Phil Wagner—together with Today in the Word—has reached thousands of inmates with the hope of the gospel and biblical truth
By Anneliese Rider
“Everything that I tried for happiness was just like the kid chasing soap bubbles,” Phil Wagner, founder of Set Free Prison Ministries, says.
Phil has been sharing the gospel with prisoners for more than 50 years. Looking back, the 89-year-old sees that his childhood—complicated by divorced parents, “crazy, stupid” choices, and a fruitless search for happiness—prepared him for this.
“Everything that had happened in my life was God’s schooling to fit me for what was going to be my full-time life: prison work,” Phil says. “My heart is for those people who are considered the armpit of society.”
‘Chasing soap bubbles’
Phil Wagner’s mom divorced his dad when Phil was 11. Phil was heartbroken. He fell in with a group of other kids from broken homes and started doing “crazy, stupid things.”
Seven years later, when Phil found his father dead from a heart attack, his attempts to heal the pain became adult-sized: buying fast cars, drag and street racing, winning trophies, starting his own trucking business, entering a teenage marriage that would not last, and fathering two kids.
He even tried church and decided that his tithing and good works earned him salvation. But nothing gave him the happiness he longed for, and when a childhood friend returned to Phil’s neighborhood in Northern California, Phil had a realization while talking to him.
“I said, ‘You got something in your life that I don’t have in my life. I want to know what it is,’” Phil recounts. They started attending his friend’s church, and soon Phil realized that his good deeds wouldn’t get him to heaven.
“I was under so much conviction,” he says. “It was either I was going to walk out and never go back to church, or I was going to try and find out the answers to my questions.”
He chose to find the answers.
A heart for the imprisoned
When he finally accepted God’s gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, Phil became passionate about sharing the gospel with everyone. In 1966, he enrolled at Emmaus University (then Emmaus Bible School) and moved from California to Chicago to get the training to become a missionary. Once there, he was assigned a practical service outreach to help counsel inmates at Cook County Jail.
“I was talking with these guys, and it was a perfect fit. They were crazy like I was. I felt more at home with them than I did in a lot of churches,” Phil says. Soon he switched to a chaplaincy training program which prepared him to minister in a different kind of mission field: jails and prisons.
In 1971 he took over the chaplaincy at Cook County Jail. He preached on Sunday mornings, counseled inmates, trained other chaplains, informed prisoners when a loved one had died, trained Moody students in prison ministry, and shared the gospel as often as possible.
But his main goal in everything was to show the inmates that Jesus always loves them.
“I’d listen to these young people, and I’d have to bite my tongue or my cheek,” Phil says. “If there would have been one person in the world that cared about this young man, he’d never, never, ever be there.”
In 1971, Phil established Set Free Prison Ministries, a non-profit ministry for inmates, and began to distribute Bible courses in Cook County Jail.
“If you can put it in their hand . . . they can sit there and read it until it finally sinks in,” Phil says.
After eight years as a chaplain, Phil began sensing a calling to establish prison ministries in more locations. He moved back to California and started setting up inmate correspondence ministries on the West Coast and around the United States.
‘Get on the airplane’
In 1993, Bud Suhl, a former inmate who’d been pardoned by the governor of California, called and invited Phil to visit Russia. Phil responded that he didn’t have the money.
“Bud said, ‘If God wants you to go to Russia, all you got to do is get on the airplane and say, “Thank You, Jesus!” Now do you want to go, or don’t you?’”
Phil agreed to go, but not for tourism—all he wanted to do was visit the prisons, a seemingly impossible request. For the past 70 years of atheistic communist rule, it had been illegal to have any contact with Russian prisoners.
But through connections with the Salvation Army, Phil and Bud ended up in the warden’s office at the Butyrka prison in Russia, preparing to go inside and talk to the inmates. When the warden told them they weren’t allowed to give the prisoners anything, Bud had his answer ready.
“Do you want your prisoners to continue to be coming back to prison?” Bud asked the warden. “They need to get the Bible, or their lives are never going to be changed. Now, do you want to see their lives changed, or don’t you?”
The warden relented, giving them permission to hand out gospel material, and Phil became the first person to preach the gospel in Russian prisons in over 70 years.
What started as a short-term mission trip turned into a 15-year stay in Russia and Kazakhstan, as Phil set up prison ministries across both countries. When political turmoil forced him to leave, he returned to California in 2007, where he continued his prison ministry and, in 2013, married his wife, Serena.
Joining with Today in the Word
In 2016, Moody’s Today in the Word team contacted Phil and asked if Set Free Prison Ministries would partner with Moody to distribute Today in the Word to inmates.
“With rapidly increasing prison regulations, it became more and more difficult to get the resources to the men and women who needed them,” says Jamie Janosz, managing editor of Today in the Word. “Phil’s organization takes a highly personal approach, ensuring that the deliveries are made in a way that can be accepted.”
Now, Moody ships pallets of the next month’s issue of Today in the Word to Set Free Prison Ministries in Southern California. There, Phil’s team—a small group of employees and over 100 volunteers—removes the staples, inserts the issues in envelopes, sends enrollment cards, and keeps track of where inmates are located so they can consistently receive Today in the Word.
The inmates who receive Today in the Word prize the deep theological teaching and discipleship.
“You know, they come to know the Lord, but how do you defend the faith? How do you have your questions answered? How do you grow in grace and knowledge?” Phil says. “And for all those questions Today in the Word is just powerful, and they love it.”
When Phil accepted the responsibility for distributing Today in the Word into prisons, there were 1,000 issues going to prisoners every month. Now, more than 4,500 issues are delivered monthly.
Instead of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task, Phil is delighted at how many people are reading and learning about Jesus through the ministry.
“Today in the Word shares the gospel. It handles the tough questions and gives you a basis for your faith, and it talks about eternal security and Christ being the only way to heaven,” Phil says, explaining how countless inmates have been transformed by the gospel. “God is building His church behind prison walls.”