Team 33rd: Updates and Moving Forward

Have you ever been invited to a surprise party? There is a lot of planning and secret meetings to make all the preparations. Finally, on the night of the party, you and all your friends huddle together in the house of the birthday person and wait.

All the decorations are in place and someone is designated as the lookout. Everyone can excuse the lookout for giving a few false alarms, but what happens when you have waited over an hour, and been let down over and over again by false alarms? Eventually, no matter how much you love the birthday person, you wonder if it is time to go home.

Since 2012, Summit has had a campus inside the 33rd Street Jail. This is one of our church’s most unique opportunities, bringing light and hope to the men and women inside in the jail. We have seen so many lives touched by individuals committed to the vision of being the church with a population that can so easily feel forgotten.

COVID-19 has changed so many things in our lives and in our community and in such a relatively short time. Among other things, due to health and safety regulations for this vulnerable population, it has prevented us from being able to bring any volunteers into the jail for Summit worship services, Bible studies, or reGROUP. Along the way, there have been signs that the jail would reopen to our volunteers and ministry could joyfully resume. However, one month turned into six which then turned into a whole year. It has now been over 18 months since our regular services have been held inside the jail, and I find myself feeling like the lookout at the surprise party continuing to set off false alarms about whether we will be permitted back inside the  jail or not.

So what do we do now?

Do we throw up our hands and say “Forget it!”? Do we hang in there indefinitely? What we need to see is that the jail can “open” to our volunteers and stay open for them over a long period of time. This would enable us to move forward with confidence as we rebuild volunteer teams that we are working toward a goal that is achievable. That is why we have decided to put Team 33rd on hold for the entirety of 2022.

You might be saying to yourself, “If the jail is ‘closed’ anyways, what difference does it make?” We want to wait and see what will happen without keeping our volunteers perpetually on hold—preparing diligently one day to be told the next that service is off again, continually working to maintain clearance to enter the jail but never able to use that clearance, and setting aside time to volunteer but not being permitted to follow through. We are blessed to have the most amazing volunteers and we want to see them throw themselves into the ministries that God has for them. Keeping people in a state of suspended animation is not stewarding the resources God has given us effectively. If at the end of next year, we see the jail operating in a way that allows volunteers in again, then we will begin to prayerfully explore what a relaunch might look like.

As I consider all of this, one thing that has stood out to me the most is how dedicated the volunteers are here at Summit. Team 33rd is no exception—with all their hours in prayer, hours spent talking and encouraging each other, going through the extensive process to get clearance to come into the jail, and on and on. I know that all this work has honored the Lord and that he is pleased with the sacrifice this church has made on behalf of the men and women of the jail.

“No matter what happens, we must continue to thank God for the work that has been done, and as we wait, we must ask him to move on our behalf again.”

No matter what happens, we must continue to thank God for the work that has been done, and as we wait, we must ask him to move on our behalf again.

Keep the men and women inside the jail in your prayers. Keep the corrections officers in your prayers. Pray for the medical and support staff. This is what we can do while we wait.

Let’s see what God does.

Doug Foley is the Riverside & 33rd Street Minister. You can contact him at dfoley@summitconnect.org.