More Than Medicine
More Than Medicine
From International Fugitive to Faith: Carey Sanders' Transformation and the Impact of Jump Start Ministries
What if the cycle of incarceration could be broken through faith and commitment? This week on More Than Medicine, Dr. Robert Jackson welcomes Carey Sanders to share his inspiring journey from a life of crime and international fugitive status to finding redemption through Jesus Christ. Carey introduces us to Jump Start, a powerful ministry dedicated to reshaping the lives of incarcerated individuals in South Carolina. With a one-year discipleship program rooted in biblical teachings and accountability, Jump Start operates in 19 state prisons, touching the lives of about 1,000 men and women annually. Hear firsthand how only the truly committed emerge transformed, ready to reintegrate into society with newfound hope and purpose.
In the latter part of our conversation, we take a closer look at the Jump Start Vision program, which offers vital support for individuals transitioning from prison back into the community. Currently aiding 37 men and 10 women in Spartanburg, the program thrives on diverse funding sources and innovative training in culinary arts and workforce development. Listen to impactful success stories like Bean Miller’s transition to a truck driving career and Jason Wines’ journey to homeownership. Discover the critical role of home ownership for those with criminal records and learn how you can make a difference through financial support, whether it's through donations, grants, or gifting assets. Join us for an episode filled with hope, transformation, and actionable ways to support this life-changing work.
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Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, dr Robert Jackson, and his wife Carlotta and daughter Hannah Miller. So listen up, because the doctor is in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, dr Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctors' rusty, dusty scrapbook. What I'm privileged today to have as my guest Kerry Sanders and he is involved with the ministry in Spartanburg and in the upstate called Jump Start. Now, kerry, I'm going to ask you to start off by telling my listeners a little bit about yourself and your family and then, after that, if you would tell them a little bit about Jump Start. Yes, sir.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Dr Jackson, for having me on the call. I'm excited to have the opportunity to share about God's goodness and the work he has so many people across South Carolina doing in the area of local missions. My wife Ashley and I recently celebrated our eighth anniversary. How about that? We have two beautiful children and our four-year-old little boy just started 4K this week. So that's the real exciting thing in our family right now. And we live in a little area called Tigerville, South Carolina, sometimes better known as the Dark Corner, and we tell people all the time we're living the dream and we mean it A little bit about Jump Start.
Speaker 3:From a big picture perspective, Jump Start exists to break the cycle of men and women leaving prison only to return. That cycle is also known as recidivism, and so to break that cycle, Jump Start has a year-long discipleship program in 19 of South Carolina's 22 prisons, serving about 1,000 men and women each year. The program is very intense and rigorous. Each week, participants are working through curriculum that's designed to teach them how to address the issues that led to incarceration, God's purpose for their life and how to daily pursue Jesus as Lord of their life, and then, after completing individually that curriculum each week they participate in small groups in the prison and we have about 150 volunteers across South Carolina going into those 19 prisons.
Speaker 2:Man go ahead, I'm listening, I'm just excited already listening.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, one of the real distinctives of JumpStart is that we use an objective assessment on each individual that determines whether they complete the program or not. So this isn't church as usual, you know. You don't get told good job for showing up to class. You actually are graded by your peers on whether your behavior reflects how a believer should live.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, how a Believer Should.
Speaker 3:Live. And so each year, through that 40-week process, of the men and women who take the program, only about 40% complete it successfully. And so, in other words, if someone has a concept of what they think jailhouse religion is, Jump Start's on the opposite end of the spectrum of that. This is intentionally designed to help men and women learn to follow Jesus and weed out those who may can talk a good game, but their actions and behavior don't reflect someone who has come to know the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, can we somehow institute that in the local church on the outside?
Speaker 3:I think there are some places that it's doing well, and I think other places could use a dose of biblical accountability among their membership.
Speaker 2:You're right, oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:So now, so they do the Bible study and the accountability on the inside for 40 weeks, and then what happens when it comes time to go to the outside?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. Can I jump in there and tell a story? Sure, go right ahead, I'm all ears. Yeah, I got involved in this line of work, dr Jackson, because I was a rebel without a cause growing up. By the age of 17, I had been arrested 17 different times in the Department of Juvenile Justice three different times and soon after my 17th birthday I shot someone during an armed robbery. I was eventually apprehended in Canada as an international fugitive from justice and was brought back to Greenville County to face justice for the things I had done.
