Healing Line

Healing Line

God's Kingdom Behind the Walls

by Dale Recinella
Sep/Oct 2009

The famed particle physicist and Noble prize laureate Erwin Schrödinger once said, “If you cannot — in the long run — tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.” He was referring to the invisible thousands of hours spent in the recesses of his physics laboratories, researching what is unseen and unknown to most of humanity. Accountability demanded an explanation of his work that would make it visible to all.

Such a universal principle can apply to kingdom work as well. When Mother Teresa was asked what she spent her time doing, her stock answer was, “Come and see.” An invitation easily given for her work in the streets, accessible to all who dared to traverse the slums of Calcutta. With such transparency, accountability is automatic.

But what if one’s field of kingdom work is not accessible, not transparent? What if the needs are hidden in the recesses of massive buildings bounded by walls of razor wire and guard turrets? What if the desperately needy are hidden in darkness, unseen and unknown to most of humanity?

Such is the plight of the institutionalized mentally ill and the condemned on death row. The kingdom workers whom God has blessed with access to them bear a double duty — to make God’s love visible and manifest inside the hospital and prison walls, and to make the humanity of their hidden suffering manifest outside those walls.

My wife, Susan, works with severely mentally ill women at a large state hospital. I minister cell–to–cell on the second largest death row in the U.S. We work as a ministry team caring for the condemned and their families during executions. We’ve been asked by the Association of Christian Therapists (ACT)* to share at the September conference our experiences of God’s kingdom behind the walls. It will be an opportunity to bring you inside with us — to make the humanity of the unseen needy visible to you, and to share with you how the power of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit is manifested inside those walls. We hope to see you at the conference.


Dale Recinella Dale Recinella is the Vice President of Special Projects at CHM. Sep/Oct 2009 Issue