The Grand Rapids Press

A pair of barbed wire fences surround the yard outside the chapel where Gerald Aikens worships. The fences aren't there to keep criminals out, however; they're there to keep criminals like Aikens inside.

Aikens, 52, is in his thirty-second year of a life sentence at the Carson City Regional Correctional Facility, about an hour east of Grand Rapids.

On New Year's Day 1967, Aikens and a buddy, out for an afternoon of "shoplifting and till-tapping," stopped in at a Lansing gas station to continue their spree.

Aikens, then the 21-year-old "rebel son" of a Pentecostal minister and a father of two, was carrying a pistol. In a haze of alcohol and drugs, he said, he shot and killed the store's employee.

Nine years into his sentence and feeling "like nothing," Aikens's life was at a crossroads, a turning point where he could continue the downward spiral that had landed him in prison, or for the first time in his life, he could choose to go down the "right" road.

His commitment to turn things around led him to the Crossroad Bible Institute, a non-profit prison bible study program.

Aikens' experience with Crossroad, he says, helped change his life.

Now holding a bachelor of psychology degree, the grey-haired grandfather of five is due to go before the parole board next year. Although he doesn't expect to be released, Aikens says he's found peace.

"There isn't anything out there that can make me free," he said. "I believe in the Lord, and that has made me free."

Crossroad got its start 15 years ago when Tom deVries, a Rockford car dealer who'd been studying scriptures with a friend, was invited to the Kent County jail to share his testimony with prisoners.

DeVries, who'd expected religion would be far from a soft sell to the legally hardened, was surprised to find prisoners sitting up in their bunks and pressing their faces against the bars of their cells to hear his message.

"They were eager, interested, respectful... quite honestly some of the nicest people I'd ever met," said deVries, 50.

DeVries understood how new experiences can alter one's perceptions of a beliefs that seem so acceptable that they often remain unchallenged.

"I was kind of a redneck," deVries said. "I had quite an attitude toward people who were unemployed or those I'd see just hanging around. I didn't see myself in the same category."

Through God's word, deVries learned that he was no different from those he thoughtlessly dismissed, that he needed the same grace they did.

"We all have a tendency to think we're better than the next guy, and it's really easy to think we're better than prisoners," he said. "But the fact is, the scriptures teach that we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that I'm no closer to the throne than any prisoner."

Still, deVries soon realized that the consistency of Biblical study and worship he enjoyed was not as easy for the incarcerated. Transfers and releases often made uninterrupted Bible study near impossible. That bothered him.

"I would find that the guys I'd talked to the Sunday before wouldn't be there the next week," said deVries. "I felt like I was breaching a potential quality relationship with people."

So he got to work promoting Bible courses to prisoners through the mail. With every request, deVries included a personal letter of encouragement, something he said gave prisoners the message that their studies were taken seriously. That's vital, he said, because only about 15 percent of prisoners receive personal mail.

The response was "overwhelming," said deVries, who soon found himself using the back of his car dealership to mail his biblical study materials, enlisting support from friends and family to keep up with mailing lessons and writing personal letters.

The student list grew to nearly 800, with deVries still funding the study program himself.

Then, about eight years ago, deVries got a call from Rev. Dr. Edwin Roels, then-president of Reformed Bible College. The two discovered a common love for mission work and prison ministry, and deVries gained a partner.

The impact of Crossroad was to grow even more: after prisoners began to write to The Back to God Hour requesting copies of "Today" devotional booklets and responding to broadcasts, the Grand Rapids-based ministry was called in to fill the need for a consistent prison bible studies program.

Relationships blossomed from there, and today Crossroad also has support from the Words of Hope radio broadcast, Christians United for Reformation, Ligonier Ministries and KeyLife Network.

According to deVries, Crossroad is meeting a deep need. "We're not going into the prisons trying to recruit students," he said. "They're coming to us, and they're coming because they have a deep hunger to study the scriptures."

And the numbers speak to that hunger. Currently, Crossroad has 2,800 male and female students in 45 states and five countries, and enrolls nearly 600 new students every month. Local organizations such as Project Rehab, Guiding Light Ministries and Bullock House also offer the program. Fifty students also are enrolled in Crossroad-administered college-level courses through Reformed Bible College.

Crossroad's program also is used at the Kent County Sheriff's Department Honor Camp, and has been applauded by the Department of Corrections.

One government official who favors the program is State Senator William VanRegenmorter. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, VanRegenmorter works with the courts, law enforcement and Department of Corrections officials to create and enforce prison legislation and policy.

"Rehabilitation does not seem to be a regular product of the prison system," he admits. "But I believe that there has been one very effective rehabilitation process, and that is Christian ministry in the prisons."

VanRegenmorter credits Crossroad and other bible study programs such as Forgotten Man and Prison Fellowship for giving prisoners a sense of destiny.

