A weekly outreach to a correctional facility in Bonne Terre, Missouri, is fueling a remarkable move of God.
How It Began
Two years ago, we received a direct message from the organization God Behind Bars asking if Twin Rivers Church would be interested in becoming a church campus inside a correctional facility. We are so grateful for that partnership and for the vision this organization carries to connect local churches with those behind the walls. At that point, we stepped into uncharted territory. What launched on March 26, 2024, became the first correctional facility church campus in the state of Missouri, and what God has done since has exceeded every expectation.
Every Thursday evening, a team of eight to ten dedicated volunteers makes the journey, over an hour each way, to Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center (ERDCC). These aren’t casual participants. They enter through the same entrance as staff, clear security, and give everything they have to serve the men inside. For many of them, Thursday is already a full workday before they walk through those doors. They sacrifice evenings with their families, arriving at 5 p.m. and not returning home until after 9:30. Their commitment isn’t seasonal; it’s consistent and sacrificial.
The fruit speaks for itself. In just two years, hundreds of men have attended worship services. On any given Thursday, more than 110 men gather to encounter the presence of God through worship and the Word. We have witnessed nearly 200 men baptized and recorded over 700 salvations.
What started as an unknown territory has become a pivotal place of evangelism. God is moving behind those walls, and Twin Rivers Church, under the leadership of Pastor Joe Dobbins, had the faith to say yes before we could see the full picture.
What It Takes
Leading a correctional facility ministry requires a level of intentionality that most ministry environments don’t demand. This is not an outreach where you show up, set up a folding table, and hand out flyers. Everything about it requires preparation, process, and patience.
Before we ever walked through those doors consistently, we had to prepare our church and our people for what correctional facility ministry is like. It is unlike any other ministry context. We are stepping into a government-controlled environment, surrounded by men who desperately need Jesus, but many of whom have committed violent crimes. That reality cannot be minimized or spiritualized away. It has to be acknowledged, respected, and navigated wisely. We invested significant time in creating an experience and a process that was clean, streamlined, and sustainable. Because if the process breaks down, the ministry breaks down.
There are forms to complete, administrative hurdles to clear, and government protocols to honor at every turn. Building within that framework requires humility and persistence in equal measure.
Beyond the logistics, the most critical investment was relational. Trust is everything inside a correctional facility, and it is incredibly fragile. The reality is that many ministries and programs have entered prison environments with great enthusiasm, only to quietly disappear. When that happens repeatedly, both residents and staff become guarded. Skepticism becomes the default response to anything new walking through the door.
We understood that from the beginning. So, we showed up every Thursday and kept showing up. Two years later, we are the longest-running weekly programming at ERDCC. That consistency built something that programming alone never could: genuine rapport with the staff, the administration, and the warden. We earned trust by refusing to leave.
And that trust has produced something beautiful. Because of the culture of commitment we established, we have seen the facility itself expand programming, including family events that now bring residents and their loved ones together. Our presence didn’t just plant a church campus; it helped create an environment where restoration is possible on multiple levels.
That is what it takes to lead this kind of outreach. Not just passion, but process, perseverance, and the willingness to play a long game for eternal results.
Testimonies
In two years of ministry at ERDCC, we have accumulated more testimonies than any article could contain. But a few of them capture what God is actually doing behind those walls.
William submitted a prayer request one week before one of our Thursday services. In it, he disclosed a strong and active push to end his life. Our prayer team flagged it immediately, and we went to work interceding for a man we hadn’t yet met: a man hanging by a thread inside a correctional facility where hope can feel like a foreign language.
The following week, we held a baptism service. At the end of it, William walked forward. He surrendered his life to Jesus Christ and was baptized that night. He went from contemplating suicide to declaring resurrection! That is what the Gospel does when the church shows up.
Jon carried a weight that many of the men carry. He believed that what he had done placed him permanently beyond the reach of God’s grace. He asked me directly whether Christ could truly forgive someone like him.
I told him the truth. Not only was forgiveness available to him, but Jesus Christ specifically died for him. The cross was not a transaction for the deserving; it was a rescue for the broken.
What happened next stopped me in my tracks. Jon didn’t just receive forgiveness for himself. He immediately began asking for prayer for the people whose lives he had negatively impacted. In that moment, a man inside a prison cell modeled something the church outside sometimes struggles to demonstrate─genuine repentance that turns outward in love.
