THE MISSION STATION MODEL
“You have a lot to offer. Come with your passion, gifts, and skills, and let’s make a difference together.”
The Blind Spot
The Insight
The Upside
Although it can sometimes be difficult to match opportunities to people’s interests and competencies, engaging them in meaningful service opportunities can demonstrate respect, foster collaboration, and combat the tendency for people to feel as if they are your “project.”
For many returning citizens, the act of serving and making a difference in the lives of others isn’t something additional or peripheral. It’s actually a significant part of how they work their own reentry in a healthy way, as they live into a new, pro-social identity and write a new “redemption script” for themselves.
In our desire to serve and meet the significant needs of people leaving incarceration, we can forget that one of their most important needs is to be respected and
valued as someone capable of serving alongside us.
And now for something completely different. This model turns the Service Station Model on its head. Instead of the instinctive focus on the significant and varied needs that most returning citizens have, the Mission Station Model shines a light on their strengths, gifts, assets, and inherent motivation to give back, to serve instead of being served. This need to serve is a crucial aspect of spiritual and personal growth for everyone in your congregation, includ- ing and especially returning citizens. You may recall that desistance research documents this need to “make good,” to make amends, as part of the process of living into a new identity. The need to serve others instead of self is often a God-given and long-nurtured dream born during incarceration. Many in- mates, for example, talk about their eagerness, upon their release, to try to influence youth in their communities not to follow in their footsteps.
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