Speaker 3:And the very night I was planning to commit suicide, I was waiting on the guards to make their rounds because I wanted to make sure my hanging ended in a certificate of death rather than another failure. During that time I just said God, if you're real, I want to know. I was self-described as an atheist at that time. I remember that someone had given me a copy of the scriptures a week earlier and I didn't even want to be seen with a Bible. I didn't really want to read one. So I took and put it under my mattress and I remember that Bible was under there and I flipped it open while I was waiting on the guards to make those rounds, and there was an article about how to have a new life. It was the first time I had heard the gospel and one of the things that was compelling to me is how God had created the world good, but that this disease had entered into humanity, known as sin, and it had corrupted everything and everyone, and that some people would be highly religious yet still not know the Lord, and others would have the disease in the way that I had it, which was, you know, bent on destruction. And I had been to see mental health counselors. I had had people try to help me to see mental health counselors. I had had people try to help me. I had had moments of clarity, realizing I was wasting my life, and said I was going to turn over a new leaf, but there was no power within me to break sin's dominion over me. The gospel resonated with me In that moment. I knew God was real and I met Jesus Christ in a very spiritual but very life-altering way. And then I faced the judge a couple of months later and I knew I had did something egregious and deserved to face punishment. So I didn't beg for mercy and was sentenced to the Department of Corrections and I remember my first year there, dr Jackson, I had a friend named John and I remember asking him, john, what are you going to do when you get out of here?
Speaker 3:And this story is important to kind of share about our transitional program and the need for it. But I remember asking John, what are you going to do when you leave here? And he said, kerry, I'm coming back. And I said, john, how can you say that? You know, you seem to know the Lord. He's going to make a way for you. How can you just say you're coming back? And he said, kerry, you're just naive, right? I said, well, enlighten me then. And he said well, I've been in and out three times before.
Speaker 3:This is my fourth sentence he said when I get out, he said I'm going to walk off of the bus he hand out. I'm sorry. He said I'm not even going to have a dollar to my name, I'm going to have the clothes on my back and I'm not even going to have an ID. He said so I'm going to live under the bridge. And he said I could maybe talk someone into giving me a job. He said but they can't do it legally because I don't have an ID and I don't have $12 to get my birth certificate, did I need to get a Social Security card? I need both of those to get an ID, he said.
Speaker 3:But if I could talk an employer to letting me walk to work and hiring me, he said, what am I going to eat for two weeks while I wait to get that first check? And he said, then, what am I going to do when it gets cold? He said I just I realized that I don't really have any other options in life. I don't have anybody to help me. You know, overcome some obstacles that I just can't overcome without help. And that's the reason Jumpstart exists to help disciple men and women to live for Christ not just to talk it but to live it and then to provide them with a bridge towards flourishing after incarceration.
Speaker 2:Amen.
Speaker 3:So our transitional program is designed to help men and women go from prisoner to homeowner in two years. I hear you Now? That's an audacious goal, that's right. So let me unpack that a little bit succinctly the process for each individual coming out of incarceration and what it takes to get their life back on track I think the best metaphor that I could give.
Speaker 3:It's like taking a 500-piece puzzle and putting it together, helping each individual put it together, and it has to be put together in a sequential order for it to work. Like you have to have a birth certificate first, to get the Social Security card, to get the ID, to be able to be employed, and then you have to have the transportation piece. You have to have somewhere safe and stable to live, and so each individual we're trying to address it in a holistic perspective. A lot of people in this space will get a government grant, for example, to churn resumes out, and so for each individual that shows up, they will get some money from the federal government for helping that individual develop a resume. And they'll pat themselves on the back that hey, we got John Doe a resume, but John Doe may not have any employment skills, he may not have the soft skills of how to navigate challenges he's going to face in the workplace.
Speaker 2:I understand and I've tried to help men who got out of prison on my own my wife and I and we've helped them jump through all those hoops individually and fortunately we had a little house on our farm where they could stay while we were doing all that, and if it weren't for that, they would have been walking the streets when they got out of prison. I mean, we picked them up when they got out of prison, put them in our rental house and then helped them get a driver's license, social Security card, helped them eventually buy a car, helped them get a job. You know what I'm saying. We helped them jump through all the hoops and the whole time taking them to church, putting them in Bible study, doing all the things that they needed to do to stay away from going back to prison.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, so you can appreciate all the drama and all the difficulties.
Speaker 3:Yes sir, yes sir, and so that's incredible that you all were willing to be generous and sacrificial in that way, willing to be generous and sacrificial in that way, but the reality in our community is that there's very few people who have the ability to do that. Well, yeah, I know. And so there's the need for an organization like Jumpstart to be able to do that kind of at scale.
Speaker 2:Yeah, start to be able to do that kind of at scale.
Speaker 3:Where we're at with our transitional program today is we currently have capacity to serve 50 people.
Speaker 2:Talking about in Spartanburg.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, in Spartanburg, but we serve people coming from across South Carolina and so we're the state's really largest provider of transitional services for people coming out of incarceration, and so we're currently building really a one-of-a-kind neighborhood in the nation for people coming out of incarceration. The name of that neighborhood is Restoration Village. It's a master-planned neighborhood that's specifically designed for support, encouragement and accountability. We currently have seven homes there on site and two more homes being built center in the middle of that neighborhood. That will have event space, a culinary arts training center and classrooms for life skills and workforce development training, and so a lot of really innovative things that have really only been made possible by God's people, because we don't utilize any state or federal funding, as some of that limits an organization's ability to stay focused on the gospel.
Speaker 2:That's right it does, doesn't it on the gospel? That's right it does, doesn't it? Well, that's amazing. Now, how many men do you? And you say you got about 50 men in Spartanburg area right now that are in the Jump?
Speaker 3:Start program after leaving the prison. Yeah, currently we have 37 men and 10 women in our transitional program. We serve men and women.
Speaker 2:I got you. That's good, that's good, amazing, that is amazing. Now, where does your funding come from?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. So once individuals are in our transitional program and employed, they pay a program fee of $125 a week. That covers the cost of their room, the utilities they use, the services they receive and their transportation to and from work. And so $125 a month for the majority of one's living expenses is low, but we need them to have that margin so they can save for that home ownership, their future. And the reason homehip is critical, Dr Jackson, is because once they have a criminal record, it is extremely difficult to find anyone who will rent to them. Yeah, that's correct, and as the upstate continues to grow, a landlord may have 50 people apply for a home. And are they going to pick someone without a record or someone with a record?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I understand that dilemma.
Speaker 3:And so some of our funding comes from those program fees. Yes, yes, yes, the majority of our funding comes from individuals who believe that this kind of work is something God wants them to invest in. So they are being good stewards of what God has entrusted to them by tithing to their local church and then giving above and beyond, depending on their ability and God's leading, to support this work. So we have won all kinds of national awards because of our success rate, and none of that would be possible without God's people really sacrificing what they could spend on themselves to invest in what God's doing. So we've got a lot of people seeking an eternal return on investment and we're thankful for that. We also receive some grants from corporate foundations and family foundations. Last year we were recognized as the top nonprofit in South Carolina by the Truist Bank Foundation Amazing. And so they've partnered with us for three years at $900,000 to invest in some of the innovative things we are doing, like culinary arts training, augmented virtual reality, training for workforce development, where individuals can earn credentials for the workplace in 30 days rather than having to go to a two-year tech program. So some really innovative things there. They've made possible for us and we're thankful, so that's where the majority of our funding.
Speaker 3:Lastly, and with funding, two years ago we developed a landscaping operation. It kind of functions as a social enterprise. So we've got people in our program who are really operating a commercial landscaping company and we do profit sharing with the individuals out there doing the work. So it helps them see they've got a future. They're not just weed eating and helping someone build a third lake house, they're actually getting based on their production and the quality of their work. They're getting a piece of pie Right and so that helps incentivize them to work really hard and, quite frankly, do a better job than other landscaping companies. Our people realize they're a part of a purpose, but some of that profit 25% of that profit flows back into the mission and so that allows people who have been served by the program to have a way to invest in the work as well and that's really meaningful to them.
Speaker 2:I got you. Well, now does it violate? What's the word I'm looking for? Not anonymity, confidentiality, if you tell a couple of stories of some of your clientele, some of the men or women that's gone through your program.
