Worship touches young offenders
The following is an email we received from Soozie Courtney, worship leader at Reading Vineyard. Sooze also sang on the VRUK album 'Love Divine' and here she tells of the impact worship music is having on the guys at the Reading Young Offenders Institute. Isn't this exactly what Jesus loves!
"I lead one of the worship bands at church and as part of church each one of our homegroups/worship groups etc are encouraged to get involved in some kind of regular outreach. We heard that Reading Young Offenders Institute wanted some people to get involved with their Sunday services so we went and did a couple. They went well I think, as much as you can ever know really, so we volunteered to lead some of their 'Befriender' evenings on Wednesdays. The evenings are a chance for a few prisoners to meet some new people and someone often shares their testimony etc and tea and biscuits. We went in the Wednesday before Easter for the first time and played some songs, including 'Umbrella' by Rhianna and 'How to Save A Life' by the Fray, one of our guys shared an incredible testimony, we played some clips from the Passion and finished the night with the fab Dave Crowder song Surely We Can Change. It was an utterly incredible evening, God was there in abundance and by the end we really felt, and so did the chaplaincy guys, that we really made a breakthrough. When we left we gave them Easter eggs and copies of 'Love Divine' the new VRUK album. They were SO hugely pleased with the albums. These are some seriously tough guys, and it was incredibly humbling and exciting to see how pleased they were to have them.
We went back last Wednesday and a lot of the guys said they'd pretty much had them on non-stop since they got them, and some of the guys even go to sleep with them on. I guess the reason why it's so exciting to see is that even when I've given mates copies of albums I've been on they haven't bothered to listen to them, or shown any interest. These guys nearly bite your hand off because they don't have the cash to buy music and they don't often get people wanting to give them things. Also, some of them can't read so well, or just aren't used to reading the bible so hearing stuff in songs is perfect. Songs like 'Unfailing Love' or 'Amazing Grace' can speak to them in ways that sermons will never be able to.
This is really just a message to say what an amazing opportunity there is with worship. It's hard leading worship with 30 guys who've never been in church or sung worship just staring at you, but the difference with them having had their albums to listen to was that we could sing songs they knew and understood and it was almost like they 'got' what we were doing all of a sudden. VRUK have given us some more albums to give out and it's just really exciting that we can keep on giving and hopefully they can keep on getting. I'd just encourage anyone to see whether there might be similar opportunities where they live because it's so important to try and get the message to these guys that God loves them and won't ever give up on them."
posted by Chris Whitelock
