Will you turn up, too?
‘People don’t care how much you know—until they know how much you care.’
No one is sure who first said it. But Scripture returns to it again and again.
We see in the Gospels times when Jesus meets people in their physical reality before He says or does anything else. He sees Zacchaeus in his tree. He asks Bartimaeus: ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ He feeds 5,000 people who are hungry before He teaches them. He turns up. He sees the person in front of Him. And then He acts.
As Paul writes to the Philippians, it is love that leads to knowledge and wisdom—not the other way round. Care comes first. And it is out of that care that true understanding grows.
It is a pattern we have tried to follow. Our work is sometimes described as ‘the ministry of turning up’—the simple, powerful act of being present with someone who is struggling— by volunteers who are carefully trained and vetted. We turn up. We care. This, we have learnt, is what changes lives. In prisons across England and Wales, this is exactly what our volunteers do, day in and day out.
In ways large and small, seen and unseen, they turn up. And lives are changed as a result.
Sometimes, turning up means putting pen to paper.
Our Letter Link programme connects people in prison with volunteer pen pals who write regularly, faithfully and without judgement. For many people inside, a letter is the only personal post they receive. It is someone saying: I see you. I have not forgotten you.
All that our volunteers require is training and the willingness to show up on a page.
£5 a month could help fund a PF volunteer’s letters to someone in prison who receives no other post.
Sometimes, turning up means making sure someone knows they are loved.
Through Angel Tree, our volunteers deliver gifts at Christmas to the children of people in prison—each onebearing a tag with a parent’s name, sent from inside. For a child, it is proof that their mum or dad has notforgotten them. For a parent separated from their family, it is one small but precious way to still be present in their child’s life.
This spring, Angel Tree reached in a different direction. Through our Angel Tree: Mother’s Day programme, young people in prison send a gift to their mother or female carer— many for the first time in years. A small act. But for a mother waiting at home, wondering whether her child thinks of her, it means everything.
£10 a month could help young people in prison send a Mother’s Day gift to their mum—many for the first time in years.
Sometimes, turning up means sitting with someone in their pain.
Our Pastoral Care work brings trained volunteers into prisons to walk alongside people who are carrying grief, trauma and loss. They provide a presence— a willingness to sit in the difficult places— to listen, and not look away.
£15 a month could help fund the training of a Pastoral Care volunteer—equipping them to walk alongside someone in prison.
And sometimes, turning up means doing exactly that.
At a prison in the north of England, we have just launched a Prison Visiting pilot—and it may be the most literal expression of the ministry of turning up that we have ever undertaken. Our volunteers are paired with
people who have no visitors. No family. No friends who come. They sit together and simply talk. There is only presence.
Our Prayer Line, too, continues to be a lifeline—a place where people in prison can bring their prayers, knowing that our faithful team of intercessors will carry them before God.
£20 a month could help ensure that anyone in prison who wants to ask for prayer will always find our Prayer Line intercession team ready to pray for them.
This autumn, we take a significant step forward.
We are preparing to launch Olive Tree—a new chaplaincy-based restoration programme that will take this ministry of turning up deeper than ever before.
Built on 45 years of learning alongside people in prison, it will offer a structured journey of restoration: honest, hopeful and grounded in the belief that no life is beyond God’s reach.
One of the men taking part in our pilot captures it well:
‘It has made me think about others and how the ripple effect works. I’ve started healing some broken relationships—and it is starting to bring peace to my life.’
None of this happens without you. And today, I want to ask you to prayerfully consider showing up, too. Every gift makes it possible for us to turn up for a person in prison and say, ‘You matter. You are not alone.’
Will you show up for someone in prison? Whatever you are able to give today will go directly to sustaining and growing this work: training more volunteers, resourcing our programmes and reaching more people who have so often been turned away. Because, in the end, knowledge is never enough. We have to care.
P.S. Please do pray for the launch of Olive Tree this Autumn. The ministry it is built on—the ministry of turning up—is already at work in prisons across England and Wales, thanks to people like you. Thank you for making it possible.
*Please note: All images are of models.
