The Texas Field Ministers Program includes two parts:
1.) education 2.) service.
Step 1:
Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry. The Heart of Texas Foundation and The Texas Department of Criminal Justice recognize the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry for Men at the Darrington Prison Unit and the for Women at the Hobby Prison Unit as the only degree qualifying the completion of the first step in becoming a Texas Field Minister.
Step 2:
Working as a Field Minister. The whole point of the Texas Field Ministers Program is to become a Texas Field Minister. The Heart of Texas Foundation works in collaboration with The Texas Department of Criminal Justice to successfully transition men and women who have earned the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry. The Heart of Texas Foundation continues to support and strengthen the Field Ministers in their new roles on the field with resources, visits, communication, and advocacy.
NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY AS TO STUDENTS
The Heart of Texas Foundation admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national, and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice Executive Director, Bryan Collier
TDCJ Executive Director, Mr. Bryan Collier speaks about the significance of The Texas Field Ministers Program at The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry annual event.
Texas State Senator, Dean of the Senate John Whitmire
Senator John Whitmire, Dean of the Texas Senate and Chair of the Criminal Justice Committee, describes the significance of the Texas Field Ministers at The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry annual event.
The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and The State of Texas Executive and Legislative Officials exist independently of one another. The entities have enjoyed the right and privilege to work together respectfully, successfully, and lawfully to provide long-term inmates the opportunities for voluntary but rigorous training and responsible service as part of becoming a Texas Field Minister. Each entity and its representatives are professional, accountable, and careful to respectfully bring our different areas of expertise together in this rehabilitation work—this work toward human flourishing. The State of Texas Governor and legislators provide the highest level of protection and permission for the Texas Field Ministers Program to exist. TDCJ, for safety and for reasons of law, trumps all endeavors within its walls all the while accepting and utilizing one of many programs—the Texas Field Ministers Program—to specifically serve men and women with long sentences who, upon becoming Texas Field Ministers, can responsibly go in the prison where no volunteer can go. The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry provides the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry degree at no cost to men and women with extremely long prison sentences. The Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry from The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry is the education TDCJ recognizes for a Texas Field Minister.
TDCJ cannot lawfully drive an agenda of any faith. The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry understands and respects the neutral accommodation TDCJ makes for inmates to practice their faith. The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry serves everyone in TDCJ to help inmates achieve and surpass the rehabilitation goals set forth by TDCJ. Every rehabilitation goal TDCJ has is also our goal at The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry.
TDCJ accommodates the faith-based educational and service components of the Texas Field Ministers Program giving men and women with long prison sentences, who may never live anywhere but prison, the opportunity to show that they have achieved TDCJ’s goals. The Texas Field Ministers Program is one way TDCJ accomplishes its goal to “provide public safety, promote positive change in offender behavior, reintegrate offenders into society, and assist victims of crime.” TDCJ could accomplish their goals without the Texas Field Ministers Program, but the Texas Field Ministers Program provides evidence of the accomplishment of their highest goals.
The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry understands and respects TDCJ’s professional and neutral accommodation of any religious aspect of the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry. TDCJ’s rehabilitation goals and security structure serve as the compass of the daily operations of The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry. Our clear roles and responsibilities and professionalism allow for continued improvement of the lives of men and women serving out their extremely long court-assigned sentences.
Ours is a statewide prison movement, and that requires close working relationships with key organizations and key individuals. We would not have teams of Field Ministers in training and in prisons without the historic working efforts of the State of Texas represented by the Governor’s office and the Senate Criminal Justice Committee; the Texas Department of Criminal Justice; and The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry.
It’s our honor to represent The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry and advocate for the men and women in the Texas Field Ministers Program no matter where we go.
It has been our pleasure to attend the inaugurations of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott. Governor Patrick and Senator John Whitmire, Chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, have been strong supporters of The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry from the beginning. They immediately shared our vision for teams of Texas Field Ministers to be equipped, trained, and sent out into other prisons to serve the long sentences in ministry to others.
Thanks to our key partners, Field Ministers are given special, unprecedented job descriptions that would allow them access to virtually all parts of the prisons, under supervision— to minister to men living in the darkest of places.
The State of Texas Governor, Legislators, and Representatives
The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry (Heart of Texas Foundation, Inc.), founded in December 2009, exists completely independently of TDCJ and work with the highest regard for them. We exist completely independently of any federal or state entity and receive no tax dollars of any kind. We operate with the highest regard for the law which provides accommodation and protection in order that we may exist to provide services to those within the state prison system. The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry is: a.) overseen by a board of directors, b.) privately funded, c.) run daily by a Chief Executive Officer, and d.) produces regular third-party financial audits which are committed to the highest level of integrity.
The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry takes the gospel of Jesus Christ into the darkest of places in the Texas prison system through our bachelor degree program which educates men and women with long-term prison sentences. Graduates of The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry are allowed to serve their peers as Field Ministers throughout the Texas prison system.
