about and love, and it’s been a lot of fun to get
to introduce these things to new Christians, to
introduce love and forgiveness. I think that it’s
totally strategic of the Lord to do that for us and
put us in a place like that.
[Chris] It is petty amazing, like you brought
up, that’s what people know Folsom for. The
prison, you hardly see it from the city, it’s been
so developed, even since we’ve been here it’s
grown a lot. Intel has a massive unit here, and
there’s Micron. So it is interesting to have this
massive prison and then have this beautiful
suburb outside of Sacramento. I’ve actually had
the privilege of leading worship inside of Folsom
Prison with two friends of mine. I think Derek
was with me, and it was pretty amazing to go in
there with lots of people serving life sentences
and to worship with them. I’ve had the privilege
of leading at a few different prisons, I led at
one outside of Houston, and they even had a
ministry school, which was kind of birthed out
of one of Banning’s books called Jesus Culture.
These inmates in Houston actually started the
whole ministry school based off of just reading,
some of them getting saved off of the impact
that Jesus Culture has had. When we went in
to lead worship in Houston, they were ready for
us. They knew the songs and they were ready
to go. When we went into Folsom it was a bit
of a different story. It was a bit more work, and
by the end of a couple hours there were people
crying, people weeping, people really getting
ministered to. It is interesting to have that
contrast like you’re saying, but I believe that
worship changes the atmosphere, we often
reference the story of Paul in prison when they
were worshipping. It says, “In the midnight hour
the earth shook and the prison doors opened
and their chains fell off”, but the thing I always
find beautiful about that story is it wasn’t just
their chains that fell off, and their prison doors,
it was all of the prison doors. So, it’s amazing
how our worship, even though we actually don’t
realize what’s happening, actually changes the
atmosphere, and we believe that’s happening
here in Folsom. When we worship, whether its
on a Sunday or privately at our home in small
groups, the atmosphere is shifting and it’s really
8
June 2020