World Impact equips leaders like Christi Pennington with biblical training they can carry into places where faith, identity, and lives are being rebuilt after incarceration.
The words came to Christi in prison, before she knew enough Scripture to recognize where they came from.
“You’re going to love them, and you’re going to listen.”
Christi had accepted Jesus while incarcerated, but she still carried years of hurt and anger. She did not even like being around many of the other women in the prison. As she prayed about what God wanted her to do, His answer was both clear and unexpected.
“I heard ‘be still’ clear as day, when I didn’t know all that Scripture back then,” she said. “Now I know it means, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’” (Psalm 46:10)
Be still. Love them. Listen.
Those words became a calling Christi is still living out. Today, as regional director of Firm Foundations Ministries in Kansas, she helps men rebuild their lives after incarceration. Some need guidance as they adjust to responsibilities and choices that did not exist in prison. Some need help confronting the anger, shame, or fear they carried home with them. Often, they simply need someone who understands.
“I’m a listener,” Christi said.
She knows what it costs to begin again; what people coming out of incarceration struggle with that outsiders may not understand. When she left prison, for instance, she worried that people would discover her past and judge her before they knew her.
“I felt scared, thinking people are going to know,” she said. “You just don’t know how people are going to look at you, or if they’re looking you up online or something.”
Prison had already diminished her sense of identity. Christi sees that same disorientation in the men she now serves.
“When you go through incarceration, you’re already feeling so belittled,” she said. “Your whole identity was stripped from you while you were there, because when you’re in prison, you’re either a number or you’re just your last name.”
More Than a Number
At Firm Foundations, the residential reentry program, Christi and her husband, Bo Pennington, help men recover more than the routines of life outside prison. Through Scripture, discipleship, and patient attention, they help the men understand who they are in Christ.
“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13-14)
Christi and Bo bring different strengths to that work. Bo, she says, is a gifted instructor. Christi describes their partnership as: “I’m the ‘here now’ person, and he’s the teacher.”
Being “here now” means noticing when someone is discouraged. It means hearing the anger beneath a man’s words and allowing him time to settle before offering counsel. It means hearing snippets of a conversation when a resident begins talking about Scripture, taking one small step toward spiritual maturity.
“When one of the guys does something well, or if I hear them talking about a Scripture, or doing anything that will help them learn and grow each day, I just get so proud,” Christi said.
Her pride comes from knowing how much those steps can cost.
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“God’s Not Done With You Yet”
Years before she went to prison, Christi was diagnosed with a virulent form of breast cancer. Doctors told her that, if she was lucky, she might live another year. She did not yet believe in God and could not have recited even a simple prayer. But someone told her, “You do have a purpose. God’s not done with you yet.”
At the time, the words did not carry the meaning they would later.
That changed in a jail cell. Christi found herself on her knees on the cold concrete floor, crying and raising her hands upward. The gestures were entirely unlike her. As a new believer, she had never been inclined to display her emotions, raise her hands during worship, or talk openly about God.
“I never would have raised my hands to worship during a song or dropped to my knees to pray,” she said. “And when I was in that cell room myself, I just did. I just dropped to my knees and started reaching my hand up.”
In that moment, faith became personal.
“I knew, I now have somebody who’s going to love me for the rest of my life,” she said. “I get so emotional even just thinking about it.”
Only later did she look back on her cancer diagnosis and remember the person who had insisted that God still had a purpose for her.
“Now that I have that relationship with God, I’m like, wow, somebody who didn’t even know me back then told me that.”
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A Place to Begin Again
When Christi was released from prison, she entered Grow, a faith-based transitional program for women. The move from prison to living in a Christian community softened an otherwise frightening return to society.
“I was blessed enough to be put into a program like Grow,” she said. “It made me feel like I immediately had a purpose.”
Most of all, she said, “I felt loved.”
That experience informs how Christi acts at Firm Foundations today. Nobody, she says, expects anyone to emerge from prison ready to speak openly about their faith. Some are reserved. Some are unsure how to pray. Christi and the other facilitators don’t press them to display a particular kind of spirituality.
“We’re not here to gloat and draw attention to ourselves in that area,” she tells them. “Really, God just wants to talk with you.”
Her instructions about prayer are simple: “Go in your room and talk to Him and pray with Him. Just like you talk to me. There’s no fancy prayers you have to say.”
Some of the men take that advice. They may not pray in front of the group, but they talk to God privately in their rooms.
“That’s exactly what I want,” Christi said.
Also read: The Future That Started in a Prison Classroom
What Change Looks Like
Sometimes transformation appears in the way a man welcomes a stranger.
