The pastoral staff of Beacon Hill Baptist Church in Somerset, Kentucky, is several weeks into a weekly Bible study they lead at Pulaski County Detention Center. Eleven men — many of whom are new believers — have already been baptized.
GJ Farmer, senior pastor of Beacon Hill, said they built toward the June 17 baptism service.
“The first week I taught on the prodigal son, forgiveness, and what repentance looks like. Then I taught on what baptism is and why we’re baptized. The third week I taught what the new life in Christ looks like, once we decide to follow Him.”
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Baptism week he taught on Acts 2 and Peter’s sermon in Jerusalem about Jesus being Lord and Messiah.
“I explained to them that we repent and turn to Jesus, and then we show that we’ve done that through baptism.”
Some inmates had been waiting to get baptized and had not yet had an opportunity; others had never responded to the gospel, but wanted to make a decision “right then,” Farmer said.
The fruitfulness of faith professions follows Beacon Hill deciding to focus on a few cells at the jail instead of rotating through the whole population and going six to eight weeks between seeing the same group of men again.
“Our hope was to be able to really disciple those guys a little bit more and go more in depth, by meeting with the same ones every week,” Farmer said.
Beacon Hill is working toward providing a Bible to every inmate who wants one, and Farmer hopes to eventually establish a weekly Bible study for every cell. “That would be great,” he said.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Tessa Redmond and originally published by Kentucky Today.
