Faith-based leadership program for prisoners

In Psalms 69:33, we are told, "For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise his own people who are prisoners."

Nor, it appears, do the organizers of the annual Global Leadership Summit.

In August, thanks to members of LaCroix Church in Cape Girardeau, another local group will have an opportunity to benefit from listening to a panel of business and civic experts from a variety of disciplines. These latest additions to the annual leadership summit are the inmates at the Southeast Correctional Center in Charleston, Missouri.

Although the conference sites at LaCroix Church and the prison might seem worlds apart, and are separated not only by miles but by the stout walls of incarceration, they are being granted equal access to the two-day event that originates from Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago and is broadcast to more than 375 host sites around the world.

John Wade, a professor at Southeast Missouri State University and on-campus graduate coordinator in the Criminology and Sociology Department, is part of a ministry team at LaCroix that visits the Charleston prison twice a week. He and others on the team had heard that prisoners in Louisiana, California, Texas and Ohio had been included in last year's summit, so this time the group wanted local inmates to be included as well.

They drew up a proposal, met with the prison warden and the deal was done.

"He read it, and he said two words: 'We're in,'" Wade said in a recent article.

It was that simple. And, we are certain, that powerful.

May the truth set us all free.