Christmas message from the president
There he is, the small boy in the manger. The small boy, who is God. The small boy who is the biggest gift ever given: the Son of God. I think of the words in Hebrews 1:3.
God´s son has all the brightness of God´s own glory and is like him in every way. By his own mighty word, he holds the universe together. It is indeed the biggest gift ever given to mankind, but also something for us to live by. And in our own worlds and lives try to hold our own universes together, to honour God.
There and then he was yet another boy born into a world of fear, poverty and persecution. Because someone with power felt threatened by something he believed to be a danger to him.
Now, 2000 years later, unfortunately the story repeats it self’s, over and over again. But the children being born into our world are not God, they are children of God. Being loved by God is a good thing, but as prison chaplains we all know that the love of God is not always the strongest power within a human being. And that people doesn´t always honour God in their actions. If that was the case, our world would have been a completely different place!
Our work as prison chaplains is to bring the light of the Gospel into the hearts of those who seeks it. Inside as well as outside the prison walls all over the world. Small deeds can make a big change. Maybe not this Christmas, but for us to bring light, hope and love where it is most needed. That might be the gift that makes the biggest change for an inmate who have lost hope a long time ago. And some darkness has changed into light.
Let´s not forget, that sometimes it is the other way around.
I remember one Christmas when our service was finished and me and the musician left the room and one of the candles felt, leaving stearin all over the threshold, the door and the wall. It was the last service for the day, and we really wanted to get home. But there we were, kneeling trying to clean up the mess we made. Then one of the inmates came, kneeled with us saying: Go home, I will be here for a very long time. So, I have time to clean it up.
I asked him if it really was okay, he answered that it was his Christmas gift to us.
I sometimes think of him when I think about how much small things might matter. It is the Gospel, however without words. Inmates comforting other inmates, giving another inmate a telephone card for him or her to be able to call his or her children or simply a hug or a hand on a shoulder. Small things, that might make big changes. It is the love of God, from one person to another. It is the peace of love in a harsh and maybe even violent environment. It is trying to help one and other to “keep the universe together”.
2000 years ago, the three wise men had to follow a star to find God. We get to follow our hearts and give light, hope and love where it is much needed.
I wish all of you a blessed Christmas.
May God bless you and your loves ones and give you peace.
Marie-Louise Norozi
President of IPCA
Prayer Corner —A Call to Intercession for inmates
Eight weeks have passed since the A Living Hope Conference.
One of the most powerful moments of the gathering was the Prayer Corner, an activity that united the participating chaplains in a profound time of shared faith and intercession.
From this sacred moment of encounter and prayer, the Prayer Booklet was born — a living testimony that gathers petitions touching the deepest parts of the human soul: sincere repentance, moments of loneliness, inner struggles, and the longing for a new beginning.
Today, we invite you to intercede with us for the cries, needs, and burdens of hundreds of people deprived of their freedom around the world.
➡️ Join us in prayer with your community and your region:
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IPCA VIII Conference – Bangkok, Thailand – 2-7 October 2025
Finally we got to meet!
The Bangkok conference was to be held in 2020, but as we all know that was not possible due to the pandemic. During the ten years that has passed between the last conference in Sydney 2015 and now, the world has changed a lot.
But IPCA has managed to survive and this year we celebrated our 40th anniversary. Around 125 prison chaplains from 33 countries met at the headquaters of Church of Christ in Thailand, CCT. The days where filled with plenary speakers, workshops and prayers. Both in the form of devotions and church visits on the Sunday. And on the conference “Prayers corner”, where chaplains pinned prayers written by inmates in the prisons where the delegates serves.
More importantly, the days where filled with chaplains meeting each other. Getting to know new collegues and friends, to learn about the different conditions in prisons all over the world.
This conference there was delegates from all of the six regions, which has not always been the case.
During the conference the new steering committee was presented and the election for the new worldwide president took place.
The new president, Marie-Louise Norozi from Sweden presented her motto for the mandate period;
Step by Step, Mouth to Mouth, Face to Face.
A motto to work by for the forthcoming five years, to make IPCA more known among prison chaplains and grow as an organisation.
Step by step, the way prison chaplains meets inmates.
Mouth to mouth, meening for chaplains to talk to collegues about the importance of having our worldwide organisation and it´s regions as a platform for promoting our topics towards the correctional systems, governments aswell as the UN. And to learn from each other.
Face to face, the only way for us to be able to meet Christ within our fellow man.
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Easter Blessings to All Chaplains Around the World
As prison chaplains, dramatic reversal is at the heart of our ministry. We can only do what we do if we believe that God can reverse the course of individuals’ lives and that his ways can prevail over the forces of evil both in and around us.
We believe in an alternative to ‘Might is Right’ as we work within prison systems bringing the living hope of transformation, even if it’s only one person at a time.
At the heart of the Gospel is the greatest dramatic reversal ever conceived of. As one song has it “Darkness and gloom filled the earth, Satan was celebrating victory, Jesus arose, He is alive”. That same sense of reversal permeates the teachings of Jesus on the Kingdom of God: he who loses his life will find it; the last shall be first; and so on. In the Epistles the same theme continues as Paul asserts that Christ told him that his power was made perfect in weakness; in John’s vision in Revelation he hears of the triumphant Lion of Judah – and looks to see a Lamb who was slain.
At Easter we celebrate the dramatic reversal of the Resurrection and the message of living hope it brings all of us. May each of us continue to know the reality of God’s resurrection power at work in our lives and the lives of those we minister to in ways that make a tangible difference!
David Buick, President, IPCA Worldwide
2024 Christmas Message from IPCA Worldwide President
Christmas is of course a time when we as Christians remember the Incarnation, a central tenet of our faith. Incarnation is also a concept that’s close to my heart as a chaplain, as we in some small way bring the fellowship of Christ to inmates through our bodily presence alongside them not only at crisis points during their incarceration but also in the humdrum of prison routine. As we have all learned from covid, there’s something about in-person encounters that technology simply cannot replace.
That’s why IPCA’s Worldwide Steering Committee is working hard on preparations for our IPCA VIII worldwide conference in Bangkok from 2-7 October 2025. It was a huge disappointment for us not to be able to hold the conference in person in 2020 as planned. We “kept hope alive” with a webinar at which it was exciting to see faces from all over the world, but this only strengthened our resolve to hold the conference in person when this again became possible.
The world has changed almost beyond recognition since then. The threat from covid has been replaced by geopolitical upheaval and instability, increasing evidence of climate change, and in many parts of the world a greater tendency towards polarization and protectionism. All this is a long way from the winds of globalization and financial growth that were blowing when IPCA was founded in Bossey, Switzerland in 1985.
Some might question whether international gatherings still have their place 40 years on in this changed world. It is my conviction that just as face-to-face encounters are a crucial part of our ministry as chaplains, so face-to-face meetings are a core component of what IPCA and indeed our Christian faith is all about – and that today, a global gathering representing diverse cultures and strands of Christianity, welcoming representatives of other faiths is something truly prophetic – as the IPCA VIII tagline has it, “A Living Hope”.
I know that attending our conference in Bangkok will be a huge challenge for many, not least from a financial point of view, but I do invite you to prayerfully consider taking up that challenge so that after ten long years, we can once again enjoy all the benefits of ‘incarnating’ worldwide prison chaplaincy.
Wishing you a peaceful Christmas and every blessing in the New Year in Jesus’ name,
David Buick
President, IPCA Worldwide
WELCOME TO IPCA
Organisation in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council since 2014
The International Prison Chaplains Association welcomes you to its Worldwide website. We exist to provide support and encouragement to prison chaplains everywhere, and to engage in advocacy on prison-related issues.
We invite you to visit the various pages and if you are a prison chaplain, to join us – membership is free. There are a number of ways you can connect with your colleagues in prison ministry around the world. You can also visit the websites run in our various regions worldwide.
As prison Chaplains around the world we share in this ministry together. If you have any suggestions for improving this website we welcome your ideas. Feel free to contact our President David Buick.
IPCA’s virtual symposium ‘Keesps hope alive”
14 November 2020
On 11 November 2020, IPCA held the closing event in its ‘Keep Hope Alive’ virtual symposium: a worldwide webinar that brought together prison chaplains from Nepal to Costa Rica via Australia and Norway. Chaired from Manila by IPCA Asia representative Gerry Bernabe, the meeting marked the conclusion of a series of virtual gatherings in each of IPCA Worldwide’s six regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America/Caribbean, North America, and Oceania).
Over 120 attendees followed the closing webinar, which is now available on YouTube. In addition to IPCA’s core community of Christian chaplains from different denominations, the symposium also welcomed chaplains of other faiths, including Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist colleagues.
Keep Hope Alive was an opportunity for chaplains to share their stories of dealing with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on prisoners and on their own ministries. In the face of today’s extreme difficulties, participants were encouraged by the realisation that they were not alone. As one Scottish chaplain attending summed it up: “It was wonderful to be reminded that prison chaplaincy all around the world is essentially the same. We are one big family!”
In addition to grassroots feedback about prisons in the Covid-19 era, the symposium also highlighted IPCA’s role in global advocacy. IPCA’s new declaration on prisoners’ rights to spiritual care amid the health crisis was presented in each regional meeting before being formally adopted in the closing webinar. IPCA’s vice-president Jean-Didier Mboyo (DRC), who heads up the organisation’s UN Team, explained that as a recognised NGO, IPCA will now submit the document to the UN for official publication – and emphasised that individual chaplains can start using it right away: “each chaplain in their country’s prisons is the bearer of the declaration. You are the ones who can take it to your prisons, to your governments”.
The symposium also looked beyond the pandemic to consider wider concerns for prison chaplains: access to research, dealing with high reincarceration rates among indigenous peoples, and coping with violent extremism were just some of the topics raised during the various meetings.
“It’s great to have been able to reconnect with the prison chaplaincy community across the world despite travel restrictions”, said IPCA Worldwide President David Buick. “We now intend to build on that momentum to develop the IPCA community and provide the organisational resources needed for us to continue to keep hope alive.”