STAMFORD, Conn. (UMNS) -- The Rev. Lonnie McLeod has a message for United Methodists: if you're going to make a commitment to prison ministries, go the distance.

About 25 years ago, McLeod was a prisoner himself. A United Methodist pastor eventually convinced him to give Bible study a try, leading to involvement with other church members.

"It was the United Methodist members … who were willing to walk up to me in that (prison) yard and to challenge me to be more than I was," he said. McLeod spoke to the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries directors during their Oct. 19-22 annual meeting.

The board directors took up their own challenge and voted to develop a global mission on prison ministry and restorative justice. Restorative justice defines crime as violating people and causing harm rather than breaking laws, and it is aimed at making victims, offenders and their communities whole again.

Proposals for specific program directions, policies, guidelines and financial and personnel support will be brought to the spring meeting next April. The 1996 United Methodist General Conference, the denomination's top legislative body, also established a Restorative Justice Ministries Inter-agency Task Force.

A panel of five speakers encouraged the directors in their decision-making. Among them was McLeod, who said he was grateful to United Methodists for spurring his own faith journey but expressed regret at how his connection with the church was broken. He explained that as he was trying to go through the denomination's ordination process, he lost his mentor when the pastor was transferred elsewhere. Later, after his release, he was ordained through the United Church of Christ. He now is pastor of a New York church and teaches in Sing Sing prison.

McLeod urged board directors to "be like Wesley," Methodism's founder, and go minister in the prisons.

The Rev. Betsy Singleton Bauer, a board director and a pastor at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church in Little Rock, Ark., told how her congregation's involvement in prison ministry in Russia opened up awareness of local needs.

"My church will continue to be there in Russia…but we are also in prisons now at home," she said.

In North Carolina, the Rev. Jerry Murray has been doing prison ministry since 1969, with a focus on the Disciple Bible Study program. Currently, local congregations are leading Disciple studies in 17 prisons. The North Carolina Secretary of Corrections "has asked us to keep going until we're in every one of the prisons," Murray told directors.

The need to move beyond the prison system also was brought to the attention of directors. They learned that the United States ranks among the top two industrialized nations in incarcerating its citizens. Only Russia has more prisoners per 100,000 citizens. Currently, more than 1.7 million of 5 million people under supervision of the U.S. criminal justice system are in prisons or jails, with the remainder on probation or parole.

If that number continues to increase, directors were told, it would equal the 6 million students enrolled in higher education in the United States.

The Rev. Eddie Lopez (right), a United Methodist pastor and former chaplain for the New York City Department of Corrections, said that any ministry of restorative justice "needs to be one that has advocacy at its roots."

He declared that the United States cannot deal with the poor and those it fails to educate "by building prisons to place them in" and added that the church "needs to stand and call for a moratorium on building prisons."

Restorative justice also is necessary in countries where the government has used imprisonment and torture for political means, in violation of basic human rights. Becky Asedillo, a deaconness and peace with justice educator for the Board of Global Ministries, described how such violations occurred during the Marcos regime in the Philippines.

When the victims of these repressive regimes cry for justice, she said, "it is essentially a call not for retribution but restoration" and the need to recognize the injustices that have been committed. She pointed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa as a model of how restorative justice can work.