Shawn spent 37 years incarcerated. A former member of a motorcycle gang, he returned to a world crowded with unfamiliar choices and new rules.
“Shawn used to be a scary-looking guy back in the day,” Christi said.
That is not the man people encounter at Firm Foundations now. Shawn serves as the hospitality manager, and his almost ever-present smile has earned him the nickname “Mr. Happy.”
“Now that he’s our hospitality manager, he’s loving on everybody,” Christi said.
Shawn talks proudly about Firm Foundations and refers to the other men as his brothers. “This is my family,” he tells people.
For someone who lost 37 years to incarceration, becoming the person who welcomes others carries particular weight. The man who might once have made people uneasy now helps them feel that they belong.
Christi has noticed other transformations in Zach as well.
When Zach first came to Firm Foundations, he was noticeably sullen and withdrawn. Much of his anger was rooted in what had happened to him.
“He had to learn how to do a lot of forgiving, forgiving himself and forgiving people that hurt him,” Christi said. “He’s learned a lot of patience and a lot of grace.”
That growth was tested when a neighbor made it clear that he did not approve of transitional housing on his street. The man became vulgar, and it triggered Zach.
There had been a time when anger might have decided what happened next. Zach still became upset, but instead of striking back, he reached out to Christi and Bo.
They listened. They drew on Scripture and empathy and they helped him consider what his response would communicate to the neighbor and the wider community.
“We have to set an example,” Christi told him. “We’re trying to get back into the community, so our job is not to get angry back.”
The neighbor eventually apologized and admitted that he had been out of line. He and Zach did not become close friends, but the tensions eased.
“They were definitely better than where they started,” Christi said.
So was Zach.
As his faith matured, Christi noticed the way he began investing in the other residents.
“The way he started discipling others, that’s when we got him to start doing the leadership program with us,” she said.
Zach now serves as a house lead and receives biblical and ministry training through Firm Foundations’ partnership with Mosaic Life Church. The church is home to a World Impact Church-Based Seminary and uses World Impact resources, like Cornerstone and Capstone, to equip leaders where they are already serving.
The man who once kept largely to himself now looks for opportunities to talk about Scripture.
“Now he’s speaking the Word to everybody he meets,” Christi said. “He’s really come out of his shell at church too. We’re actually hoping to train him up to be a pastor.”
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Growing Alongside the Men She Serves
Christi continues growing alongside the people she serves through The Urban Ministry Institute’s online Capstone program. The flexibility of online study allows her to pursue theological training while remaining present in the daily work of Firm Foundations. One module that especially shaped her was “God the Father,” which led her into a deeper study of God’s moral purity, absolute integrity and unbounded love.
“I just really enjoyed getting in depth with what each thing means,” she said. “That’s how I learn, really digging in deep.”
Even as a student of the Word of God, listening remains central to how Christi processes. She prefers exploring Scripture with a mentor, she says, who can help her take a passage a part, consider examples, and understand how its truth applies to life.
“I like hearing the Word and then digging into examples of what each thing means,” she said.
That combination of biblical grounding and personal attention is also what she gives the men at Firm Foundations. She can recognize their fear because she remembers her own. She can tell them that prison does not have to be the final word on their identity because it was not the final word on hers. She can urge them to forgive because she once carried anger she did not know how to release.
“You’re here for a reason,” she tells them. “It’s no accident that you were released from prison and that you’re in this program.”
Their lives, she reminds them, still have a purpose.
“You have an opportunity to go out there and spread the good news to others,” Christi said. “We’re not here on this planet to just sit here. We’re here to bring heaven to earth.”
Recently, Christi was driving from Wichita to Kansas City to pick up a friend she had met through Grow. Years after leaving the transitional program, the two women still encourage and minister to one another. Christi was looking forward to their time together at a conference in Wichita.
For the moment, however, she was alone in the car with praise music playing. Long drives have become a place where she can pray, sing, and listen without interruption.
“I love the road trip because this is my time with God, and I don’t have any distractions,” she said. “I turn on my worship music, and I’m jamming out and singing and getting emotional sometimes. That’s how I have my bond with God, through music.”
The woman who once knelt on the concrete floor of a jail cell now travels Kansas to serve others. The friend waiting for her in Kansas City is part of the community that first helped Christi find her footing outside prison. The men waiting back in Wichita are discovering that they, too, can move from fear and isolation toward purpose, belonging, and leadership.
Christi listens for the moments when that change begins: a man praying privately in his room, Shawn welcoming someone into the family, Zach choosing peace and then teaching others what he has learned.
“We’ve had people come to us that have been wicked before, and they turn their life around,” she said. “Even if it’s just one person that changes and turns their life over to God, it’s all worth it.”
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