Hearken House Ministry A Thorough Overview : Ray Addis

Welcome, everybody. A special welcome to all the visitors. You can see by the overhead up here that the title is Harkin House Ministry. Many of you, and maybe even most of you, know that one of many of the outside ministries CCF and its individual members are involved in is with Harkin House Ministry. But some of you may not be that familiar with exactly what it is that Harkin House Ministry does or what it is that CCF and other local churches do to help support our ministry. So I wanted to take today to give a thorough overview of just that. And when I first looked at the subtitle I gave it, a thorough overview, I said to myself, "Wait a minute, is this an oxymoron?"

So I asked Google if it was an oxymoron or not, and AI came back and said, "No. This thorough overview is not an oxymoron. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms like deafening silence. While thorough implies completeness and overview suggests a general summary, these are not inherently contradictory. A thorough overview aims to be comprehensive while still maintaining the concise nature of an overview."

Now, although I somewhat disagree with the AI's response, I will defer to it, and everybody else can make up their own decision. So I just thought that was interesting, but we'll go ahead and move on with the presentation.

First of all, what is Harkin House Ministry's mission? Now, this is a broad way of saying it: to provide lifelines and pathways for restoring the lives of men re-entering society from past criminal behaviors and imprisonment to becoming new persons with renewed purpose as productive members of society, emphasizing that true change results when adopting these three core values: choosing a relationship with Jesus Christ, committing to behavioral accountability, and committing to rebuilding life, family, and a better community.

Now, how do we fulfill this mission? Now, here again, this is a broad statement. We fulfill this mission by reaching out to those whom society rejects, loving those who fear love, walking beside those who hide in shame, and bandaging the wounds that many ignore. Well, that's very broad. So basically, what it comes down to fulfilling the mission, more specifically, we provide physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual support.

But before we get involved into that, I want to talk a little bit about the staff at Harkin House. First, we have the director. That's Earl Eby, and I'm sure some of you know him. And these are some of his job descriptions. We have official job descriptions for everybody. And you can see some of the things he does: develop and implement initiatives, monitors the physical and mental well-being of the residents, helps Harkin House members build a community of recovering men to becoming followers of Jesus.

Whoops. Coordinates special events, resolves household issues or concerns, and participates in the interview process for recruitment of new Harkin House candidates. And he manages the operations of the Harkin House Ministry's warehouse, which is fresh purpose, which some of you are familiar with.

Another person on the staff is our life coach, Matt Pratt, and some of the children here and their parents probably know Matt from his daytime job. He's a teacher at Anchor School, and some of the children here go to the school.

But he also plays an important part with the men at Harkin House. Okay? Matt comes to Harkin House several times throughout the week and sometimes on the weekends as well. And he sits with the residents, and if they just need somebody to talk to, somebody to listen to them, Matt is there for them. He tries to get to know the men personally, through doing different things with them, through conversations, playing board games, going out to dinner, providing budgeting and counseling services for them, and other such activities.

Matt is also very has a lot of knowledge with hardware and software, so we rely heavily on Matt for our IT system. And you can see some of the job descriptions up there. These aren't all of them, but I just put a few up there.

Okay, I'm the house administrator for Harkin House, and these are some of the duties that I perform: aspects of the recruitment process, reviewing and completing and processing documents and reports, distributing incoming mail and phone calls, processing incoming and outgoing residents.

I manage the calendar and scheduling for individuals and scheduling volunteers for leading morning devotions, the weekly meals that churches bring in, and other activities.

The last time I was here at CCF, I introduced the next staff member as my studio's assistant. However, believe it or not, she actually has an official title. Her official title is House Pet, not my assistant. And she also has an official job description. You can see what they are here. She's supposed to perform entertaining antics to enhance the morale and mental well-being of the Harkin House members, assist with house cleaning by quickly ingesting or guzzling any spilled food or beverage, alert Harkin House members to possible intruders through loud and vigorous barking. Anybody who's been to Harkin House knows she does that third one very well, and she actually does the first three very well.

However, in the fourth one, display love and loyalty by providing a fair amount of culling time with all Harkin House members. She does have her favorites, so she doesn't do so well in that area. Also, she's kind of given herself the title of Princess, and she pretty much does what she wants to do anyhow.