The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry at the Memorial Unit for Men
The education of Texas Field Ministers by The Heart of Texas Foundation began at the Memorial Unit in 2011. One class of 33-36 students has graduated every year in May since 2015. Beginning in August of 2021, The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry began offering the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry, a curriculum written by the leadership of The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry after 10 years of experience. The leadership, faculty, Memorial Field Ministers, and students of the Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry pursue the highest standards of excellence daily. The entire effort is privately funded by generous donors to The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry. Each donor knows that these men will be allowed the privileged opportunity of becoming a Field Minister.
The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry at the Hobby Unit for Women
In August of 2021, The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry began offering the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry to the historic first class of women at the Hobby Unit for Women. The Class of 2025 was selected from women’s units from across the state. The leadership, faculty, and students of the Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry at the Hobby Unit for women pursue the highest standards of excellence daily. The entire effort is privately funded by generous donors to The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry. Each donor knows that these women will be allowed the privileged opportunity of becoming a Field Minister.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has accepted the Texas Field Ministers Program as an agency program through its Rehabilitation Programs Division (RPD). TDCJ accommodates the focus of The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry as a Christian organization, as well as, the religious component of the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry, for inmates who voluntarily apply and continue within the Texas Field Ministers Program. By allowing the Texas Field Ministers Program, TDCJ fulfill their lawful requirement to “accommodate and not merely tolerate” an inmate’s faith expression even in his or her education, whether his or her own faith is Christian or not. This accommodation allows an incarcerated man or woman to learn more about faith practices in general, by specifically studying the Christian faith included in the curriculum, whether or not his or her own faith expression, if any, is Christian.
TDCJ accepts the Texas Field Ministers Program as one of many programs in its utilization of numerous resources, sacred and secular, to address the educational needs of the long-term prison population, a population which is historically under-resourced in most states. The men and women of the prison population with the longest sentences often view pursuing the lowest education, a GED, as futile if their lives are to be spent in prison. TDCJ’s excellence in Corrections is reflected in its willingness to accept the Texas Field Ministers Program. This outstanding option for inmates with extremely long prison sentences—an unprecedented endeavor with many positive measurable results—includes an accredited Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry with no online or correspondent component.1 Through the Texas Field Ministers Program, men and women with extremely long sentences have the opportunity to express the rehabilitation that has taken place in their lives starting in the very place where they live. Prison is the only place many men and women serving in the Texas Field Ministers Program will ever live. Can they live a rehabilitated life within the prison? Texas Field Ministers are showing us that rehabilitation goals achieved become rehabilitation goals far surpassed. Our desire at The Heart of Texas Foundation is that men and women in the Texas Field Ministers Program would live flourishing lives, even in the midst of difficult circumstances. Evidence exists daily that men serving as Field Ministers have met and far surpassed the rehabilitation goals of TDCJ. While this does not change the length of their sentence or their status as men who are incarcerated, it changes entirely their quality of life inside of the prison and their influence among the inmate population.
The State of Texas Governor, Legislators, and Representatives
The state officials in Texas who were involved earliest in the establishment of Texas Field Ministers are still serving in the same roles as or in higher capacities than they were when the idea for Texas Field Ministers began ten years ago. Senator Dan Patrick (Republican) became Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Texas State Senator John Whitmire (Democrat) holds the title of Dean of the Texas Senate as its longest standing member. Senator John Whitmire also serves as Chair of the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee. Each of them has attended every graduation and every fundraising banquet to lend his full support publicly to the Texas Field Ministers Program and to The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry as a privately funded endeavor. Each shares and champions the work of The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry and the Texas Field Ministers every appropriate opportunity he has.
“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?“
Romans 10:14-15
Mission of The Heart of Texas Foundation: The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry takes the gospel of Jesus Christ into the darkest of places in the Texas prison system through our bachelor degree program which educates men and women with long-term prison sentences. Graduates of the Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry are allowed to serve their peers as Field Ministers throughout the Texas prison system.
The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry and The Texas Department of Criminal Justice recognize the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry for Men at the Memorial Prison Unit and the for Women at the Hobby Prison Unit as the only degree qualifying the completion of the first step in becoming a Texas Field Minister. The Texas Field Minister job opportunity provides men and women who have extremely long prison sentences the opportunity to display a new way of life by faithfully handling responsibilities that flourishing people enjoy to the benefit of themselves and everyone around them, even in the midst of difficult circumstances.
The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry makes a lifelong commitment to men and women who enter the Texas Field Ministers Program and successfully keep their jobs as Field Ministers. There are currently 202 active Field Ministers in 42 locations across the state of Texas.
What makes The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry different?
What makes The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry unique is our curriculum and our student body and our faculty. Our bold curriculum of 42 courses in the 126-hour Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry is a consistent and fierce pursuit of the truth. Our students are men and women with extremely long prison sentences. Our faculty have the highest level of scholarship in the world, but they also have proven ministry experience—they are able to use real-world examples as they teach.
This movement to educate men and women with long-term prison sentences to serve their peers is unique in the history of prisons anywhere in the world.
Senator John Whitmire, Dean of the Texas Senate and Chair of the Criminal Justice Committee shares the uniqueness of the Texas Field Ministers Program.
The Texas Field Ministers Program Consists of Six Key Elements.