"For the first time for many of these prisoners, programs like Crossroads put in their hands the principals of scripture, which clearly are the answers for many of them."

The ministry still is funded solely by donations and fund-raisers. Proceeds from donated books that stock Crossroad's bookstore at 2751 Alpine Avenue NW cover the cost of mailing and processing lessons. The rent and utilities at Crossroad's offices, at 2769 Ivanrest SW, are taken care of by an anonymous donor, and the two full-time and five part-time administrative salaries rely on deVries's salesmanship. He even takes old cars as donations, which he sells for parts.

The faces on the walls of the Crossroad offices tell the story of why the program is worthwhile. Bulletin boards are covered with letters, photographs and art work from those whose lives have been changed through their Bible studies. Framed posters of prisoners' faces over the words "Remember Me" serve as a constant inspiration to office staff.

Much of the prisoners' inspiration comes from the way Crossroad lessons are designed. The ten-book series is written especially for those in prison, deVries said, paying careful attention to those who might have learning disabilities or attention deficit disorder.

"That's a key thing," said deVries. "Prisoners are usually not good students, but they've been educated beneath their intelligence. If we mark their spelling wrong or belittle their efforts, it harks back to what they were told in school. You have to really know the people-group you're dealing with: they're intelligent people who are just not successful at 'doing school.'"

The goal, said deVries, is to develop discipleships in order for prisoners to lead others and their families. "And the only way you're going to do that is to equip them," he said.

Roels developed the lessons, and Dr. Robert Bulten, a Grand Rapids behavioral physician, acted as an adviser, pointing out some of the unique features of people with attention deficits and learning disabilities.

"In other words, these lessons aren't like traditional high school tests," Bulten said.

DeVries relies on a huge network of volunteers to administer and grade the lessons. Dozens of helpers come to the Crossroad offices every week, and over 800 parishioners in churches coast-to-coast serve as Crossroad instructors.

Instructors complete a two-hour training course where they're taught how to grade lessons and how to word the letters of encouragement they are required to send with every returned lesson. The lessons and letters are cleared through Crossroad's offices and then mailed to instructor's homes.

The only requirements are that a potential instructor have the desire to teach God's word and can grade and return lessons quickly, so the connection a prisoner has to someone on the outside who cares is continually maintained.

"You should never let them hang," said Crossroad Executive Director Joyce Jansen. "This program is the most important thing they've got going. They've got to know someone on the outside thinks it's important as well."

Jansen is quick to point out that instructors do not become pen-pals with prisoners, nor are they required to make personal visits. No personal information is shared; in fact, instructors may only volunteer their first names if they request it themselves, and only once a student has reached the graduate level.

This, Jansen said, is done for the protection of the instructors as well as to keep the program focused on biblical study. Prisoners are referred to other agencies for needs such as clothing and housing for themselves or their children.

"Our focus is to impact people with the word of God," she said, "but that's where we draw our boundaries. We let people who are better gifted in other areas take care of other needs."

According to deVries, it's hard to determine who benefits more: the prisoners or Crossroad volunteers.

"The dividing wall of those on the outside versus those on the inside is diminished as knowledge replaces fear," he said. "There's a sense of surprising spiritual fellowship developed between people who apparently have nothing in common other than the planet Earth and Jesus."

Once out of prison, Crossroad also has proven to help ex-offenders, like Julie Schmitt, shape their lives on the outside.

Schmitt, a 1972 West Catholic High School graduate, was a model and a flight attendant in her twenties and thirties, a life that took her from Grand Rapids to California, Arizona and Miami.

The jet-set life also landed her in jail. Schmitt was arrested repeatedly in her twenties and thirties for drunken driving and cocaine possession.

"My life was a mess," said Schmitt, now 46. "At one time I've got life at my fingertips, and the next thing I know I'm sitting in prison. I was in the pits of Hell. I thought I was being punished, so I turned my back on God."

After her last run-in with the law in 1986 caused her to temporarily lose custody of her two children, Schmitt finally made her way back to God.

Through court-ordered treatment centers and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, Schmitt rededicated her life to the Lord when she returned to Grand Rapids in 1991.

With her children returned to her and a solid membership with Resurrection Life Church, she focused on a new goal: to spread God's word to women in trouble with the law.

"I knew that these women sitting in prison and in treatment centers were not as hard or as angry as they seemed," she said. "I wanted to show them that they don't hate, they just don't know how to love, and they have no idea what Jesus Christ can do in their lives."

Now a trades broker living in Grandville, Schmitt visits Project Rehab once a week, where she ministers to the program's female clients.

For deVries, it's all part of planting a seed and watching it take root. "Prisoners need what those of us on the outside have," he said, "which is order, discipline and caring."

But, he insists, we also need what prisoners have to offer: a fresh, new look on grace, and on what it is to call on the name of the Lord out of a seemingly hopeless situation.

"I know I need that," he said, "desperately."