Hey, good morning, everybody. Morning. Thank you, Ben, for that. That was fantastic. And thank you so much for having me out here today. I’m eager to share with you a little bit about the jail ministry. As Mr. Copley already told you, my name is Ethan Maynard and I’m the chaplain at the Geauga County Jail. It’s actually part of the Geauga County Safety center, which is both the jail and the sheriff’s office combined. So if you got the PowerPoint up there.

Click about three slides forward. One, two. One more. One more. One more. There it is. That’s where I work. Okay. You might have seen this building before, if you’re ever driving on 44, this is just south of the hospital. This looks like a plain, drab brick building, but there’s actually a lot going on behind those walls. All right, so I’ve actually been the chaplain at the jail for eight years now. And I just came from the other campus, the Agape campus, with the little kids, and some of them were younger than 8 years old, which made me feel really old. But it’s also a testimony to God’s grace that I’ve been able to do this ministry. And God seemed fit to have me do this. And I just really want to praise him. It’s all about glorifying Jesus. Amen.

So a lot of people don’t know what a chaplain is. And I’ll start off just by explaining that a chaplain basically fulfills a lot of the same duties as a pastor, only instead of being at a church, you’re at an organization, or you’re in the military, or you’re at a hospital, or in my case, you’re right there at the jail. And so I’m ministering both to the inmates. Those are the prisoners, but we don’t call them prisoners. I’m ministering to the inmates and administering to the officers. And we call the officers who are watching inmates corrections officers. Some people might not know that as either. A lot of times they’ll just, you know, call them cops or whatnot. But they’re actually corrections officers and I’m there to help them as well. So a couple different things that I do. Number one, pastoral presence.

If anybody needs prayer, anybody needs encouragement, I’m there for them to do that. And I’ll meet with people one one. I’ll do counseling one one. I’m also there to preach and teach the gospel. So every week I’m inviting inmates to come out of their living units, which we call pods, and they can come to a multi purpose room, gather for a Bible study, gather for a church service. I play my guitar, we do some songs. There’s a message from God’s word. I’m always focused on the gospel. And the reason why that’s important is because they’re not there a long time. There’s a difference between jail and prison. A lot of people use those words kind of synonymously, but jail is pre sentencing. People are usually not in a jail for a very long period of time.

They could be there, you know, a number of days, couple weeks, couple months. They might serve out their whole situation there. But if they get convicted of a Larger crime, that’s when they go to prison. Alright, so that’s one thing that I do is I do a lot of preaching and teaching. I also facilitate all the volunteers that come into the jail. And we’ve got about 30 volunteers that are with New Creation Jail Ministry. So I’m really glad that they can help. I do ministry with the men and then I’ve got people volunteers that do a lot of similar stuff with the women inmates. We’ve got a ratio of like about, we don’t have that many female inmates at the jail. Probably maximum of about 30 female inmates, but then we can have 120, 130 male inmates. That’s average, but it fluctuates greatly.

So does any of you. I’m going to teach you big word here today. Any of you guys know the word recidivism? Say that a few times. Recidivism, that’s the tendency of convicted people to reoffend and go back into incarceration. That happens a lot. You know, there’s a lot of different statistics out there that speak to recidivism and it’s always a pretty scary high number of how many people go to jail or even go on to prison, get out, do another crime and they’re right back in the system again. And some studies show that in like a five year span of time after getting out, recidivism is like over 60%. So in other words, there’s a big need. There’s a lot of broken people, a lot of people that need Jesus.

That’s you know why the Lord brought me to this place, I believe is because he has a heart for people to be transformed. And if you look at our logo, let’s go back to that first slide if we could. New Creation Jail ministry, it’s all based on what God can do in people’s lives. Therefore, whoever is in Christ is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. That’s the work that God wants to do in people’s hearts and minds. You know, people are obviously making bad decisions out there. A lot of times it’s simple life choices that bring you to jail. But the one thing that can break that chain, the one thing that can break that bondage to sin is Jesus Christ. So that’s one of the hope that I want to bring these inmates.

One other thing I forgot to tell you about the jail ministry is I’m handing out a lot of Bibles. I hope a lot of you guys are in your Bible a lot. You know, the Bible has the power to change lives. It’s living and powerful, sharper than any two edged sword. So I believe that brings people conviction when they get into God’s Word and that can really bring transformation. And it’s important for people that are in the jail that even don’t speak English. We have ICE detainees in our jail from all over the world. And I make it my mission to get them a Bible in their own language. So I’ve now been able to pass out Bibles in 26 different languages. So praise the Lord for that.

