voice, he says, What Im about to preach, you may never remember. What youve just seen, youll never forget.

In 90 percent of evangelical churches, most people would not have responded to young Bill as did the deacon in this scenario. Weve lost a sense of compassion in America for the radically unchurched, and thats why so few lost people, or even new believers like Bill, are found in most of our churches. Most Christians in North America see the church as a hotel for saints rather than a hospital for sinners. The church has, by and large, failed to be salt and light in the midst of a depraved humanity.

Adapted from Radically Unchurched: Who They Are & How To Reach Them, by Alvin L. Reid, Ph.D., professor of evangelism, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (Kregal, October 2002)

Hard soil. Difficult to penetrate. Requires frequent tilling. Absorbs water and fertilizer, needing more soon. But, when roots form, hard soil holds steady the new growth. Supports tall trees.

Who are the hard soil cases in evangelism? People like Kimberly, Steve, Shannon, Juan, Lori, Jason, Abbie, Judy, Linda, Roy, Sheila, Charles, Logan and Chuck. Alcoholics, prostitutes, people with addictions to everything from heroin to sex to chasing financial success, Goths with multiple piercings and body art, homosexuals, prisoners. And who are the on mission Christians who never give up on these people? Timothy and Grace and Sammy and Robert, to name a few.

In the next pages youll meet folks who readily describe themselves as hard soil and others who minister to them with a helping hand and the gospel message.

In many cases, the hard soil converts become advocateson mission Christianswhen they are healed.

Kimberly: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a needy place. Thats why its important to tell about my faith in Christ, demonstrate my growth, talk about my journey, even if its ugly. Somebody at AA wants what I have. Her talk of Christ is more than working her 12-step program.

Its her personal ministry.

Crime supported her addictions (I earned my chair at AA by running guns). Over time, she sold every possession, including the appliances, to support her habit. She often downed three beers before driving her kids to school. She flew below the laws radar until she was picked up for a simple DUI. When arrested, she was consuming a case of beer a day and $1,000 worth of cocaine a week.

Except for being cold, jail was what hell would be like, she says, recalling sleeping on a cement floor for several days with no pillow or blanket, eating two peanut butter sandwiches and two cartons of fruit juice a day, sharing a cramped holding cell with a dozen recently booked women, being shackled daily to go before a judge who sent her back when she couldnt make bail. No one would help me. Id used up all my favors.

Kimberly is a rarity, right? Some-one you probably wont encounter.

Hardly. You may encounter a person like her in the worst way. According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), people arrested for driving under the influence have driven drunk or high 200 to 2,000 times before their first arrest.

Steve: My addiction was money.

I was so focused on showing the world my success that I lost track of the people and priorities in my life.

My desire for money consumed me. When I was making lots of it trading stocks and options, my wife would ask, How much is enough for you? I would answer, Its never enough. I found that the danger of going after your desires for earthly riches is that you will always find something else you wantanother vacation, a new car, a bigger house.

Steve had some wealthy relatives, and he wanted to be like themowning property all over the country, traveling the world, having a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Now he tells them and othershow his hours hunched over the computer until midnight researching investments, making trades and taking huge financial risks set him up for a nearly fatal fall. When the market dropped he attempted suicide. I was dying and knocking on the gates of hell, Steve recalls. His wife found him full of sleeping pills and losing consciousness. In what I thought were my last moments alive, I reached out in prayer to Jesus to save my life. He did, and now Steves personal ministry is telling about it to other people who are chasing after material riches.

Shannon: I asked to be sent away from the temptations of this neighborhood when I was weak-willed, just starting my walk with the Lord. Now Im back to help other women leave prostitution, the streets and drugs. I tell them about Jesus. She shows a visitor around her inner-city neighborhood where she supported an $800 per day habit via 20 to 30 daily trysts with strangers in fancy cars who offered me a ride, code words for a pickup. Her routine was devoted entirely to the pursuit of drugsno reading the paper, no watching television, certainly no legitimate work. Just a trick, then a hit, then another trick and another hit.

Shannon approaches a woman haggard and covered with scabs scurrying along in the agitated manner of someone strung out on crack cocaine. With the few dollars from her latest trick, she will purchase a five-minute high, then experience the muscle aches and chills and nausea as she comes down before needing another fix and another trick to afford it. No middleman such as a pimp is needed in this simple economy. Instead, the woman will give a dealer all her money for the drug. Shannon treats the woman with compassiona hug, a pat, an invitation to hear how Jesus changed her.

Its hard to picture this tender-hearted woman in modest clothing selling anything but love for the Lord and surrender to His will. Her transformation is testimony to Gods healing power. Her bed in her mothers neat-as-a-pin house is covered with stuffed animals. In her sneakers and white crew socks Shannon could pass for a college student. Her skin is blemish-free, her posture self-assured, her manner confident, upbeat, happy. Shannon has become a lady.