All right. There's also a board for Harkin House, and we have Earl Eby as the chairperson, Brent Byers as the vice chairperson, Rapper is our CFO. We have Clinton Martin, who's the secretary, and then we have general members, Lon Martin, Peter Myers, and Gerven Ogburn.

Now, it's the board that makes up the rules and policies of Harkin House Ministry, and they enforce the rules and policies if individuals start going astray.

Okay.

We also have two residents that hold in term employment at Harkin House. They work at the warehouse, fresh purpose, and they do the general warehouse things like operate the forklifts, pallet jacks, loading, unloading, and things like that. And also, the warehouse administrator, he's also responsible for running the Facebook marketplace.

Well, marketplace on Facebook, yeah.

Unfortunately, okay, this aspect of our ministry is being phased out due to several factors. The two main reasons would be I know it's not probably proper etiquette to hold paper in hand. I can't see it when it's sitting down there, so I'm going to have to hold it a little bit.

Okay. The two main reasons would be financial challenges and additional restrictions that are imposed on newly released individuals from prison by parole that makes it impossible for new candidates to go ahead and get onto the social media site of Facebook and help run the Facebook marketplace. So without a means to advertise our products in the future and the overhead costs associated with the running of the warehouse, the decision was made to phase out this portion of our ministry as soon as possible.

Now, this is going to have some negative effects on us. There'll be no immediate employment upon arrival for new residents. Previously, residents received a flat rate of $250 per week for four weeks with no taxes taken out for 40 hours of work per week at the warehouse. Then after four weeks, the residents would receive $9 an hour minus normal taxes for 40 hours a week. Now, some of you may be saying, "Well, that's pretty low." Well, remember, these individuals coming out of prison where they were making $50 a month if they were lucky. And also, they automatically qualify for free health insurance for up to a year at least. And most of them qualify for SNAP program, which used to be food stamps.

And that's about 280-some dollars a month, so the food would be covered. Also, if we gave the same rate of pay that people give on the outside, there would be no incentive for the individual to go looking for a job and to move on quickly. So that helps us incentive for them to move on.

As we began to phase out the warehouse and there was significantly less work, the hours were reduced to 30 hours paid weeks, so they were getting even less money. Now, any new incoming resident, which we did get a new resident on Thursday, he'll be the first one to fall under this. They will not be offered any type of employment or pay. They will be required to seek employment immediately upon their arrival.

Community service will be affected because of lack of manpower and equipment to perform community service activities. Most of you probably know where the—they do mulching every year, and we are the ones who usually do the mulching for them up there and help them out. We won't have the vehicles and the manpower that probably help them anymore.

You ever noticed the large black containers out in front of the Falafel House or however you say the name of that restaurant out there on the circle? Or they call it the square, but it's a circle. So we're the ones that usually put those black boxes out there. We store them over the winter for them, and then we would deliver them in the springtime. And we're probably not going to be able to do that. And then pick up and deliver your donated products and food for those in need. A lot of times, we go to Dot Food down in Williamsport, Maryland, pick up food and then deliver it to Maranatha and some other places so that they can give it out to the community.

And we probably won't be able to assist in that anymore.

Okay, so sort of getting back to how we help out the individuals through physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual support. But another question that needs to be answered, well. Somebody end up at Harkin House Ministry? They usually find out about Harkin House Ministry through three main ways. From someone on the outside, it might be looking on the internet for re-entry facilities, and they come across our website. From a staff member at wherever the facility is that they are at, maybe worked with them in the past, and they know about our program, so they pass it on to this individual. But the most common way is word of mouth from one inmate to another inmate. And that's how I found out about Harkin House Ministry, was through word of mouth.

So once the inmate finds out about our program, the inmate will contact us for information or application. We send them the application. The inmate completes it and returns it. And we determine if the inmate meets the qualifications. If so, we schedule a 30-minute phone interview with the inmate. If not, we notify the inmate as to why he doesn't meet our qualifications.

And then we conduct the interview, and then we notify the inmate whether we feel he is or is not a fit for our program.

The application basically consists of several categories. There's an introductory page that tells about our program. Then there's information they need to include in a letter that they have to write to us. And then we send them a form that has our rules and policies on it that they have to sign when they return the application. And we have a speech policy document they have to sign also.

