Baptism Behind Bars
God is moving in Colorado’s prisons!
God is moving in Colorado’s prisons! I recently had the opportunity to witness an amazing faith experience in Cell House Five (CH5) at Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility in Cañon City.
CH5 is a transitory unit where inmates who are being transferred spend one week to three months. No inmate knows where or when they’ll arrive at their next prison until they get on the bus leaving CH5.
It looks like the prisons you see in old movies – two row of cells, three tiers high, with bars controlled electrically. Guys in CH5 can’t go anywhere: no chapel, no yard, no dining hall. It’s a pain. They all hate it. It’s loud and full of obscenities as guys yell from one side to the other.
As I went cell to cell talking with the guys, I met Jose (an alias), who admitted that he’d had a life filled with violence. But now he’s in his 60s and he’s rethinking his life choices and reading the Bible.
He had a lot of questions and I could tell he was serious about studying God’s word. After talking with him for a while, It was clear that somehow, sometime in the past year he had become a true believer and had given his life to Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
With thick metal bars between us, Jose told me he hoped to be baptized one day. The prison Jose came from didn’t have a chaplain, so there was no way for him to be baptized. There’s no guarantee that his next prison will have a chaplain either.
I couldn’t take him out of cell, but I asked him he if wanted to be baptized right then.
He answered, “Yes, please.”
After talking more about baptism and what it means, I used the bottle of water I had with me to fill my palm with water and reaching through the bars baptized, Jose on his forehead. That’s how Jose, surrounded by guys yelling f-bombs and obscenities, took a step of obedience and publicly declared his new life in Christ.
While Woodmen practices baptism by immersion and sees this as best aligned with our understanding of scripture, on this day Jose and I made the best of what God provided in the moment.
Please join me in praying for Jose and the other men in CH5. Ask God to bring Jose to a prison with a good chaplain and an encouraging group of believers.
Story by Woodmen Prison Ministry Partner, Paul Nielsen
Return to Stories