Each of the six key elements described below, together, make the Texas Field Ministers Program unique. L.E.T.L.A.P. = Lifers,Equipped,Transferred,Live-in,Access,Peer to Peer
● L: Lifers and Long Sentences. Only “lifers” and inmates with extremely long sentences need apply to the Texas Field Ministers Program. We don’t want someone to earn his or her theological training and then leave the prison, when the prison desperately needs the word of God as do the inmates who live in it. We want men and women who will be Texas Field Ministers for the rest of their long sentences. What better option does a lifer have, who wants to build a new life and serve others, than to become a Field Minister while in prison?
● E: Education. The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry offers the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry. This degree is the only degree accepted as the qualification of the first step to becoming a Texas Field Minister. The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry entirely funds this education.
● T: Transferred. When a man or women with a long prison sentence applies to The Heart of Texas Foundation College of Ministry, he or she goes through a multi-layer, multi-step application process including an interview. Once accepted, each student is transferred to either the Memorial Unit for men or the Hobby Unit for women. Once the students complete the Bachelor of Arts in Applied Ministry, each is allowed to become a Field Minister, appointed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He or she is transferred by TDCJ to a prison to begin service as a Field Minister. The new Field Ministers are placed in teams of two or more. With this transfer out, the new Field Minister’s entry into the mission field begins.
● L: Live-In. These Field Ministers, whatever their faith, take into their new prisons the education and training poured into them, and they take the gospel of Jesus Christ with them if they are Christians. And, unlike all Wardens, Chaplains, and all volunteers, the Field Ministers don’t “go home at night.” They are home! And they live in that large “village” around the clock, seven days a week. They don’t go on vacation. They don’t go home on the weekend. They live in their mission field, and most will die in that mission field. They are like any other missionaries anywhere in the world: they live with their people, they speak the same language, they dress like their people, and they indeed are culturally identical to their people. But Field Ministers take no furlough.
● A: Access.Field Ministers would be like any other inmates if they were not, by special permission, given access to all areas of the prison where inmates live, function, and go. While each Warden carefully monitors his or her own Field Ministers, TDCJ has officially sanctioned and encouraged Wardens to allow the Field Ministers to have access to any housing area a man or woman lives. This is where the “darkest of places” comes into view. The Field Ministers are allowed to have daily, and sometimes hourly, visits to places no volunteers can go. And Field Ministers can usually go to these places at any time of the day and also be called out during late hours of the night. Such areas include restricted housing (familiar to civilians as solitary confinement); inmates on Constant Direct Observation (CDO) for circumstances such as threat of suicide. The Field Ministers have a large impact on inmates who are totally separated from their peers because of their crimes or because they are known gang members. Field Ministers can bring comfort to inmates who are in the medical or hospice units. The Field Ministers are trained in how to preach sermons in the chapels, teach Bible studies, or counsel the grieving and depressed in their cell blocks. Such state-approved access for inmates such as Field Ministers exists nowhere in the United States.
● P: Peer-to-Peer. Inside the culture of all prisons is the overwhelming influence that one inmate has over another. This peer influence is at the core of why prisons contain dark and violent cultures. That culture is usually founded upon intimidation, suspicion, retribution, extortion, violence, and hostility. The most influential inmates control every prison’s culture. And who are the inmates with the most peer influence? Typically it is those who have the longest sentences, the lifers, because they have committed the worst of crimes and have to do the longest time. They are instantly given “respect.” They are the “role models” for all the other inmates. They have the respect and the power. And of those with long sentences, the avowed gang members are the ones who bring fear into the hearts of other inmates. Their influence always sets the culture inside a prison. The prison’s culture is totally invisible to the outside visitor, to the staff, and to the volunteers. It underlies, controls, and directs all relationships inside the prison. It is not a culture of light. It is a culture of darkness. No warden, no chaplain, no volunteer can have the impact that a Field Minister has as a peer.
Remove any one of these above, and the unique mixture of what makes the Field Ministers so effective is lost. At times, those who have seen the effectiveness of the Texas Field Ministers Program will attempt to replicate it in an “easier” way by reducing the length of the prison sentence requirements, reducing the length or standards of the education, not granting graduates the access they need to serve others, or focusing solely on education without service. Any attempt to reduce any one of the key elements in L.E.T.L.A.P. will not result in the same measure of impact seen in the Texas Field Ministers Program. It simply will not be the same thing. We believe that any attempt to replicate the Texas Field Ministers Program without the gospel of Jesus Christ will lose its impact entirely.
Something impacted the culture of our prisons when the Texas Field Ministers arrived. The Texas Field Ministers brought new and positive “role-models” as scholar-mentors into the prison system. Inmates are stunned to find out that Field Ministers don’t intimidate; they don’t retaliate, can’t be bought, have markedly different countenances, and live their lives in total contrast to the gaming, deceit, and distrusting culture in the prison. They are not snitches; they are not spies for the warden. The Field Ministers are front-line spiritual responders, positive role-models that are unlike any the inmates have ever seen.[1]They bring into the prison a new kind of peer-influence because of the exemplary lives they live, in full view of every inmate.