The introductory letter talks about these are some of the things that are on the letter that we're a Christian-based facility. We consider ourselves to be a therapeutic community. The expected length of residency is 6 to 12 months. They must commit to the process of seeking employment immediately.

And the possibility of financial assistance, if they don't have any outside support from family, friends, or things like that, when they first get here, we will help them with clothing up to $250, getting a phone, things like that. Like I said before, the food, they will get support from the SNAP benefits. And the lodging fee.

The lodging fee is free for the first month, and then it's $450 a month after that. But of course, if they don't find a job right away and so forth, then we work with them.

In the letter that they're required to write, they need to tell us about their charges, their sentence length, when's their minimum date and their maximum date, the expected month that they go in front of the parole board, the actions they've taken to prepare for a successful re-entry into society while they've been in prison, their relationship with Jesus, the services and other Christian activities they've been attending while incarcerated, their work experience and skills rather in prison and before prison, and their physical and mental health and any medications that they might be on.

Our general rules and policies, just some of them. Mandatory activities. They're supposed to attend our devotions, Bible studies, and meetings that we have. They have to be compliant with mandated individual group counseling. They have to comply with parole, probation, and law-directed requirements and personal hygiene. They have to perform their chores that are assigned.

We have a curfew at Harkin House that's from 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Of course, if people work late night shift and whatever, then that will be adjusted for them. Of course, they can't have tobacco, drugs, alcohol, weapons, or obscene material.

There's restrictions on the use of phones, electronic devices, internet, social media sites. And then we have some visitation policies.

Okay, the speech policy includes things about respect when talking with others, the volume of your voice, no cursing, vulgar profanity, name-calling, and of course, no physical contact. And then these are the violations. If you commit the violations, you see $50, $100, $300, and then dismissal from the program.

So what happens when somebody is accepted into our program? So the day of their release from prison, we provide transportation. If they don't have somebody to go to the prison and pick them up, family members and so forth, then we will drive there and pick them up and bring them to our facility. Or if it's really far away, like Erie, something like that, they will take a bus or a train to Harrisburg, and we will pick them up from there.

And either the first or second day, depending on how far away they were and how much time we have, we have to get them to the Harrisburg parole office, the Pennsylvania State Police, and we try to get them to the county assistant office that first day. Although the health insurance starts in prison, they do the paperwork in prison, so it's usually already set up. But then we get them to the county office for the SNAP benefits, and then we help them go get clothing and food for when they first arrive because the residents are responsible for their own meals, except for on the Tuesday evenings that the meals are brought in by outside churches.

Housing, we have three houses that make up Harkin House. The main house, 79 South Franklin Street. Then the blue house, as many of you know, is 65 South Franklin Street. And then we have one at West South Street.

The 79 South Franklin Street, we have six single rooms, one double room, two full bathrooms, and one half bathroom. That's where my office is, and that's also where the house pet quarters are at. And then there's a living room, kitchen, pantry with individual cabinets. And there's lots of space in those cabinets. There's three shelves, so there's plenty of room for canned foods and dry foods.

Refrigerators and freezers. There's two refrigerators on the main floor with freezers. And then there's also a floor freezer. And then in the basement, there's two more refrigerators with freezers. So there's plenty of space for frozen goods and for items that need to be refrigerated. Okay. There's a common washer and dryer, common use computer, and there's a basement for storage.

65 South Franklin Street, the blue house, there's just two single rooms there. They have separate entrances. And these are considered a step-up house. So once an individual finds a job and starts saving money towards finding a place to live, then they can move to the step-up house, either the blue house or the other house, which I haven't got to yet, the one on 73 West South Street. And there's less restrictions when they move over to the step-up houses.

But there's two single rooms in the blue house with separate entrances. They have their individual bathrooms. They all have their own refrigerator and freezer. They do have a common washer and dryer and use the attic and basement for storage.

And the reason why I mentioned about the storage is because remember, they're trying to save up to go move on to other houses. So some people, they start buying furniture and so forth so that when they're ready to move out, they have a little bit at a time they keep purchasing things.