You know, if you respond to God’s word, I mean that’s going to be a major step. And so please continue to pray that these men and women would respond to God’s word. So I’m going to get back to why this ministry is important. You know, Jesus early on in his ministry was invited to speak at a century synagogue, very much like this gymnasium here. Very similar situation. He was invited to speak at the synagogue and he opened the scroll of Isaiah and he turned right to Isaiah 61 where it says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recover his sight to the blind. Now was he saying he’s going to set people free from the Romans?

Were those the captives that he was going to set free? No. Was he going to set people free from taxes? I wish. No, he’s not going to set people from free from taxes. How about free from something else? He came to set people free from the bondage that’s set. That’s what people came to set people free from. That’s what Jesus came to set people free from the bondage to sin. And I wanted to share that same message. That Jesus can set you free from your greatest enemy. That’s the sin and death that brings. You can break that cycle of darkness in your life. Romans 10:17 says, Faith comes by hearing and bearing, by the word of God. That’s why I use the Bible. That’s why this is what has the power to bring conviction and transform.

And it’s important that you don’t want to water that message down. The inmates get a lot of different programs offered to them. They can go to a lot of different social service type programs. And there’s something unique in what the chaplain and this ministry offers. That’s God’s word. Because the world is not telling them that Jesus Christ is the solution. They might Say that’s okay for you. That’s a nice cherry on top. But that’s you guys. I hope you know that’s not the truth. Jesus is the foundation you have to build on. That relationship with him is everything. And we gotta get back to those basics. And I often share with the inmates Matthew chapter 7, where Jesus says, the wise man built his house upon the rock. Amen. The wise man built his house upon the rock.

You’re not going to be able to withstand any of those storms in life unless you have that relationship with Christ. And another reason why this ministry is so important and so vital is because a lot of people behind the walls of the jail are forgotten. You think about it, how many of you go through your life and like, oh yeah, pray for inmates, oh yeah, pray for corrections officers. It’s probably not happening every day if we’re honest with ourselves, right? We’re thinking about other stuff. You know, I actually used to serve as a missionary. I taught English and Kazakhstan and did mission work there for over a year. And I knew there were tons of people praying for me in that capacity. You know, I used to be a youth pastor. I knew tons of people were praying for me in that capacity.

But when you go behind the walls of the jail, sometimes, you know, the inmates and the officers especially get kind of forgotten. It’s like Jesus said in Matthew 25:39, when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them, truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. So obviously God has a heart for those who are behind the walls of jails and prisons. He wants to see them reach for the gospel. He wants them to have the love of Christ being shown to them, you know, and that’s what I hope to do. I want to be obedient and faithful in that.

And when I was first kind of thinking about becoming a chaplain, well, first let me tell you, I never dreamed of being a chaplain. Any of you guys have the dream of being a chaplain? Okay, nobody has that dream yet. Maybe I can kind of light a fire under you. Because one of the things that made me interested in pursuing missions was hearing stories from missionaries. And I want to show you that you can do mission work right here in the United States, even cross cultural mission work if you do a chaplain type situation. And they need both men and women chaplains to reach, you know, men and women inmates. So it’s not just a guy thing. You could Be a chaplain if you’re a lady too. And God gave me a verse because I was between jobs.

I’m gonna back up the train here. I was between jobs. This was back in 2017. I had just graduated seminary. I was hoping to become a full time senior pastor. That’s like the next step, you know, like after you’re a youth pastor, everybody becomes a senior pastor. So I was applying for lots of different churches, and I went out to speak at all these different churches and several churches offered me a job. But nothing was right. You know, God was not giving me the go ahead. And I prayed about it with my wife. It just didn’t. Nothing seemed like the right fit for us as a family.

When I saw an ad for the job right here in Geography county, serving as the chaplain at the jail with Good News Jail in prison ministry back then, it was like God was saying, you know, almost audibly, that’s what I want you to do. Like God, why? Really? I mean, I’ve done this maybe a little bit before. I went into a jail and worked with youth a little bit. I went into a detention center when I was in college, but that was like years ago. God gave me this verse, Mark 2:17. He said, those who are healthy don’t need a doctor, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the self righteous or those who think they’re right with God. I’ve come to call sinners to repentance. Like, there’s people in the jail that need help.

