By Karen Thurber
For The Herald Bulletin
ANDERSON — Life on the streets: Crack cocaine. Using. Dealing. Always looking over your shoulder. Sleepless nights — too busy making connections.
The lucky ones are caught.
Enter Bob Blume, founder and executive director of Man4Man Ministries, which gives convicted felons a chance to choose productive lives.
“It’s unbelievable how many lives he has changed, people who were given up on. Through Bob’s programming and the people who are involved with him, he has performed miracles,” Judge Thomas Newman Jr. said.
Shannon Swain, a former inmate, lost jobs, family and a nice home.
“The downfalls of being in a life like that is that it happens way before you really recognize what’s going on,” he said. “Through Man4Man Ministries I have been able to use the gift and the talent that I never thought I had in me. God showed me that you are worth something to me.”
Swain is now a commercial contractor and an ordained minister through Lighthouse Family Worship Center.
A person’s choice of habits leads to a choice of friends and those friends lead him to places that can be destructive, Blume said.
The recidivism rate, or rate at which offenders return to incarceration, was 37.8 percent in 2007, according to the Indiana Department of Correction. According to Blume, the recidivism rate in Man4-Man is less than 2 percent.
“What you’re around is what you become, so we have to change their environments,” Blume said.
Blume asked Tony Canaday to help set up Man4Man Ministries in 2001. Canaday now chairs the board of directors.
“It’s the only job I’ve ever had where I have to pay to go to work,” Blume said.
But this man wouldn’t trade a day.
When someone comes into Man4Man, he is met by Jim Ott, director of Men’s Ministries. All incoming men start in the group Band of Brothers.
“This is the initial step in trying to discover who you are in the big picture that we have here,” Blume said.
As needs are assessed, men move into other groups that help them deal with addictions and to become strong fathers, husbands and leaders.
Kojak Fuller, a former Anderson High School basketball star and Indiana’s Mr. Basketball in 1993, was ordered by a court into the program after his sentencing for dealing drugs.
“To be honest, we weren’t excited about him coming because of some of the history he had. After we met him, he turned out to be one of the most exciting young men I’ve met in a long, long time,” Blume said.
Fuller said he lost everything in prison.
“That’s when I met King Jesus. That’s why I love Him the way I do today, because He took me in when nobody else could,” Fuller said.
Fuller is now director of Outreach in Man4Man Ministries.
“We know that if we can get to a man’s heart and help him verbalize in a healthy, non-judgmental way, we can help him begin to find himself,” Blume said
When Bobby Cotton first walked into a group meeting, he slouched in a chair.
“I’m thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be fun.’ The next meeting he started heading to the same chair. I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Cotton, you sit right here,’ “ Blume said.
When Cotton asked why, Blume answered, “Because leaders sit here and you’re going to be a leader.”
Cotton proved him right. Blume prepared him to run a fish fry fundraiser and says, “He did a great job. They raised $700 that day.”
“It wasn’t what I expected when I came here,” Cotton said.
He accepted Christ and now researches grants for the ministry and also is a leader of Celebrate Recovery on Friday nights.
“Man4Man has been a big catalyst in my life and helped me be the man that I am today,” he said.
The ministry
Man4Man Ministries, 1010 E. 8th St., offers men a chance to regain dignity and become positive leaders. The Christian ministry can be reached at 659-2989.
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Discussion
A band of brothers
Man4Man Ministries gives second chance to former inmates
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