Behind the Walls

Behind the Walls is a practical guide to Christian prison ministry written from the inside out. John M. Cobin spent nearly five years and five months in three Chilean prisons after being wrongfully convicted following a 2019 self-defense shooting during Chile's social unrest. Drawing on his own experience serving as a de facto pastor and Bible-study leader to dozens of fellow inmates under brutal, unpredictable conditions, he offers pastors, chaplains, and lay ministers a field-tested account of what prison ministry actually requires: how to build trust behind bars, sustain a congregation with no books or quiet space, and minister to men the outside world has written off. This is not prison ministry observed from the visitor's side of the glass -- it is prison ministry lived from inside the cage.