Missions group is building new chapel at Boley prison
BOLEY — Concrete will be poured in the next few days for the floor of a new chapel at the John Lilley Correctional Center.
It will be the sixth chapel built at an Oklahoma prison in a unique public-private arrangement between the state of Oklahoma and World Mission Builders.
And it may be the last one, at least under his leadership, said Joe Wilson, retired Enid pastor who has served for years as volunteer domestic project coordinator for World Mission Builders.
“This is the last one I’m planning on doing,” Wilson said. “I’m in my late 70s.”
Wilson said he hopes someone younger will pick up the mantle because several more Oklahoma prisons need chapels.
All of the chapels are built on state property at no cost to the state. World Mission Builders raises money for the projects and builds them with volunteer labor and a large amount of donated materials.
Prison inmates at John Lilley Correctional Center who are licensed plumbers, electricians and heat and air specialists, as well as other workers, are helping out with the project.
Wilson said volunteers will raise the walls in an old-fashioned barn-raising on Monday, and the roof trusses will go up on the following day. Roofing, windows and doors will be installed by the end of the month.
He said he hopes to have the building completed by the end of the year.
When it is completed, it will be the property of the state. The building will be more than 5,000 square feet and be valued at $500,000.
Wilson said the chapels are heavily used.
“We have a lot of good curricula and trained volunteers, but we don’t have the space because of overcrowding,” he said.
The chapels are used for religious services and Bible studies, and also for all kinds of educational programs, including GED studies.
Most of them also serve as meeting halls for events held at the prisons that involve outsiders.
Some 200 to 300 inmates are baptized at each of the chapels each year, he said.
The Corrections Department reported that the five chapels in 2016 logged 211,000 inmate contacts, 690 baptisms and 32,000 volunteer hours by 5,049 volunteers.
Wilson went to work as a volunteer for World Mission Builders after retiring as pastor of Oakwood Christian Church in Enid.
The ministry has completed some 300 projects all over the world since 1975, including more than 100 churches in the Philippines.
As domestic projects coordinator, Wilson oversaw more than 80 of those projects in the United States for churches, church camps and other ministries. The Oklahoma prison chapel project is a spinoff of that.
The first Oklahoma prison chapel built by the ministry was at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center at Taft.