Sometimes God sends you a sign. But for Randy Shipman, it was the lack of a sign that pointed the way to the fulfillment of a dream.
Shipman is the retired pastor of First Baptist Church, which every Monday night, sends a group of members to the Henry County Jail to visit the inmates and share a Christ-based addiction recovery program. Their dream for more than a dozen years: to provide a place for the men to go after they come out of jail, where they can put their lives back together.
“The need is great,” Darren Huey said. “So many men want to change their lives, but they don’t have a plan of how to do it. This gives them a place to make a plan.”
Darren, who said Celebrate Recovery turned his life around, will be the live-in director of the center. It’s important for former inmates to have a place to live, he said, because if the men have no place to go, they return to the place and the situation that led to their arrest. As a result, there is a 75 percent recidivism rate in most of Missouri, including Henry County, Darren said.
First Baptist Church had been looking for that place for a long time, Shipman said, but somehow, every time they thought they’d found it, the deal fell through.
Then, one day after a spring storm, he was driving down West Ohio Street when he noticed the sign on New Beginning Ministries, a non-denominational church, was down. Calling the minister, DeWayne Dodd, who is a friend, Shipman said he hoped everything was okay.
The sign had just blown down in the storm, Dodd told him, and was now back up. But attendance had been heavily knocked down during the COVID epidemic, and the church didn’t have enough resources to cover the bills and keep the doors open.
“He said, “Your question is a potential answer to our prayer,’” Shipman said.
The result: First Baptist Church purchased the building in April, and with volunteer labor, is turning it into a men’s discipleship center. When it opens next August, it will provide housing for 10 men, who will stay at the center for a year, during which they will be provided with a structured environment as well as a place to live.
In Springfield and Warrensburg, which have post-jail residence programs, recidivism rates have dropped to 35 percent, Darren said.
Henry County already has a housing program for women, he said, called Hope, which was started by Amanda Roe. It was originally one house and has grown to four, Darren said. There are six times as many men in the Henry County jail population as women, he said, but with no place for local men to go, Darren has sometimes had to drive them to structured housing in other places.
Forged By Christ volunteers said they are hoping to have the Men’s Discipleship Center open by the end of July or first week in August. They are working Wednesday nights and Saturdays to turn the church sanctuary into five, two-person cubicles with bunk beds on one side and a living area on the other. They are also adding showers to the upstairs bathrooms.
Downstairs is the kitchen, a laundry room, with the director’s bedroom and three private bedrooms, which residents can move into as a reward.
The residents will be required to have jobs or other income, Darren said, and contribute to their living costs. They will otherwise have what Joe Hilty, an FBC board member, calls “highly-structured freedom.” The schedule includes attending the church of their choice, Celebrate Recovery meetings twice a week, Bible study, and discipleship and life classes, Darren said.
“The goal is to re-learn life skills, so that they become productive members of society,” Darren said, “and eventually, to restore them to their families and their kids.”
As part of the schedule, residents will be required to put in four hours of community service a week, he said. Called Give-Back Saturday, it will first focus on making repairs to houses of senior citizens, starting in the center’s neighborhood.
They named the residence program “Forged By Christ” because the program’s aim is to reshape the men’s lives by putting them through the discipleship program, Darren said. Like a forge, he said, the process may get a little heated at times, but when they come out, it will have broken the cycle of their former lives and shaped them into something stronger.
Forged By Christ is guided by I Peter 5:10: “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” To restore, confirm, strengthen and establish the lives of the men who are chosen to live in the center is their goal, Darren said.
FBC is taking monetary donations, Shipman said, to help with the remodel, but discourage donations of used furniture because they want to furnish it with items that will make the center efficient and attractive, so the men will be proud to live there and take care of it.
“We went to restore their dignity,” Shipman said. “They need a place to come home to.”
Every person who lives in the center will be vetted, he said, and no violent offenders or sex offenders will be allowed. Darren is also taking over leadership of the Celebrate Recovery program in Henry County from Ron Pack, who led it for almost two years. Celebrate Recovery holds meetings in Clinton and Calhoun. One aim of Celebrate Recovery is to raise up leaders who can share the program with others, Ron said.
Last Saturday, FBC volunteers took up the dais in the sanctuary, and are removing the nails from the boards, which they are shaping into crosses to give residents.
The FBC team is planning an open house once the center is finished, they said, and inviting people from First Baptist Church and the center’s neighborhood. They will probably put prayers in the walls, Shipman said, and have a prayer walk at the event.
Finding a home for the project was an answer to their prayers, Darren said — the sale went through easily, as did the permit from the city, with no dissenting votes.
“We explored a lot of options,” Shipman said. “This has been the right opportunity.”
“God provided everything, all at once,” Darren said.
And it might not have happened, Shipman said, if he hadn’t been driving along Ohio after a storm and noticed the sign was down.
Donations to Forge By Christ Men’s Discipleship Center can be made through First Baptist Church, 1531 N. Vansant Rd., Clinton, MO 64735. Mark checks Forged By Christ. For more information, go to Forged By Christ.com.
