Communities who suffer from crime and generational incarceration is one of the hardest-to-reach groups in America. The chasm between them and our churched communities grows every year. 

Over 10 million people in the United States are impacted directly by incarceration.  This number includes prisoners, parolees, former inmates and their families.  It does not include victims.  It does not include prison staff. It doesn’t include the people who live and work in neighborhoods with high crime rates.  If we added all those together, we believe the number of people affected by incarceration is much greater. Not to mention the damage that having incarcerated parents has upon children and the how breakdown of families, fatherlessness, and living in crime ridden neighborhoods affects generations.  

Studies show that recidivism - the tendency of a convicted criminal to re-offend and return to prison - is around 70% within the first three years after being released, nationwide — and around 80% in San Diego County.  Often, prisoners have no support or idea how to find the support they need to help them navigate the long road of reintegration with an outside world that looks vastly different from the one they knew before they were arrested. When people don’t know how to succeed, they will often return to doing what they know in order to survive. For many pursuing the American Dream isn’t a strong enough purpose to keep them from returning to crime or a sinful lifestyle when the process of change is longer and more frustrating than they anticipated. 

CDM's The Freedom Initiative takes a holistic approach to empowering prisoners to become the men and women God created them to be before the realities of this broken world and their sin got them off track: being world-changing disciple-makers.  Our comprehensive process connects work done both within prison and after, taking ownership of a prisoner’s entire journey to see long lasting fruit. Our goal is to use both Disciple Making methods in the mentoring process and the support of re-entry services to empower prisoners to reach their communities with the Gospel and lead them into obedience and healing expressed in His Kingdom. We believe this will impact our entire cities and future generations as well as revive the Body of Christ as we unite in this mission together.

The Freedom Initiative is opening a local chapter in San Diego, and we welcome you to connect with the effort and discover how you can help pioneer this mission with us. Whether you help in mobilizing prayer, providing re-entry needs (like food, housing, transportation), serve in networking, or mentoring prisoners and parolees, there's a place for everyone to make a difference. 

In this meeting, we will explain the process, give updates on the national effort, and detail the next steps in San Diego. 

What gets us really excited is that the Freedom Initiative gets the whole Body of Christ in an area involved in actually doing something about a systemic issue in a way that results in disciple-making. Ministries that provide for the needy- like housing, food, clothing, and education— can all partner together toward a cohesive, strategic outcome. Ministries and churches around San Diego can see their efforts bear on-going fruit far beyond their programming and location, fruit that has a real impact on crime and families across every demographic in their city.

Together, we can stand in the gap for these hard-to-reach communities to “preach good news to the poor, ...to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners."