Wings of Love to help ex-cons restart their lives
Exuding a rougharound-the-edges friendliness, Rex McDaniel makes the perfect spokesman for his church, Wings of Love.
He said he is dedicated to helping those that the general public has left behind, in particular, former prisoners re-entering society. That is the mission he started on when he opened Wings of Love about four years ago with a re-entry facility for ex-prisoners in mind.
“[God] calls me a ‘fixer of men’ and that’s what I was put here to do, to help people, to really help people no one else wants to mess with,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel was able to get his hands on the old armory building located at 445 Industrial Road, which is when Wings of Love’s newest location opened. Since then, he and the church’s congregants have been steadily working to prepare the property to meet code and have the amenities the parolees will need.
McDaniel said the building fell into his hands in a “supernatural” way. He said he was driving around one day and noticed the armory building; at the time, he knew he couldn’t buy it on his own and tried to push it out of his mind, but was unable to. He eventually was connected with a friend of a friend who had put a bid in on the property and agreed to let Wings of Love use it.
McDaniel said the Lord told him to “go act like [the building] is yours,” he said. He began with a one-inch paint scraper and was eventually joined by strangers and congregants alike in fixing the property up. At the same time, he received several generous donations that helped with the startup efforts of getting the building up to code.
“It’s really exciting to see what God’s doing because no man is going to be able to do what God is able to,” he said.
So far, the building has been remodeled so that it is compliant with building codes. There is a sanctuary, a family reunification area, a kitchen, laundry facility, classrooms, offices and a large dormitory style bathroom. McDaniel also hand-picked beds for the future residents and they can be seen lined up in what will be two large group bedrooms.
“We went to five or six different places and I laid on eight or 10 different beds until I found one that I liked, because I figured if I didn’t like it, it didn’t make [any] sense to make them lay on something that I wouldn’t lay on,” McDaniel said.
Once the facility is able to start accepting residents, men from correctional centers around the state will be able to come to the facility to live. McDaniel said the facility will house 16 to 24 men for about three to five months when the facility first starts operation. He said he hopes to eventually be able to have parolees and ex-prisoners stay longer.
McDaniel said the program will focus on teaching the men life skills, which will help them re-integrate into society with more ease than if they’d been immediately released on their own. He said the program would be intense, but for the men bettering their lives, worth it.
“The end result is bringing these people out from incarceration, from out of the prison environment, [and] putting them through an intense program of the word of God, teaching them who they are, teaching them their true identity, getting them jobs, teaching them life skills – teaching them even to the smallest thing, even how
to fill a resume out – getting their GEDs,” he said.
McDaniel has been ministering for the last 30 plus years, he said. He said he’s always had an interest in being a link between the downtrodden and the Lord. He has been working with the Pathways to Freedom program, the program which facilitates prisoners living in re-entry homes to complete their prison sentences, for several years and still travels to Wrightsville every Tuesday to teach a class to prisoners.
Debbie Watts, SHARE Foundation Vice President of Community Impact, said the re-entry home is a great thing for Union County and fits into the priorities of SHARE’s Violence Intervention Plan (VIP), unveiled this past January.
“The focus of re-entry is to help these men … back into society from being incarcerated, and we want to offer them a hand up – not a hand out, but a hand up – to help them be able to get their feet back on the ground, become self-sufficient and not dependent on society,” Watts said.
Although Wings of Love was not one of the grantees selected when the SHARE Foundation awarded grants to community groups as part of the VIP, Watts said the foundation plans to help however they can once the facility is open. McDaniel said he hopes to be able to open the facility within the next year.
Watts said the Pathways to Freedom program is evidence based and has been shown to dramatically reduce recidivism rates in communities where their re-entry homes have been implemented.
“We believe that [recidivism rates] are going to be very good compared to [ex-prisoners] that have no type of accommodations or programming or anything,” Watts said.
“If we treat them like we want to be treated and love them like we want to be loved, I’m expecting 100 percent [will not re-offend],” McDaniel said.
He said everyone who lives at the facility will have to get a job and their GEDs if they do not already have their high school diplomas. The money the men earn will be put into a bank account for them, and they will receive the lump sum when they leave the facility.
“The [Arkansas Department of Community Corrections] has made it to where it will benefit every employer around here to hire them,” McDaniel said, adding that employers who hire the residents will receive a $2,400 tax break and that the residents’ insurance will be covered.
“I know that this is what [the Lord] called me to do. I’ve always wanted to help and I’ve always been for the underdog. The people that no one else wants to mess with, I have a heart for them,” McDaniel said. “I don’t feel sorry for them. I just see the potential in everybody.”