Juan: Right in here is where we worship, he says, patting the churchs stucco wall with his hand. And right out here is where I used to shoot dope. He loves the way the Lord brought it all full circle for me.

Juan has been squatting in the alley near a rain gutter, its spout hammered nearly shut to form a hiding place for syringes. He demonstrates how he would tie off a vein in his arm with a crude handkerchief tourniquet, thump a likely spot, then thrust into heavily scarred flesh the needle he shared with his junkie friends. This was how they began each day. Their pushers house was a mere 100 yards away in the barrio where he now ministers to hard-core users, often gang members and ex-convicts, who have turned to Christ.

Juan pulls no punches, telling converts housed in the residential detox/discipleship facility that the problem in his life wasnt drugsit was sin. The dormitory is orderly and sparkling clean, the newly minted Christians maintaining to spit-and-polish perfection all buildings and grounds to become accustomed to the higher standards of their new lifestyle and as part of the discipline of their now daily submission to Christ. 

Reaching beyond the razor wire
The mean streets breed trouble, especially in North Americas urban environments that are growing by leaps and bounds. Could it be that God is organizing America into cities so the church can reach more people? asks Southeastern Seminarys Alvin L. Reid in Radically Unchurched: Who They Are & How To Reach Them (Kregal, October 2002).

One of every 125 Americans is in prison, according to Operation Starting Line, a campaign to share Christ with prisoners, organized by Prison Fellowship and a dozen other ministries, including SBCs North American Mission Board.

The goal of the outreach is to bring offenders to a relationship with Christ and help them grow in faith as law-abiding, productive citizens after they are released. It will be an uphill battle. U.S. prisons are overflowing, housing 125 percent more people than their recommended capacity.

Indications are that the prison system is not working, since 62.5 percent of prisoners are arrested again within three years of their release, a Bureau of Justice Statistics study shows.

More than 6 million men and women in the U.S. are under correctional supervisionincarceration, probation or parolecompared with 3.2 million in 1990.

Of African-American men in their 20s or early 30s, 11 percent are in prison or jail compared with 4 percent of Hispanic men and 1.5 percent of white men.

Can individual on mission Christians and churches help to stem this tide?

With 306 prison chaplains endorsed by the North American Mission Board, its not surprising that On Mission magazine is seen by inmates all over the continent.

Occasionally prisoners write Letters to the Editor, telling of their conversions and sharing about their own on mission experiences. Ive used On Mission as a tool to help 79 other women in prison find their way to Christ, writes Linda. I can be a light in the darkness, writes Roy, describing his joy at participating in prison chapel. Razor-wire fences surround us, patrol cars check the parameter fences. Guards in the control center watch the monitors for an activated sensor; sometimes a bird will set it off. No one ever escapes from this prison. Yet, every Sunday men are set free.

In preparation for our Hard Soil cover series, the On Mission staff decided to tap this population for anecdotal information, writing to prisoners who had corresponded with us and asking: What methods and factors caused you to turn to the Lord? We also asked what circumstances led to their incarceration. The return mail was fascinating.

Most crimes were drug-related. Many serve repeat sentences ranging from four years for embezzlement to 45 years for a third robbery offense to multiple life sentences for kidnapping and escape from prison.

Most said they grew up hearing about Christ but not seeing Him in their home; many offenders shared tough stories of witnessing mothers beaten by fathers, seeing multi-generational substance abuse, being neglected and left to find their own way in the world.

Some wrote of the difficulty of understanding God the Heavenly Father when their earthly father was such a disappointment.

They described their daily walk with the Lord behind prison walls. Most expressed an acceptance of their circumstances as the price they must pay (only one letter complained of an unfair sentence); many expressed contentment, even joy. Some described a life of service. 

As for advice for on mission Christians: 1) offenders requested ongoing friendships with people on the outside, including visits and correspondence, providing opportunities for the prisoner to experience unconditional Christian love; 2) they recommended exercising patience and persistence, not giving up on them as they believe society has done; 3) in witnessing, they suggested emphasizing the blessings of a day-to-day relationship with Christ over the consequences of spending eternity in hella circumstance they perceive to be much like they endure today.

As John wrote: Do not misunderstand me. I am not even beginning to suggest that the potential for hell should not be pointed out. Its obviously a very important issue. But if you want your message to have a better chance of getting the attention of prisoners, it might help to take into consideration the reality of their situation: their lives tend to be miserable. 

One trend stood out among all inmates who wrote to On Mission: Christ radically changed them. Each was outspoken about the 180-degree turns.

That which overcomes the greatest of adversity is that which stands with the greatest of strength, wrote Logan. Hard-soil people are indeed hard to reach. But, once you win one over to Christ, they are among the strongest of His soldiers.

Carolyn Curtis is editor of On Mission.

Pastors and mission leaders: For worship and small group videos on Hard Soil and other subjects, visit www.essentials.tv or call 800-634-2462, option 2 for E-ssentials.