USA (MNN) ― Crossroad Bible Institute equips the church to disciple prisoners with the Word of God.
Since 1984, CBI has guided thousands of inmates through a faith-based re-entry education and equipped the church to make disciples and support them. One under-resourced group in this vision scope were the Spanish-speakers.
However, Crossroad Bible Institute President David Schuringa says they're answering that need by making the "Survey of the Bible" course available in Spanish.
That's significant because the Spanish-speaking population makes up nearly a quarter of the U.S. prison population. "We understand that there's precious little material available to those who speak Spanish, let alone for a program to disciple them in a personal way."
It's also a door into fast-growing outreach. Schuringa says the Spanish materials dovetail nicely with this expansion. "We'll be using this not only in the prisons here in America, but we have a distribution center in South America and Colombia. These lessons will be hand-distributed."
The South American hub is CBI's third international distribution center after Canada and Australia, but it is the ministry's first Spanish language center as well as its first to be planted in the developing world.
Inmates will study God's unfolding plan of redemption with Christ as its centerpiece. But, says Schuringa, "We need more instructors. There is a much greater demand at this point than we're able to handle. By instructors we mean those who will correct the Bible study lessons and return the lessons to the people in prison with a personal letter of discipleship."
