Riverbend Prison

We had another great service with the men at Riverbend last night, I don't know what it is about taking the word to the men at Riverbend but it is such a soul strengthening experience that it is really hard to put into words.

Mark Pierce nailed it in an e-mail I received this morning...

"No doubt that playing in the Riverbend facility is a humbling experience. It is somewhat funny, but upon leaving I didn't seem to have ANY problems!"

I think that says it all. We, "On The Outside" - I think take our freedom for granted. But when you come face to face with a group of men who have lost that freedom and everything else, and have decided to turn their lives over to God, it creates and incredible worship experience.

I look back over the last year or so and see how much fighting and arguing has gone on at my church in the name of "creating" a worship service, the meetings, planing sessions, re-arranging of leadership, new banners, new video display and the list goes on and on, and then I think about the service at Riverbend, and I realise how down right foolish we all are. I mean who are we worshiping here? All God has asked is that we bring our lives to Him. That's it! I hate to say it but I think the rest is for us. Sure it helps "Create" a more worshipful atmosphere, but is it worth it?
At Riverbend all that is left outside the gate. Worship is "Created" by God from nothing, It happens because a group of people have come together for no other reason but to worship. Now having said that, do I want to go to prison in order to have a true worship experience? No. But our experiences at Riverbend has opened my eyes some and I am going to be rethinking what worship means to me.

Sorry - I kinda went off on a tangent there.

The following are two posts from Tommy's "Shoot The Moose" blog about our recent trips to prison...

First from March 2nd

I don’t know if I’ll be able to accurately express what I want to say. I’ll give it a shot, though.

No matter what I do the rest of my life, no matter how much money I make or what heights I rise to in computing, music, or writing, I know that I will look back on the first day I went to prison as one of the absolute pinnacles of my life experience. Last year, members of X-Alt traveled to Riverbend Maximum security prison in Nashville, to lead worship services there. What happened there had such a profound effect on me, I am drawn to return as soon as possible.

It was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done. No doubt, we were going behind inpenetrable walls to be amongst some very scary people - men who had done horrible things to get in the position they were. Here we were, whitebread, middle aged men and women from Belle Meade, Bellevue, and West Meade, going with eyes wide open into the one prison in the state of Tennessee where the worst of the worst of criminals was housed. But we felt called, and we had made a promise, so we went.

When entering Riverbend, you are searched vigorously. The musical equipment has to come in separately, inventoried down to the smallest wire. You are not allowed to bring ANYTHING in with you but your driver’s license, and a single key to your car. You are told not to ask the men about what they’ve done, and you are told that under no circumstances are you to give any personal information to them. Then you go through a gate. Then another. You walk a bit, then go through another. With each automated gate closing, you feel you’re being drawn deeper away from the word you knew.

We walked across the yard, accompanied by a lone female guard. As we walked, a large group of men were crossing the yard on the other side, probably going to dinner. I’ll be honest, they were quite scary looking. We had females among us, and, being a male myself, I understood perfectly the looks they were giving us. We finally got to the chapel, if you can call it that. It’s just a bare room with a few pews. No decorations, no adornments. Just a bare room.

Our equipment was already there, and some of the inmates had already started setting up for us! Our first instinct was to yell, “Hey! Get away from that stuff!” But we remained quiet. It became obvious after a few minutes, that these men were just very eager to get the worship service started.

Once set up, the strangest thing happened. A couple of men left the room and came back with Styrofoam cups of water for us. To be “served”, in a Christian way, by these men who were in the direst of conditions was quite humbling. It moves me still, just thinking of it. We started playing, and immediately you could tell that these men were there to worship. Not to see or be seen, not to gossip, not to socialize. They hungered for the Living God. We played our set, feeling that we had done pretty well in those circumstances. The minister preached a bit, and then they called a few of the inmates up to sing.

They called themselves “God’s Soul Children”. Five of them had worked up an acapela version of “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye (To Yesterday)”, changing the word “hard” to easy, and inserting their own verses singing God’s Glory. I can’t tell you how moving this song was. Many of us had tears in our eyes. Later, I thought to myself, they must have been ridiculed endlessly when they were working up this song in “the yard”. Yet, they sang anyway. God was glorified, I can tell you.

Then, we got up to close the service. We did an encore or “Lean on Me”, then we called up God’s Soul Children to sing Amazing grace with us. The only way I can describe that moment is the same way that Handel described the moment “Messiah” was written:

“I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God Himself.”

I have never experienced anything like it before, or since. We weren’t a bunch of west-side white folks and a group of hardened criminals thrown together in a room. We were brothers and sisters, singing a song for our Father, and the Spirit let us know that the Father was well pleased. Singing words like wretch, lost,blind, saved take on a whole new meaning in such a setting. It was such a glorious experience, I feel my words are failing to express it properly.

We are going back to Riverbend Prison this Sunday. I don’t know what we’ll find there - usually the second time you experience something, there’s a letdown. But if the worship service is only half the one we experienced last time, we’ll be talking about it for years to come.

When I went through that third gate into the yard, half scared out of my mind, who would have thought I would hunger, no, ache to get back in there again. God is funny like that.

Then from today...

Yesterday evening, not being the first time going to prison and all, went a lot for efficiently. That’s a weird word to use for something so profound as a prison ministry, but there’s not doubt we got in and out much more quickly than last time. That was good, because it left more time for “church”.

It went beautifully, as expected. There is a man who calls himself “Happy Jack”, who was there last time as well, who may be the best singer I’ve ever heard. Anyway, it was a wonderful service, and it went over a little because nobody wanted to leave. A couple of guards positioned themselves in front of the chapel where we could see them in an unspoken summons for us to wrap it up.

But even they got into our version of Amazing Grace

Back to my tangent for a second - Isn't that what we all want in a worship service? As Tommy put it "who would have thought I would hunger, no, ache to get back in there again" that's what I'm talking about, when my church service ends I want to hunger and ache to return. Isn't that what God wants from us, to hunger and ache to be with him?
I'm going to have to keep thinking on this one.
What do you think?
V