There’s people in the jail that need to be told about the Lord and called to repentance. Otherwise their lives are never going to change. And if God wants to use me in this God, I want to be obedient. So I told the Lord, okay, I don’t know what this is going to entail, but I’m ready to do whatever you call me to do. And that’s basically how I became a chaplain. So I’ve been here now, like I told you guys, eight years, and we just started a new ministry. Before, I was working for Good News Jail and Prison Ministry, which became Good News Global. And they were, you know, all over the United States and international. But the chaplain support team and I decided to meet our local ministry to better serve Geauga county and Northeast Ohio.

So went independent just a few months ago, in November of this past year, went independent and we are now New Creation Jail Ministry. Well, what does this mean? Why is there a ministry in the first place? It’s because the facility doesn’t pay me. I am not paid in any way by the sheriff’s office or the state or the federal government. I have to raise all my own support. I’m essentially a missionary in the jail in terms of how I’m paid. So that’s why there’s a non profit ministry. And I meet on a regular basis with the board of directors and they help me reach my support. They need each year to take care of my family and continue in the ministry in the jail. But I’m very blessed that you know, that God was able to do that.

You know, I think it’s good to have a local ministry because the needs of this jail are different than the needs of another facility. For example, there’s state prisons that are over 3,000 inmates. This local jail only has like max capacity 200, no comparison, completely different work. I can be very hands on. Other chaplains, I mean they basically just got to run around all day and facilitate different things. But I can be very hands on and relational with the inmates. I can even go into the living units, which we call pods and visit with them. So praise the Lord. And that’s kind of what goes on. How am I doing on time? I’m doing pretty good on time. I’m not always the most time conscious. What time do we have to. 20 more minutes. Oh wow, that’s a lot.

Okay, well, let’s see if there’s anything I forgot from the slides and then I’m going to open up for some questions. Okay. So the first slide basically said that were accepted by the sheriff to be the full time chaplaincy service. So when we kicked off this new ministry, one thing that had to happen was we had to have the approval of Sheriff Hildenbrand. You know, unless he invites you into the jail, you can’t be a chaplaincy there. So went to him, the team and I, and we presented new creation jail ministry and he was 100% on board. So we’ve been invited to be in a full time chaplaincy service vision to see men and women inside the jail and out become fully discipled followers of Jesus Christ. That’s our mission.

One of the things that we try to do is called aftercare and that’s the process of mentoring and working with people that have made decisions for Christ in the jail when they get released. And you want to continue mentoring these people, following up with them, you know, if they’re a good candidate for it, make sure they get plugged into a church, make sure they’ve got good people in their Life. Because I’ll tell you, one of the things that gets people doing wrong is the people they surround themselves with. Their circle is often so pivotal in their lives. Remember, you know, bad friends will corrupt good morals, just like it says in Corinthians. You got to be very careful with the choices you make in terms of who you let into your circle. There’s going to be people in your life, right? You can’t.

You can’t leave this world and not work with certain people or seek certain people. But you do choose who you’re going to let in your inner circle and who’s going to influence you. That’s really important to always use God’s discernment, use biblical discernment. All right, let’s look at the next one here. You can’t really see it, but is there somewhere different points of emphasis in ministry? You know, really emphasizing God’s word, focusing on the gospel, calling people to repentance, things of that sort. Now, one of the questions you might have is like, am I allowed to preach anywhere at all times in the jail? Well, I have to use some common sense about it, you know, I mean, I basically do. But a lot of times I’m asking people, is it okay if I pray with you?

Would you like me to share a verse with you? As long as people are giving you permission, I can do anything. You know, it’s when they say, no, thank you, and then I have to be, okay, that’s fine. I don’t have to do that. Because then they would maybe say that you’re trying to proselytize or trying to do something in the jail that they not asking for. Everything has to be at the request of the inmates, right? If they want a Bible, they have to request it. If they want a book, you know, about the Lord, they have to request it. If they want to go to Bible State, that’s their choice. They get to go. But if they don’t want to, you can’t force them. So within those type of boundaries, I can actually do a lot.

