[ humanity ]
Mount Olive
Bible College
CATHY BONNSTETTER
Photo by Karisa Clark.
Healing Hearts,
Building Futures
In December 2018, Mount Olive
Bible College graduated its first
class of students. The result of
a unique partnership between the West Virginia Division of
Corrections and Rehabilitation, Appalachian Bible College
(ABC) and Catalyst Ministries, this accredited program is a
prison-based Bible college that offers inmates the opportunity
to earn a bachelor’s degree in Bible/theology and pastoral
ministry and serve as peer mentors within the prison system.
Getting the program off the ground was a long shot, and
its success is credited to divine intervention by all involved.
Calvin Sutphin II, founder of Catalyst Ministries, a nonprofit
designed to elevate the prison culture in West Virginia, says
the program gives incarcerated men the hope they lost with
the closing of the prison gate behind them.
“If you don’t have much hope and you are given an oppor-
tunity, it is so powerful,” he says. “We have seen men in their
20s up to their 60s embrace this college. That comes from the
power found in hope, and that leads to purpose—something
we all need. When we can be God’s vessels of hope, it changes
people.”
The inaugural class was made up of 21 men who were sent
to minister to fellow inmates at Mount Olive Correctional
Complex & Jail and beyond after graduation. Graduation day,
held in January, was the culmination of a focused journey that
began with a meeting between two strangers.
“I came to work one day, and my assistant told me Jim
Rubenstein, the commissioner of corrections who has since
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
retired, was there to see me,” says Daniel Anderson, ABC’s
president. “It turns out Commissioner Rubenstein had become
interested in a program for prison moral rehabilitation at
Angola Prison in Louisiana, and he wanted Appalachian Bible
College to start one in Mount Olive. This came about through a
series of circumstances I believe to be sovereign intersections.”
The road to Mount Olive Bible College’s fully accredited
program—which mirrors the one on ABC’s campus—and its
first group of graduates was a short one. According to CJ Rider,
West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s
director of inmate services and activities, the school—the third
of its kind in the nation—was established in about a year’s time,
thanks to the solid partnership. Even though the program is
too young to produce statistical proof of its success, anecdotal
proof was found even before the first class graduated.
The commencement ceremony was a celebration of transfor-
mation, says Anderson. “We had the men put graduation gowns
over their prison khakis,” he explains. “For a few hours, they
were able to be something other than prisoners. To see how
grateful they were when I shook their hands—how grateful
their families were—tells me this is tied to a work of God in
their hearts. These men have taken on the privilege of being
children of God.”
Seven of the graduates have been sent to other prisons in the
state that are commensurate with their sentences and crimes.
Two of them went to St. Marys Correctional Center & Jail, two
were sent to Northern Regional Jail & Correctional Facility,
and three moved to the Huttonsville Correctional Center & Jail.
“We sent them out to be peer mentors with a variety of pas-
toral duties,” says Rider. “We only accept someone if they have
at least eight years before they see the parole board or are dis-
charged. We want them to get their education so we can use
them for a few years.”
According to Rider, while some inmates at Mount Olive
will be there for life, more than 90 percent of them will even-
tually be free. As such, the program has a two-fold mission.
“We have some men serving life without parole, and we
need to make that community the best it can be,” he says.
“We also want to make our state safer. If we can change hearts
and minds now, we are not releasing people back into the
population who will recommit a crime.”