Jon reminded me that forgiveness doesn’t stand outside the prison gates. It walks right through them.
Ben’s story captures the multiplication effect of this ministry better than any. His mother told us not only had her son attended every service since we launched, but he had also become an evangelist inside the facility.
Ben has struggled with addiction for years. So, when other inmates told him they didn’t feel worthy enough to attend a religious service, Ben didn’t argue theology with them. He just said come anyway. And they came.
Ben is now leading a Bible study inside the facility, with additional men showing interest. He is also helping organize a class to address substance abuse because, as his mother noted, drugs are rampant inside correctional facilities, and the majority of incarcerated men carry some form of addiction. His mother closed her message to us with these words: “You are bringing God’s light into the darkness at ERDCC.”
Ben arrived as a resident. He is leaving as a leader.
The Addiction Breakthrough.
Substance addiction is one of the heaviest realities inside ERDCC. A drug known as K2 has afflicted many of the men there. But we have watched something shift. Men who have been enslaved to this substance have come forward for prayer, publicly declaring their desire to be free. And they are getting free. Men are testifying to being completely clean for months and even a year. No rehabilitation program produced that; the presence of God did.
Revival Shifting the Culture.
The most sweeping testimony doesn’t belong to one man. It belongs to the entire camp. The warden has expressed deep gratitude for our presence at ERDCC, saying the environment has changed and there has been a measurable shift inside the prison. The residents themselves have echoed this, saying the camp simply feels different, even in how people treat one another day to day.
I can describe what is happening only with one word: revival. Not a revival as a scheduled event, but as a culture shift. A direct result of the presence of God taking up residence in that camp every Thursday night and refusing to leave when we do. The leaders of the chapel have also reported a significant increase in attendance at their own services since our Thursday ministry launched, meaning the hunger God is stirring isn’t contained to one night a week. It is spreading.
When the warden notices, the residents notice, and the atmosphere of a correctional facility begins to shift, it is not a church program succeeding. That is the kingdom of God advancing into territory that darkness thought it owned. We are just the ones who said yes.
Impact on Twin Rivers
Our congregation is one of the most generous communities of believers I have ever encountered. None of what has happened at ERDCC would have occurred without their wholehearted backing, spiritually and financially. From the beginning, they didn’t just tolerate the vision. They funded it, prayed over it, and claimed it as their own.
That financial generosity made possible something that still moves me to reflect on: the full installation of screens and a complete sound system in the ERDCC recreation gymnasium. A proper worship environment, built by the sacrificial giving of people who will never set foot inside that room. That is the church at its best.
But what this ministry has done to Twin Rivers may be as significant as what it has done at ERDCC. Every Sunday, before the sermon, Pastor Joe Dobbins welcomes the congregation, and in that welcome, he includes the men at our correctional facility campus. He makes it plain: The residents of ERDCC are just as much a part of Twin Rivers Church as anyone sitting in our free-world campuses. That declaration has had a profound effect on our people. It has expanded their definition of who belongs.
Nothing illustrated that more powerfully than a moment during one of our Revive Night services. We filmed our ERDCC congregation worshipping, men inside a correctional facility singing with everything they had about the good plans God has for their lives. When we played that footage on a Wednesday night, the room erupted. People sang along with them through tears. There was not a dry eye in the building. In that moment, the congregation didn’t just see inmates on a screen. They saw their people, men they had prayed for, given for, and believed for, declaring the faithfulness of God from behind prison walls. It was one of the most electric moments I have witnessed in ministry.
Beyond that moment, this campus has fundamentally reshaped how Twin Rivers understands the church’s call. We no longer hang our identity on what happens on Sunday morning alone. This ministry has made it undeniable that ministry happens every day, in every environment, to every person. We are not a four-walls church. We are a sent people.
And that shift in identity has produced a tangible passion for outreach and mission throughout the congregation. New people are stepping into ministry lanes they never considered before, with a fire and energy that cannot be manufactured from a pulpit. It was ignited by watching ordinary volunteers drive an hour to a correctional facility every Thursday night and return changed.
Twin Rivers launched a campus to reach an unreached people group. In the process, God used that campus to reach something inside the church itself.
Brandon Nelson served as campus pastor at Eastern Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center, a ministry of Twin Rivers Church, until his recent appointment as lead pastor of Harvest Church of God in Charlottesville, Virginia.