Florida Prison Ministries was formed in 1989 with Frank and Maxine Barton along with Elder Malcolm and Hazel Gordon introducing prison ministry to the Florida Conference. Elder Obed Graham, then Conference President wanted to start a Conference prison ministries organization in Florida.

We setup an advisory committee of numerous individuals that would be a cross representation of ministers and lay members that could help plan and implement the vision that we had to reach God's children behind prison walls and their families/friends with a Bible based prison ministry program containing only Bible truth.

We have found that church members were eager to minister to inmates and their families if they had three things; training, printed materials at a reasonable cost and support from the church/conference.

The Lord has given us a training program that has been so effective that we have grown from having approximately prison ministries programs in six institutions in 1989 to ministering in over eighty-four institutions today, Praise the Lord, with around several hundred workers ministering to several thousand inmates and their families each week in Florida. In the training program that the Lord gave us, we teach what are the qualifications for service, spiritual warfare, anatomy of a setup, the do's and don'ts, ministering in prison, handling emergency situations, and the importance of support programs.

Our training program has been blessed by the Lord that we have successfully taught elderly ladies who thought they were too old to minister in prison. (See Testimonies)

We have two sets of bible lessons that we use in our ministry in Florida and print them ourselves too keep the cost at an affordable level for the quantities that will be given away. By printing our own bible lessons this classifies us as a publisher as the prisons will only accept materials sent in from publishers or book suppliers.

First, we have a bible lesson which consists of six lessons designed to lead a person to Christ and a copy of Happiness Digest, on the sixth lesson the question is asked if you would like to continue studying and if yes, please check box below. Then we send them our thirty two bible lessons which have basic Bible truths necessary for salvation.

The thirty two set of bible lessons that contain bible truths has a colored form insert that informs the inmates that if they complete the lessons they will receive a certificate of completion along with a free spiritual book of their choosing as indicated on the back of the form. Each form has a place for them to give us additional names of individuals that they think would like to have a chance to learn these Bible truths.

Another reason for printing and using our own material is that in the prison system in order to keep tension down they move inmates from one prison to another. If the inmates are getting together as a gang they will split them up. So, if they are taking our bible lessons and they return them to be corrected then get transferred to another facility they usually are not forwarded, therefore; it is hard for them to get the lessons back, but if they use our lessons because we print our own with the Conference address on the back, when they get returned to us because they are no longer in the institution from where they sent, we can usually find where they have been transferred and contact our prison ministry leader in the area and have them make contact with the inmate and return his/her lessons, while inviting him/her to the Florida Prison Ministry program in his/her new institution.

The local church going into the institution is the one that usually purchases the spiritual material that gets distributed to inmates in prison and/or their families/friends. In addition, they will take the lessons to their church for correction and distribute back to the inmates. This way they know the growth and needs of the individual inmates. If the lessons go off to some other place to be corrected they may never get back to the inmate and our workers will not know how they responded and their spiritual growth.

If the inmate sends his/her lessons to the prison ministry office we will respond to the inmates needs while we send his/her lessons to our special workers at Florida Living which have been correcting our bible lessons for us for many years. This gives them something to do in their retirement and they do an excellent service seeing that the inmates lessons are corrected and returned. They also send additional spiritual tracts to enhance their studies.

All of our material is subsidized including our Bibles to keep the cost down and is managed and shipped by the Adventist Book Center. By doing this the materials are shrink-wrapped to insure that it has not been compromised with contraband.

Our goal is to see that every inmate and their families/friends that want to know about Jesus Christ and be saved will have that opportunity. Therefore, in order to achieve that goal we realized that those inmates on death row, in solitary or in prisons where we do not have a prison ministry program we need some program that will reach them.

So we have two programs, first; because we get so many letters from inmates asking for someone to help them understand the Bible that we have setup a very successful pen pal program called Regeneration Fellowship (See pen pal tranining section). This program is a safe due to the fact that the inmate never knows who the pen pal person is or where they live. In addition, we read every letter coming in to insure that the inmate is not getting out of bounds with our pen pal personnel, this way we can give our pen pal some advice in some matters. (See success stories in testimony section)

Second, we have a newsletter we print each month for inmates called Regeneration Fellowship. This is edited each month with all kinds of interesting Bible based material. This will also reach those on death row, solitary confinement or in institutions that we do not have any prison ministry workers going in doing a program.

This has all kinds of interesting articles, a place where inmates can write in and have their Bible questions answered. It has editorial, health issues, Bible trivial, read your Bible through in a year, order free Bible lessons and send in prayer requests. We print several thousand every month in Florida and mail them to the prisons and we have given other Conferences permission to use the content but change the name and address for their use. (See Downloads for PDF copy).

In addition, we now give the inmates a chance to continue to study our message when they are released. They can fill out a form giving us permission to contact them with the address and telephone number where they can be reached. This form comes to the Conference office and the nearest church is contacted for follow up. (Thanks to Brother Joel McDowall for this suggestion).

The Lord has blessed Florida Prison Ministries to such an extent that we have been asked to teach others. We have been all over the country teaching what the Lord has shown us to do. This ministry has reached throughout North America and beyond.

We want to thank God for using us in such a way that He is glorified. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of host" Zechariah. 4:6