Mission Statement
To bring truth, hope, and love to the self-imprisoned, so they may find a true freedom.
About The Ministry
Beauty for Ashes Ministry (BFAM) is an outreach ministry for the homeless and the incarcerated based in Kansas City. God called us into prison ministry a few years back. After prayer and preparation, we felt the timing was right to start Beauty for Ashes Ministry at the beginning of this year. At that time, we started a weekly prayer group at Hope Faith Ministry, reaching out to the homeless community, as many of them have been in and out of prison. Soon thereafter, we put on our first all day retreat at Hope Faith. We taught “Encounter God”, a class that addresses the healing power of Christ. In addition to the teaching, we provided worship and three good meals. We had twenty people sign up, prepared food for forty (just in case there were more) and had 150 show up! We witnessed a miracle that day, as we were able to feed all 150 people with our food for forty. It was an amazing start to the ministry.
Since that first retreat, Beauty for Ashes Ministry has continued to do monthly outreaches through Hope Faith, City Union Mission, and Restart family center. Our team of over 100 volunteers has ministered to hundreds of people, both adults and children, within the homeless community. Our retreats at Hope Faith Ministry have grown from the initial 150 in attendance to almost 400. We have had many rededicate their lives to Christ, others make a decision for Christ the first time, and have witnessed answers to prayer from our weekly prayer group. These answers have included family reconciliations, job opportunities, and one gentlemen that made his own decision to go to Teen Challenge to get off drugs and off the streets. Praise God!
In June of this year, God opened the door to expand into prison ministry. Through a Prison Fellowship program called Interchange Freedom Initiative (IFI), Derk and Gina started teaching a leadership class at Lansing Correctional Facility in Kansas. In August, Beauty for Ashes Ministry conducted its first worship service at the Lansing Maximum Security Prison. We assembled a team of thirty people including a worship band to conduct the service. Gina gave the message and we provided ministry teams for prayer support. Since then, we have put on worship services every month at Lansing Prison, each time providing a message, worship and ministry teams.
The mission of Beauty for Ashes Ministry is to bring truth, hope and love to the self-imprisoned, so they may find a true freedom. We have found that the self-imprisoned aren’t just the ones that we are ministering to, but those of us that are participating in the outreaches as well. Many of our volunteers have testified that their hearts have changed towards the people in the homeless and incarcerated communities. We have discovered that one of the reasons Christ said that we are to serve “the least of these” is because it is there that we find ourselves.
