The best day of my semester was at a Miss. prison

As I near the end of the current semester, it’s natural to reflect back on the previous few months. Truthfully, unless I looked at my calendar of appointments, it would be hard to recall what I did many days. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good day, but nothing stands out. There is one day, however, which stands out from this semester. In order to understand why, I need to give a little background.

In 1995, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS) began offering collegiate education at the Angola Penitentiary in Louisiana. For the first few years, we were uncertain if this program would last, but after 30 years, we have seen the fruits of the Angola program and over two dozen similar programs through the United States. God has clearly done more than we expected.

NOBTS offers bachelor’s degrees in five prison locations including two for women. At Angola, we also offer master’s degrees. Currently, I serve as the senior vice president for academic administration and provost of the seminary, but at one point during my time at NOBTS I worked directly with the prison locations in Louisiana and Mississippi. As part of that responsibility, I taught at Angola on a couple of occasions.

I remember many of those students, and I’ll never forget the overall experience of teaching these men who were incarcerated but truly living free. I have rarely, if ever, taught a group of students more interested in learning. One of the students I met while teaching at Angola was Robert Hyde. At the time, most of the inmates at Angola were expected to die there, and Robert was supposed to be there a long time as well. No one, including him, expected Robert to be released from Angola in 2022.

After Robert was released, he began to work in the Department of Corrections in Mississippi with their education programs, and eventually NOBTS hired him to serve as the Director for the Parchman, Miss., prison location. He currently leads a group of more than 100 men who are seeking to earn their Bachelor of Arts in Christian Service so they can be assigned as field ministers and serve the Lord while incarcerated. In addition, he began to work on furthering his education and eventually was admitted into the seminary’s Doctor of Ministry degree program.

How does all this relate to the best day of my semester? On November 10, I sat at one end of the table along with a couple of other faculty members to discuss the Doctor of Ministry project Robert Hyde implemented within the walls of Parchman prison. The final stage of the DMin is to research and implement a project in the student’s place of service and write about the experience. Robert recognized a need for ministry to those in prison who need hospice care. Thus, his research was related to key palliative care skills which could be implemented by graduates of the NOBTS program. He selected a group of upperclassmen and trained them in these skills as part of creating a system to train hospice assistants. I remember specifically, he mentioned one graduate who had spent his life with “hands that hurt,” but now he had “hands that helped serve the hurting.”

As I listened to Robert describe his project that day, I couldn’t help but think about when I first met him behind the gates of Angola with no expectation that he would ever leave those grounds. When Robert walked out of the room to celebrate, he was met by his daughter he had reconciled with, and his wife, which is another story of God’s grace.

As I walked back to the office, I found myself overwhelmed by the recognition that God can do more than we might ever imagine and a sense of gratitude that he let me watch this example of his amazing grace personally. Lots of good things are happening at New Orleans Baptist Seminary, but I’ll never forget that day.

Originally published at the Baptist Press.