Current Vision for St. Luke’s Renewal Center

Mission

St Luke’s offers the inmate a balance of retreat time and activities, supported by volunteers from the wider community, in order to create a physical and spiritual space in which the inmate can experience healing, personal growth and a new vision for his or her life.

Objectives

1. To provide a ‘sacred space’; a place ‘set aside’ from the institutional setting. Life in the institutional setting requires the inmate to bury emotion and to offer no sign of vulnerability. Healing and reconciliation require vulnerability, healthy ownership of emotion and an atmosphere of trust.St. Luke’s accomplishes this by:
   • Providing a quiet, home like facility which is physically removed from the prison milieu;
   • Facilitating individual and group retreat time for the inmate;
   • Providing the inmate with activities which promote spiritual openness, trust and honest introspection.
2. To facilitate interaction between inmates and volunteers from the wider faith community. Through the participation of volunteers in the delivery of programming, St. Luke’s seeks to provide positive relationship experiences between inmates and members of the wider faith community.
3. To address the Core Values of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) Specifically, Core value 1 which emphasizes, “the dignity of individuals, the rights of all members of society and the potential for human growth and development”, and Core Value 3 that, “human relationships are the cornerstone of our endeavor.”

Reworked Vision

… offers the inmate a balance of retreat time and activities, supported by volunteers from the wider community, in order to create a physical and spiritual space in which the inmate can experience healing, personal growth and a new vision for his life. These experiences around transformation assist in the re-integration of the offender into their spiritual/faith community as well as the community at large. Pre-release

Mandate

1. Create a quiet, home-like sacred space for inmates away from the institutional setting.
   • Conduct spiritual needs assessment on an on-going basis
   • Support the spiritual practice of the offender and connect them to their faith community
   • Recruit and oversee volunteers contributing to the growth of faith practice of offenders
2. Maintain and develop positive relationships with Springhill inmates around their Christian faith.
3. Maintain and develop positive relationship with people wishing to support St. Luke’s.
   • Raise awareness of restorative justice and spiritual practices for faith communities
   • Educate volunteers, communities, and organizations around the re-integration of offenders into a spiritual community outside the institution.
4. Develop, coordinate and implementation of programs for inmates that encourage personal, spiritual, and community reconciliation.
   • Nurture offender social skills through applied spiritual and religious practices
   • Introduce offenders to like-minded natural faith communities for potential social support
   • Guide the offender in managing attitudes of being a valued religious and spiritual person
   • Foster the applied religious and spiritual growth of offenders within the Christian faith community as it relates to their unique experience of re-integration.
   • Help offenders deepen their concept of a spiritual life as it relates to coping with life, and dealing with the psychological, emotional and physical self-care