Here’s a 5 minute video to introduce ourselves:

Mission

UNDERGROUND MINISTRIES OPENS NEW RELATIONSHIPS OF EMBRACE AND TRUST BETWEEN THE INCARCERATED AND THE COMMUNITIES TO WHICH THEY RETURN—FOR OUR MUTUAL TRANSFORMATION AND RESURRECTION

“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”

-Nicene Creed, fourth century

VISION:

“Practice resurrection.”

-Wendell Berry

We serve those at the bottom of the American system: prisoners, gang members, those most feared, locked away in solitary confinement, and deemed dead to society. 

We build relationships, incarnating the kind of love we see in Jesus, friend of sinners and outcasts, who wept over Lazarus in the tomb before he raised him from the dead.

We are inspired by how Jesus not only spoke life into the underground, but then called a larger community closer—to help roll away the massive stone barrier between the living and the dead. So the beloved could join the land of the living.

And so we build relationships with employers, churches, lawyers, families, correctional facilities and neighbors. Why? So we can, together, creatively move through prison walls, roll away prisoner debt, and open new opportunities.

As we open these new relationships of embrace and trust, the change is mutual. Formerly incarcerated men and women are learning a new way, for sure. But so are business owners, churches, parents, and landlords. These new relationships turn us ("on the outs") into the kinds of people, and communities, God has called us to be. As we both risk shedding our defenses—mainstream and underground alike—we discover our purpose together, the life of the world to come.

“If we do not welcome our own wounds, we will be tempted to despise the wounded.”

-Father Greg Boyle, Homeboy Industries

OUR STANCE

Central to Underground Ministries’ mission of “opening new relationships of embrace and trust” across chasms in society,  we are committed to welcoming, affirming, working with, and learning from all people—regardless of criminal history, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, income, religious affiliation, disability, or education. 

Consistent with our value of “mutual transformation,” we seek not only the healing and restoration of those with conviction histories returning from the tombs of incarceration, but also helping mainstream faith and business communities unlearn and heal from the sins of white supremacy in our shared history, along with other societal sins that built these very tombs of mass incarceration we now seek to empty.

For us, these values are inseparable from our celebration of the ongoing and divine work of Christ’s incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection and radical movement, as recorded in the New Testament.

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