73 West South Street, the other step-up house. There's four single rooms over there. It has common entrance. They don't have separate entrances, although there are front doors and back doors and so forth like that. There's two full bathrooms, one on the first and one on the second floor, kitchen and a living room, common refrigerator and freezer. I do believe they have two refrigerators over there and a floor freezer. They have a common washer and dryer. And they have two rooms in the basement for storage. Now, one of those two rooms could be made into a bedroom, but they just don't have the space then in the kitchen and the cabinets and so forth to really support a fifth person over there.

Okay, the rooms are very basic. They have a bed with, of course, the mattress and the linen and so forth, a dresser, and a nightstand. Some of the rooms have a closet, and some of the rooms have man-made shelves with the rods underneath so they can hang clothes. So the very basic rooms.

Okay, now a little bit more into how we physically support and financially support the individuals. Of course, we provide them a room.

And first month's rent is free, then it's $450 thereafter. And up to $250 initial allowance for clothing, phone, and basic needs we provide for them, budgeting and financial counseling, transportation for appointments, medical appointments, and grocery shopping, and where else they may need to go until they can get their own mode of transportation. And then the meals, which CCF supports and other local churches. It used to be Wednesday evenings, now it's Tuesday evenings. A meal is brought in from outside churches.

Some ways here are the churches that help provide the meals: Chambersburg, Christian Fellowship, Shippenburg Christian Fellowship, Upton Brethren, Green Village Church of God, Chambersburg, Dunkirk Brethren, Spring Valley Mennonite Church, and Trinity Brethren Fellowship. Of course, Chambersburg does the first Tuesday of the month. Shippenburg does the second Tuesday of the month. Upton and Green Village Church of God, they do the third week, one every other month. So they switch off. And Chambersburg, Dunkirk, and Spring Valley Mennonite Church, they switch off on the fourth Tuesday of the month. And then if there is a fifth Tuesday of the month, then that's when Trinity Brethren Fellowship brings in the meal.

Some emotional ways that we provide emotional and spiritual support. Monday through Friday, we have devotions in the morning from 7:30 to 8:00. Then we have weekly Bible study. Currently, it's on Thursday evenings at 7:00. That usually runs to 8:00 PM.

Then every Sunday morning, we have a meeting at Harkin House, 8 o'clock, and lasts sometimes till 9:00, but usually a little shorter than that. And then they can have one-on-one time with the life coach or other staff members.

Devotional leaders, there's 20 regular leaders from 10 local churches. Five of these are from CCF. And we have eight fill-in leaders. And I'll talk about that here in a moment.

Devotional leaders' churches, these are where they come from: CCF, SCF, Rowe Mennonite, Trinity Brethren, Chambersburg Missionary Alliance, Upton Brethren, Calvary Mennonite, Cedar Street Mennonite, Chambersburg Church of the Brethren, and New Hope Mennonite.

Bible study leader churches come from Chambersburg, Dunkirk Brethren, Upton Brethren, and Mercenberg Mennonite. There's four individuals that come on a regular basis from these churches for the Bible study.

Then at our Sunday meetings, of course, just like any organization, we talk about business matters. But this is also a time when people can bring up any grievances that they have or concerns, or they can talk about positive experiences that they've had throughout the week.

And this is also a time they can talk about what's going on in their life, like job hunting, house hunting, car shopping, concerns at work, vehicle issues, financial concerns, spiritual matters, adjusting to being out of prison, things like this.

It's also a time to bring up concerns. One has about other residents' behavior. We try to encourage, if you see somebody doing something you don't think they should be doing, to try to talk to them one-on-one. But then if things don't seem to change, then you need to bring it to everybody's attention at one of these meetings. It's not a matter of telling—remember, these are individuals coming out of prison. So their way of thinking is a lot different than maybe other people's way of thinking, okay? So they're thinking that's tattletelling, okay? Of course, they wouldn't use the word tattletelling. That's like ratting on somebody or something like that. But the real goal is to help these brothers to stay out of going back to prison.

And also, it will affect the entire house in that we don't want Harkin House to be shut down because somebody's doing some things that they shouldn't be doing. So that's the time to bring up these matters so that we can get on them and figure out a way for them to behave in a different manner.

So what is our goal? Our desired outcome is for the residents to grow spiritually, to mature emotionally, to obtain some sort of financial responsibility, and to integrate back into society.