Speaker 3:No, not at all. I would love to share some of those stories. I can share a few that have just taken place. Over the summer.
Speaker 3:We've got an individual named Bean Miller, and he had to work for about a year at a job that he wasn't crazy about but was thankful for we probably all had to do that sometime or another and for a year, in the evenings he would go to truck driver training school. His lifelong dream was to be a truck driver and he kind of liked his solitude and liked seeing new places, and so for a year he worked and did night school. And so for a year he worked and did night school, and two months ago he joined a company doing over-the-road trucking, and so he's super excited about that and we're super proud of him. How about that?
Speaker 3:Another individual is Jason Wines. He works with our landscaping crew and in just about a year and a half he saved every penny that he could. So he learned the, the self-discipline needed to delay gratification for a future goal and which is a key life skill, and he, about two weeks ago, closed on a piece of property and then he's going to be putting a home on, and we're just super proud of him for that.
Speaker 2:How about that? Now, how long do folks actually stay with Jump Start once they leave the prison and move into the Jump Start program?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the program is designed to be a two-year program. Some stay a little less. Maybe they have higher earning potential and can save faster. Others have more obstacles to overcome. Maybe they owe a lot of restitution and child support and their finances are a lot tighter. Or maybe they've never had a job before so they have to start somewhere at $11 or $12 an hour and obviously, with that decreased earning potential, it takes them a while. Like a good doctor, we try to serve each person based on their needs.
Speaker 2:I understand that, great, great, all right. So now, if my listeners wanted to be a financial supporter to Jumpstart, how would they go about doing that? Cary Sanders, yes, sir.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of ways. People can donate online or they can visit online and find the address to mail the check. We can also receive gifts of assets like stocks. So if someone has high income one year and needs to offset some income tax, they can give us stock and not pay any capital gains on the increase of that stock and also offset their income taxes. I would be happy to discuss that with each individual. A listener can email me directly at carysanders at jumpstartvisionorg. But prior to you know, if someone feels led to give, obviously I don't want to stop them, but we also have plenty of opportunities for people to come and see before they make that decision.
Speaker 3:Henry Blackaby has a great quote. He said you know, if you want to experience God, look for where he's working and go join Him there. That's right, he said. As you join Him there, he'll give you confirmation of whether that's what he wants you to do or not. And so we've got all kinds of ways for people to come and see. People can Google Jumpstart South Carolina and easily sign up for a tour to come meet some of our staff team, some people in the program, and just see what we're doing. Next step is to come visit and ask questions and prayerfully discern what God would have you to do or not to do.
Speaker 2:Do you have room for volunteers?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and you know, here in the upstate, within about a 20-minute drive of Spartanburg, if you increase that radius to about 30 minutes, we've got four prisons. We have all kinds of incredible volunteers that do that and I think many people listening to this would find great fulfillment in going in and participating in those classes. And the Department of Corrections has been in existence for over 100 years and they've never had a volunteer hurt in the prison. So I would say you may be safer in the prison than you are at your local Walmart. Statistically, and in our transitional program we have volunteers that are mentors, that help with transportation, that do work projects around the homes, all kinds of ways for people to do something meaningful with their free time that will bring them fulfillment in a way that very little else will.
Speaker 2:How long has Jump Start been in existence?
Speaker 3:Since 2008.
Speaker 2:And what is the recidivism rate for the men who go through Jump Start?
Speaker 3:So over the past 10 years we've had 3,500 men and women complete Jump Start and be released back into the community, and less than 4% of them have returned to prison. If you contrast that nationally, about 68% of people return to prison within three years, so the Lord is definitely working to change people's lives.
Speaker 2:Amen, brother, amen. The proof is in the pudding. Well, you're listening to More Than Medicine, and my guest today is Kerry Sanders with Jumpstart. That's been an amazing program and, kerry, I just really want to thank you for coming on and sharing with my listeners about Jumpstart.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, sir, it's been my pleasure.
Speaker 2:It's been our pleasure. Well, you're listening to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr Robert Jackson. We'll be back again next week, and may the Lord bless you real good.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry, dr Jackson's books, or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, instagram or their webpage at jacksonfamilyministrycom. This podcast is produced by Bob Sloan Audio Production at bobsloancom.
