When heaven invades hell
Don Waybright wrote this response to my interview with Terry Solley. . .
Before the sun rises every day on Texas Death Row you will hear the songs of praise and Amazing Grace echoing from the cells.
In the past year, thirty-three Death Row inmates have followed Jesus in baptism. These inmates lead five churches that meet daily for worship, Word, prayer, and learning to love God and love one another.
They are caged separately but that does not inhibit their worship. When a man receives his execution date, they conduct a special service, and as he makes the Death Walk they sing Amazing Grace. The condemned man is placed in Death Watch until his execution. The most dangerous criminal in the Texas Prison system has a special cell on Death Watch. Whenever he is removed from the cell, his hands and feet are shackled. Yet, he is a born-again disciple maker and ministers daily to the other men on Death Watch. The men on Death Row often feel God could not forgive their horrific crimes. Yet all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. The Gospel sets these men free.
One seemingly demon-possessed killer has been on Death Row for twenty years. His hair and beard a wild tangled mess – cussing venom constantly, his cell shielded to protect guards from his spit. Today he has been transformed by the love of Jesus demonstrated by Leroy and Barry. His hair and beard are clean shaven, he is baptized, transferred to Death Watch to the sound of Amazing Grace, sharing the Gospel with every guard. Two days later he was executed and like the thief on the cross, entered Paradise.
Another man who had been on Death Row for twenty-six years said, “I have been in everything you can be in—it is good to now be in God. Jesus laid His hands on me!” He quoted all of Psalm 34 from memory as his last words before execution. He received a stay of execution and continues to lead one of the Death Row churches every day.
Barry and Leroy are two multiplying inmates with special security status and freedom to make disciples on Death Row. They have been used by God to create this new humanity among a people and place that seems inhuman.
This is a work of the Spirit-Word-Mission. In the last year, Leroy and Barry have baptized over forty prisoners in solitary. Before being transferred to Death Row they led a movement in a prison south of Houston that saw 90 baptisms in solitary in nine months.
Inmates that were trained with these two in the simple, biblical reproducing disciple making approach have transferred to other prisons and seen amazing fruit. The largest Texas prison reached NoPlaceLeft with almost 300 churches meeting weekly, and 500 baptisms in four years. Inmate leaders have trained over 2,000 inmates to share the gospel, and over 500 to plant churches. There are over fifty church planting multiplication leaders across six Texas prisons. Texas has the largest prison population in the United States.
Several of these NoPlaceLeft inmates will be released soon, and plans are in place to help them keep spreading the Gospel and making disciples in prisons, in our cities, and in the nations.
Don Waybright