You know, I can even step into the. The POD and say, hey, does anybody need a prayer today? That’s perfectly fine. Because I’m asking them. It’s up to them. But I can’t just throw myself in there, go into the living room and be like, hey, guys, gather around. We’re going to go in a Gospel of John today, starting on verse one. Yeah, they would, you know, I can’t do that. So there’s some boundaries. Here’s a boundary for volunteers coming in volunteers can’t give the inmates anything. You know what they call that? If you try to give something. Somebody in the jail something contraband. So you can’t be giving inmates anything. If you go in as a volunteer, they have to request it from me. Okay, so if you. If you get caught giving inmates contraband, that could be. That could be a big problem.

All right, but let’s take a look at this next one. So it’s hard to see from back here, isn’t it? Can you guys read that at all? It’s kind of, I believe, isn’t it? So that talks a little bit about our history, because we’ve actually had a chaplaincy program at the jail for a long time, way back when. There’s a sheriff in Red Simmons. And the first chaplain’s name was Ralph Self as a. Back in the mid-90s. And Chaplain Harry. Harry Richardson was a chaplain for over 20 years. He kind of was the guy that mentored me and got me on track. And now, of course, I’ve been here for a while. Let’s take over the next one. We never talked about that. Talked about that. Okay. What is God doing in the jail?

So I told you a little bit about some of the different programs we do, like Bible studies and church services. You might wonder, like, how many people usually come out and what does that involve? Well, to tell you the truth, the class sizes are actually pretty small. You know, maybe like anywhere from 2 to 12 guys I normally have in class. It varies a lot, but it’s not a huge number. That’s because they’re disallowing you to take one living unit at a time. So this figure, there’s like, maybe like 20 to 30 guys in a living unit, and maybe only, you know, a third of them want to come out for Bible study. You know, if I can get a third of them to come out for Bible study on a regular basis, it’s actually pretty good.

The numbers are not huge, but over the course of the year, we added up and we administered to hundreds of different people because there’s always people circling through the church jail. So I’m always amazed looking at it, you know, from the end of the year, going back and seeing what God has done in a bigger picture, because we minister to hundreds of people in any given year. Let’s take a look at the next one there. This is my family. If anybody. Has anybody here ever gone to Nelson Ledges? Okay, so that’s Nelson Ledges. Beautiful place to hike. My wife Angela, and our two Daughters. And yeah, that’s a great place to hike if you ever get up there. That’s near Thompson. Oh, no. Or was this the Thompson Ledges? Excuse me. This one I think might have been.

It’s either Nelson Ledges or Thompson Ledges. We went to both of those places on the same day. We did a Ledges tour. All right, I want to share a quick story with you here. Every year we do a banquet. It’s a fundraiser banquet. You can find out more about it on the website. I’ve got a brochure I’m going to let you guys have. And there’s a guy that was in the jail and got to work with him a lot. His name’s David, and David was doing really well. He went through this whole program that we have called Reformers Unanimous, which is basically addictions recovery from a biblical perspective. They have to keep a spiritual disciplines journal. They got to complete all these different challenges. They got to get in their Bible. And he went through this whole program, and he graduated from Reformers Humanities.

Then I went to visit him on the outside. He’s doing really well. He was running a bakery, and now he’s training to become a plumber. And he’s doing all this to take care of his family. And he is actually going to be speaking at our banquet this year. So praise God. Every year, I usually invite one of the former inmates to speak or to share a testimony or I’ll interview them. So it’s not quite as awkward up there. And it’s just always amazing to see what God has done in their lives. And Dave and his family are very invested in church. They’re going to church every week. I text him a lot of times. He’s like the one sending me scripture. And I just praise God for what he’s done in this guy’s life.

So if you want to lean on your family, I know a lot of you go to local churches here. Ask your church to get a table and lean on your family to come to the banquet. And I should probably give out some brochures for you guys and then ask if you have any questions. All right, Is it time? All right, so in this bag over here, let’s see if this will keep working here. All right, thank you.

Thank you.

And if you don’t want one, that’s fine. It’s like inmates. It’s only if you want one. All right, I’m going to open it up for questions here, because I’m sure you probably have some questions about the nature of jail industry. Yes. Oh, this one’s a brochure. Yes, Absolutely. That probably helps more than anything else. Yeah. Because a lot of times these guys will go back to their old friends and kind of see the situations. That’s the way you can help that out the most. Yes. No, thankfully, I’ve not been attacked. But they do teach you about different ways to prevent that. The first one is called de escalation. So if the guys in the room are getting rowdy and they’re starting to, like, push each other around, you kind of want to de escalate the situation.

