Mel Goebel was a prisoner of darkness - long before he went into the Nebraska
State Penitentiary to serve five years for burglary.
Growing up in a home with alcoholism and abuse, he learned to kill the pain
with drugs and sex. Eventually, his self-destructive lifestyle led him to
crime.
"I got an ME degree - master of escaping reality," Goebel said
Tuesday in an interview. "It was a Band-Aid. If I'd get a little lonely,
I'd go have a drink or have sex."
In his first years in prison in the early 1970s, he went further into the
darkness - smuggling drugs into the penitentiary. But then, one day, he met an
inmate wearing a jacket with the words: "Smile, Jesus is your
friend."
In his new book, "The Unseen Presence," Goebel tells how he began to
study the Bible. Soon he committed his life to Christ and found himself filled
with an overpowering peace and sense of direction.
Goebel, who is meeting this week with inmates throughout the Nebraska
corrections system, worked 20 years with Prison Fellowship, the nationwide
ministry that offers Bible study and one-on-one Christian teaching to men and
women behind bars.
In 1997, he left Prison Fellowship to start Window King, a Colorado-based
window washing business that now has 20 franchises in 10 states. Three of the
franchises are owned by ex-prisoners, and another five ex-cons are on Goebel's
home office staff in Colorado Springs.
Much of the profit from Window King has gone into printing and distributing his
book and to funding other programs to help prisoners and ex-prisoners, he said.
Goebel, 50, received a pardon from former Gov. Bob Kerrey in 1986. He still
spends a lot of time traveling and speaking both behind bars and to churches,
business groups and others, encouraging people to support prison ministries.
Recent studies have shown that inmates who participate regularly in prison
ministries have an 80 percent chance of not returning to prison after release,
he said. But a key to prisoners' success is people on the "outside"
to help them find jobs, housing and necessities, and to get the religious and
moral support they need to re-enter the working world.
He remembered the day he was released from prison -- with $100 in his pocket
and a small cardboard box with his few belongings. He was met by caring
Christian friends who had known him in prison. They gave him a place for him to
live and helped him get a job and become a productive citizen.
"That network around me was my success - along with my faith," he
said. "They were people who were living out their faith by being a role
model to me."
While with Prison Fellowship, Goebel was national director of Network for Life,
a coalition of churches working to help ex-prisoners.
As he speaks to groups, he urges businesses to hire ex-prisoners and churches
to welcome them into their fold.
"We have to be a lifeline of grace to help ease the transition, ease the
culture shock" for inmates re-entering society, he said.
Though he lives in Colorado, Goebel has made a commitment to prisoners in
Nebraska. He comes here several times each year, meeting with inmates and
encouraging local prison ministries.
No one should give up, he says, on men and women behind bars.
"There's tremendous talent in prison. They've learned how to
inappropriately handle pain, but once they can learn how to handle their pain
appropriately they can be a real asset to the community."