Now, some of these—the first two areas, spiritual and emotional, are not that easy to evaluate. Okay? The evaluation is more subjective than objective. With finances, a person's bank statement can tell you if they're saving enough money for a down payment on a house or first month's rent, second month's rent, and security deposit, and things like that.

But there are ways that we can kind of evaluate their spiritual and emotional maturity. Has their language changed? Do they participate in discussions during devotions? Do they ask questions? Do they ask for prayer for the Lord's guidance? How are they getting along with others? Are they spending their money on foolish things instead of on basic needs?

Now, sometimes people ask, "Well, what is the success rate at Harkin House?" Well, I try to figure that out. And I first decide, "Well, first, we have to have some criteria. Well, what are we going to use to determine if they've been successful or not?" So this is what I came up with. This is not an official Harkin House criteria. This is race criteria, I guess. So I decided if they're meeting mandated requirements, they're seeking spiritual growth, they're employed outside of Harkin House, and they secure outside residency, they've successfully gone through our program. Now, I try to go back to see the history of Harkin House, but there was no way I could really do it except for the timeframe that I've been there.

And I've been in there since June of 2022. So I've gone back based upon the individuals who have gone through Harkin House since I've been there. And there's been 29 residents since June of '22 that's gone through Harkin House Ministry. 14 have already successfully completed the program. They've moved out, and they're back into society. There's 11 still in the program. Seven of these 11 have already gained outside employment. So now they're just saving up money to try to find a place to live. Two of them are retired on Social Security, so they don't need to find outside employment, but they will eventually need to find a place to go to on their own.

And two are still working at Fresh Purpose Warehouse while they are seeking employment outside.

Now, of course, that only added up to 25. So where's the other four? Well, four people did not complete the program. Two were asked to leave. One was for stealing and lying, and one was for alcohol-related issues that they were asked to leave the program. And two returned to prison for activities that they did.

So that brings me to my success rate of what I'm calling raise criteria. It's an 86% success rate, which I think is pretty good for our program.

Okay. I mentioned before about how the board members create and enforce the rules and policies of Harkin House. However, I do need to mention that all residents are also under the supervision of a parole agent or probation officer, which has the authority to add additional requirements on any or all the residents under their supervision. For example, I told you before that we have a curfew, a Harkin House curfew of 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM. So a parole officer could tell one of the residents, "No, your curfew is from 7:00 PM to 6:00 AM." It could make it more lenient also, but that's probably not going to happen. But the whole point is that they still fall under parole and probation, and they can override anything that Harkin House puts on the individuals.

They can make it tougher. They can make it more lenient, which they're not going to do that, though. At least they haven't.

Okay. We would have an even tougher challenge than it has been for us to be successful if it wasn't for support that we received from CCF and the other local churches. We are very grateful for the contributions made over the years of your time and funds. If there's anyone here who has learned something new about the Harkin House Ministry and you would like to get involved, you can see me about volunteering to lead devotions, participating in our Bible study program, or initiating some other activity. If you have some ideas that you think might be beneficial for the men in some way, we can always look at that.

And if you haven't had the opportunity to share a meal with the residents of Harkin House and would like for you and your spouse to enjoy an evening of fellowship with the men and some good food because we've never had anybody bring in bad food, and everybody's looking forward to the home-cooked meals and so forth, you can see Raffert. Raffert is the point of contact, the coordinator for the meals for CCF, along with a million other things that he does for CCF and Harkin House. So if you want to get involved with that, just see him, and he can put you on the schedule. I think they are looking for somebody for December.

Or if you just want a tour of our facilities, you can contact me, and I can show you around. If you've never been there before and you want to see it, however, just keep in mind there can not be any minors, so no one under the age of 18 can come there.

Okay. So these are some of the things that CCF and, of course, other local churches have helped us with: special offerings, individual contributions, your time, leading morning devotions, providing us spiritual guidance, the monthly meals we talked about. Everybody enjoys the home-cooked food and the fellowship. And then work projects. A lot of individuals here from CCF and other local churches bring their skills and help us put together that blue house that was nothing but—I don't even know if there was a foundation there or whatever, but they're always coming and helping us do something kind of work. And we really do appreciate that.