If somebody seems like they’re going to argue with you, do you have to be right? No, you don’t have to be right. You just got to de escalate it. Be like, yeah, that’s nice. That’s good. I appreciate what you just said. You know, even if you don’t. But you de escalate it. And then people usually don’t blow a fuse. If you don’t feed a fire, the fire is going to go out. So not always, though. And sometimes there’s some crazy people. So one of the things you got to be ready for is to press that button. So the officers will come and they’ll be there within seconds. They also have a device called man down, which is basically like a, you know, like one of those paramedic type things.

Like, older person will have, you know, like, I fall in and I can’t get up type thing. You press that button and the officers will be there immediately, too. But I hope you have a use that. I never take it with me. All right down here on the first row. Price is. Say that one part again. Yes. And that’s a beautiful thing to see. So I thank the Lord for that. And I. I feel very privileged by that because, you know, I went for a long time in ministry as a youth pastor, and there was only like a few people, but as a chaplain, I see it almost every month. I think she was up first up here. Up here in white. Yes, I have been baptized. Yeah, I was baptized when I was 11 years old.

@ the time, I lived in California, and Pastor Munson was the guy who baptized me. Back then I went to a small church and. Yeah, let’s see, right there with the black shirt. Not trying to escape. But there are some people that said they accepted Jesus who have been backslidden or kind of proven that it wasn’t a real commitment. You know how Jesus said, you’ll know a tree by its fruit? Well, they weren’t bearing any good Fruit. I’m sorry to say, but we pray that God will get them on track and there will be genuine repentance. Yes. I have not seen that, thankfully. That would be pretty disrespectful. But I think a lot of times people, even inmates, will have some basic respect towards things like Bibles and treating, you know, chaplain with decency. Just a couple more.

Do we have any more time for just one or two more or you guys gotta go? Yeah, there are those. Yeah, there are some people that try to influence people away from Jesus. But you know what? You just keep doing what you do. Jesus proves better. Jesus is gonna prove better. I don’t need to even say anything bad about other religions. I just keep going the people to the real McCoy. Fights. I’ve seen fights, but not in person. I just saw them on camera because they’re back in the housing units while I was somewhere else. Last. Last one. Let’s get one from an older student. You know, my mom, she works there. Oh, yeah. Oh, fantastic. Okay. Do you have a sibling at the other campus? Yeah. Okay.

I never see the dispatchers because we’re on opposite sides of the building, but thank you for her service. Do you ever baptize at the jail? That’s a good question. And we cannot baptize at the jail for several reasons. Number one is we have no place to drain the water, you know, and you don’t want the sand and clogged the drain. I’m just joking. But the other reason is you can’t really tell in the jail somebody’s sincerity level. So I always encourage these guys, get plugged into a local church, talk to your pastor, go through their baptism class, and do it in front of the church. Because in the jail, you can have different types of peer pressure. You can have peer pressure to do wrong things, but you can also have some peer pressure to do right things.

And I want to make sure something like baptism, which is so important in somebody’s life, is real. All right, last one. You said that you had somebody come, a previous inmate come and share the testimony at the banquet. Did you ever have anybody come, like, during, like, a regular day? Yeah, in fact, I had a guy share, like, a DARE Program type of situation. I had a guy show a youth event a couple years ago. They did, like, a skating party up in Lake county at that ice rink. Depending on who it is, I could probably get a guy out to share here. I don’t know. I mean, they have to be okay with their whole situation, you know, But I can get the guys to share their testimony. Yeah, yeah, Good questions. All right.

Do you guys, like, close in prayer or how do you do this normally? Okay, let’s. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I just want to thank you so much for Agape Lord. Thank you for all the students here, all the teachers, all the staff. God, I pray that we would continue to bring glory to your name, God, and thank you for the opportunity to share the jail ministry, God, that a lot of things are going on in this community. Sometimes we’re not even aware how much work, God, you’re doing behind the scenes to change lives, God, and you allow us to be a part of it, your kingdom work. And I just pray, God, that we’d be excited about joining you in your kingdom work. And God, I just pray that your protection would also be on all these young people, God.

They got a lot of influences in their life. This world is a crazy place. But God, I pray that you would keep them safe, God, keep them on your path and keep continue to help them serve you each day. In Jesus name I.

Pray.

Amen