1. How did you first become interested in the issues that surround white-collar and other nonviolent incarceration?
Good morning Hurley. It is so good to meet you. Your cover story interviews of Tracy Martin, father of Trayvon Martin, and of Christopher Williams were so powerful and helpful - if our interview touches even one person or family suffering from white-collar or nonviolent incarceration issues, I will consider it a success. The most obvious answer to your question is that from 2006 - 2007, I was incarcerated for almost fourteen months at Allenwood LSCI, a federal prison in White Deer, Pennsylvania for a white-collar crime I committed when I was a lawyer.
2. When did you first realize that you wanted to launch this project?
I think our ministry was a more a calling than a realization. After returning home from prison, I volunteered for some recovery and prisoner reentry agencies in the Bridgeport Connecticut area. Most notably, Family ReEntry, which was the first organization to elect me to its Board of Directors. I then applied to and was accepted at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, where I attended from 2009 to 2012. After earning a Master of Divinity with a focus in Christian Social Ethics, I was called to a position at the First Baptist Church in the inner city in Bridgeport, Connecticut, as Associate Pastor and Director of Prison Ministries. My wife and partner-in-ministry Lynn Springer and I were living in Greenwich, CT at the time, where we were attending recovery meetings every morning. In Greenwich recovery, I helped many financial people through their own prison-related issues. The concept of founding the first ministry in the United States created to support individuals, families and organizations with white-collar incarceration issues grew out of our personal experiences living and working in these vastly different communities.
3. What is your mission and what do you find to be the biggest challenge with carrying out that mission?
interview with rev. Jeff grant
by: Hurley Morgan
Senior Managing Editor
Men of Faith