Joy Osborne - An Inside Job: The Life of a Prison Chaplain

I have known Joy for many years and have been privileged to have had a small part in her ministry journey. This has included being a part of the selection process for ministry candidates in her denomination, serving for a number of years as her District Superintendent and as a fellow Pastor and colleague, but most of all, as just another servant of Christ and His Kingdom, fulfilling His call to service.

It was a special delight to participate in her Induction Service at Lincoln Prison in July 2002 and, some 16 months later, visit the prison and spend time with Joy. She showed me around various departments and I observed her interaction with prisoners and staff, just over a year after the prison riot of 2002.

Before this, my knowledge and experience of prison life was limited to visiting inmates at HM Prison Wakefield on a few occasions and HM Prison Manchester (or Strangeways, as those of us brought up in the locality always called it).

Though visiting as an ordained minister, my wife and I joined the long queue of visitors outside Strangeways on a cold and damp Manchester morning. Families flowed through the gate for security check before being ushered into a large visiting room where there was little privacy and heavy surveillance. This was before the infamous riots at the prison. The chaplain, Noel Proctor, proved helpful to us in future visits. We learned how essential it is to remember to pray, especially for the guys we visited during the evening hours of lockdown, when they were confined to the loneliness and isolation of their cell.

During my years of missionary service, I took services in Bissau Prison, Mt Hagen, Papua New Guinea, and later participated in services in Chisinau Prison, Moldova. After speaking with inmates in Chisinau who were about to be released, I left the clothes I took with me (a months worth), for they had so little to face freedom with. It was there I learned that not every story has a positive outcome. One of the released prisoners who attended the services which my Moldovan friends conducted so faithfully went on to murder a woman who had given him a great deal of support and assistance.

My experience was that of the outside observer, catching brief and incomplete snapshots of prison life and ministry. My time spent with Joy and several conversations with her over the years gave me more of a window to flesh out these images. Reading her book, written in such straightforward, unembroidered language, gives a more complete picture of life for inmates, officers and the day-to-day work of prison chaplains.

The book is interesting, revealing and very moving. I recommend it to all those who desire to understand prison life and ministry better but also to those who, to this point, have never considered the needs and opportunities that are part of the life of significantly large numbers of our population, to have any relevance for them.

Joy is an unassuming Christian who allowed Christ to open doors to ministry and so was led into ministries she never could have imagined. She learned to trust Christ in supporting her through some of the most difficult years of HM Lincoln Prisons recent history. This book reminds us powerfully that ministry is all about people.

The beautiful Biblical word redemption reminds us all that in Christ there is provision for our own emancipation and deliverance from everything that imprisons or enslaves us. Joys book is also a powerful reminder that Gods call to the ministry of reconciliation often comes to those who seem to bein the eyes of many and indeed of themselves totally unsuited and unprepared for such a calling (1 Corinthians 1:26-31). Read this with an open mind and heart to hear what God might be saying to you.

Reverend Clive Burrows M.A. PGCE

Retired Pastor, Missionary, Theological Lecturer, Cross
Cultural Missions Specialist and District Superintendent,
Church of the Nazarene.