Chris Lange, FISM News
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More than 100 children whose parents are incarcerated heard the message of hope and redemption found in the Gospel of Christ at a sports camp sponsored by Prison Fellowship ministry in collaboration with the Baltimore Ravens.
The nation’s largest prison ministry worked with the NFL team and local church volunteers to hold the free sports camp Saturday at the Ravens’ practice facility in Owings Mills, Maryland, dubbed “The Castle” by local sports fans.
Retired players and coaches taught middle and high school kids football disciplines like throwing and receiving, blocking, and tackling, stepping in for active Ravens players who could not attend due to a game against the New England Patriots that weekend.
Prison Fellowship regularly holds its Angel Tree sports camps at various locations across the country throughout the year. Founded in 1976 by Chuck Colson, the non-profit ministry serves families whose lives have been impacted by poverty and incarceration. Through its sports camps, Angel Tree focuses on helping kids build relationships while encouraging both physical and spiritual growth, according to Prison Fellowship CEO James Ackerman.
“The Angel Tree sports camps we’ve been doing for about 11 years, but this is the first time we’ve done an Angel Tree sports camp with the Baltimore Ravens,” Ackerman told The Christian Post in an interview.
He said that while the majority of camp attendees are boys, there are also “a fair number of girls who come out as well.”
Campers spent the morning rotating through eight different stations where they practiced football drills and showed off their new skills. Following a lunch break, adults presented the message of the Gospel through their personal testimonies.
“And those talks [shared] about the Lord and stepping into new beginnings with Jesus,” Ackerman explained.
Following another round of station rotations, several women shared their experiences in raising children while their husbands were in prison.
“The whole goal is to give the kids hope, right? Hope that you could maybe one day play for the NFL yourselves, hope that God has a purpose and plan for your life,” Ackerman said.
“God has gifted you and has hope for you. And so that’s the whole thesis of the entire trip,” he added.
Each child also received a backpack filled with a pair of athletic shoes, a football, and a Bible.
“So the kids, we want them to experience the ultimate hope that is stepping into a relationship with the Lord,” Ackerman continued. “But also the hope of being able to come out to a place that, to be frank, they would never otherwise have access to. And, you know, they’re getting to train on the same field as their heroes that they watch on Sunday in the Ravens.”
Prison Fellowship also serves children whose parents are in prison through its Angel Tree Christmas program. The program signs up incarcerated parents across the country and, through community donations, delivers gifts to children on their parent’s behalf.
A new program called Opportunity Kids, which was launched by the ministry in 2021, seeks to partner with other groups, including Black Girls Code, which teaches teenage girls to code, and the Boys and Girls Club of America. The program is supported by Coca-Cola Consolidated and Walmart.
Prison Fellowship was founded by Chuck Colson in 1976, a man who certainly understood the redemptive power of salvation and forgiveness through Christ. He served seven months in Alabama’s Maxwell Prison after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice charges in 1974 for his role in the Watergate scandal.
In his best-selling memoir, Born Again, Colson describes the way in which the Lord allowed him to use his prison experience to help others, writing “I found myself increasingly drawn to the idea that God had put me in prison for a purpose and that I should do something for those I had left behind.”
The ministry finds its roots in Matthew 25:34-40, which reads, in part, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me … The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”