St. John Catholic Church

A Parish Ministry of Hope is a ministry that tries to meet the needs of the Incarcerated and their families.  Parish communities may help with different needs and have a variety of service opportunities, depending on what kind(s) of penal institutions are located in or near the parish.

A Parish Ministry of Hope could be its own separate ministry or incorporated into a Social Justice Committee or similar ministry as one aspect of social justice.

Here is an article concerning prison ministry in general:  

http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/criminal-justice-restorative-justice/crime-and-criminal-justice.cfm

Some of the areas that an individual may become involved with under the ministry of hope are as follows (see the attached articles for details and suggestions about each area):

• Praying for and offering spiritual counsel to individual inmates.    Http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3156104/Prayers_of_the_People_for_Prison_Ministry_Sunday.pdf 
• Teaching inmates how to read and write.
• Writing to inmates and encouraging them in their rehabilitation.  http://www.mobilearchdiocese.org/prisons/PrisonPenPalTips.pdf 
• Offering assistance to families of inmates.  http://ffipnv.org/resources/ 
• Providing transportation to the prison or jail for relatives of inmates.
• Helping released inmates or paroled inmates to reintegrate into society. http://www.txccm.org/Links___Documents.html 
• Providing through the prison or jail chaplain or other officials, hygiene items, writing paper, envelopes and stamps and religious reading material for the inmates.
• Being an advocate for penal system and restorative justice.  https://educationforjustice.org/catholic-social-teaching-resources 
• Praying for change in the justice system to eliminate the death penalty and holding vigils when executions are scheduled.   http://www.phadp.org/ 
• Participating in an ecumenical Kairos program, a prison-program similar to Cursillo.  http://www.kairos-al.org/
• Direct ministry to individuals incarcerated in local, county, state and federal facilities. This would include youth facilities such as diversion centers, boys and girls homes etc.  http://www.mobilearchdiocese.org/prisons/ 

St. John Ministry of Hope

The members of the Ministry of Hope bring the word of Christ to young men who are in staying at the Boys Home in Dale County and those young men and women who are incarcerated at the Diversion Center in Dothan, Alabama. 

We visit the Diversion Center on  the Tuesday before the last Monday of each month and we visit the Boy’s Home on the last Monday of each month.  We do this for one hour starting at 6 PM.

Volunteers are needed, especially women volunteers to cover the girls in the Diversion center and at the Dothan Girls Center.

Contact the church office for more information.