St. Thomas the Believer Project

In the hope that you will share your model for prison ministry, allow me to share the model of St. Thomas the Believer.

The Model of St. Thomas the Believer is beginning a parish/congregation within a prison and supporting the ministry of the prisoners.

St. Thomas the Believer is a worshiping community wholly within the Lovelock Correctional Center, Lovelock, Nevada USA. St. Thomas the Believer was begun by a group of prisoners, including William and David, in December 2002. It was begun as a team ministry in the form of a LEM congregation (a Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist congregation) employing a variety of Anglican Liturgies. During the first few years St. Thomas the Believer had no outside support. However, by 2006, the Reverend Trudy Erquiaga of Holy Trinity, Fallon NV, Episcopal Diocese of Nevada, volunteered to be the community’s priest.

By spring of 2007, St. Thomas the Believer had expanded to two primary services per week, along with choir practice, PIT (Preachers in Training to develop lay speakers), Centering Prayer, other groups, and pastoral care conducted by the lay leaders of the congregation. To this day, David describes the uniqueness of St. Thomas the Believer in terms of seeing every member of the congregation on a daily basis.

In 2008, St. Thomas the Believer formally requested membership in the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada. Members of the community began to be licensed by the diocese as Worship Leaders, Eucharistic Ministers, and David completed the examination process and was licensed to preach in the Diocese of Nevada.

By 2010, St. Thomas the Believer was officially recognized as a parish in the Diocese of Nevada with the right to vote at convention. The parish periodically sent as delegates former prisoners who had been part of the congregation.

The Team changed as leaders were released from prison and new leaders grew into the ministry. David was finally released in 2019 and the community continued.

While the various chaplains over the years were supportive of St. Thomas the Believer, the administration at Lovelock Correctional Center, despite the USA’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, routinely sought in incremental steps to curtail all religious groups. COVID provided an opportunity for the prison officials to completely close all the chapel programs.

As COVID eased and restrictions on other programs at Lovelock Correctional Center ceased, the near-complete ban on chapel programs at Lovelock Correctional Center remained. A suit filed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2019 matured, and a Federal Judge in 2023 in Reno convinced the sides to enter into a settlement which restored the ministry of St. Thomas the Believer and the companion ministry of Kairos at Lovelock Correctional Center, as well as requiring Court monitoring of compliance. St. Thomas the Believer completed the litigation without outside support. Throughout the litigation, the Diocese of Nevada was silent.

In 2023, the new bishop of the Diocese of Nevada stripped St. Thomas the Believer of its parish status, re-classifying it as a “preaching station.”

By the summer of 2023, St. Thomas the Believer is nearly back to full function. Weekend services are still banned at Lovelock Correctional Center, but St. Thomas the Believer’s regular Tuesday evening service averages 40 to 50 prisoners.  

St. Thomas the Believer is a parish which belongs to the prisoners. Prison Ministry volunteers participate in one to two services a month, down from the pre-COVID participation in 3 to 4 services a month. St. Thomas the Believer, pre-COVID, had 104 primary services a year and is now limited to 52 primary services a year.

-Ansgar+