Some years ago Nancy Pearcy and I wrote a book entitled How Now Shall We Live? I was looking for the very best example I could find of a transformed life, someone who had gone from the darkness into the light in the most dramatic way. The person I chose and devoted a chapter to in the book was my friend Danny Croce.
People often ask me what my legacy will be. In fact it’s a question, now that I’ve become 75 that is asked with increasing frequency. The answer is simple. Apart from my family it will be the living monuments of God’s grace, the people who have experienced a complete new life, and I’ve been privileged to be a part of. At the top of the legacy list will be Danny. He and I have a special kinship, and as I watch him grow in Christ, I rejoice, and I feel pride - the right kind of pride, that is. This is the man whom God anointed to do great things, to be a witness to our culture, to reach out to the poorest of the poor, and to give hope- new hope, indeed- to the 1 out of 32 Americans today who are either in prison or on probation. What’s the answer to the staggering prison problem in America – more Danny Croces.
Tyndale House Publishers 1999 ( pages 293-294)
Saved to What?
Danny Croce’s “wake-up punch” is the perfect punch line for this book. Not because it’s a heartwarming conversion story – though it is that – but because of what Danny did after his broken life was redeemed. It’s the kind of wake-up punch that contemporary Christians urgently need, as well as an apt metaphor for the theme that will be woven through the rest of this book.
When Danny Croce became a Christian, he embarked on an adventure to change the world. First to be transformed was his own life: He cleaned up his act, got out of prison, got married, settled down into a respectable life, and earned a college degree. But changing his own life wasn’t the end of things for Danny. After his graduation, he didn’t tuck his Wheaton diploma under his arm and head off for the comfortable life that his education might have given him. No, he set out to transform the world he had known. He went back to prison.
And transform he did. The Plymouth County Correctional Facility houses fourteen hundred inmates in twenty-two units, four of which are the “holes”, the dreaded segregation and protective – custody units. In each unit, Danny located an on-fire believer, or else he preached and witnessed until God converted someone. Danny then appointed these men to function as elders to help and lead others; to equip them, he continues to disciple and teach them, giving courses on theology and doctrine, often using seminary-level materials. He also hold weekly Bible studies throughout the prison, assisted by Prison Fellowship volunteers. And every day Danny talks with inmates one-on-one, teaching, encouraging, and helping them with personal problems.
He helps inmates like Peter, who received a letter from his wife telling him she was filing for divorce. Danny prayed with Peter, then drove sixty miles to meet his estranged wife. Many meetings later, Peter and his wife were reconciled, and they are now growing together in Christ.
When God makes us new creations, we are meant to help create a new world around us, and Danny Croce’s work at the Plymouth prison, offers a striking example. Again and again, I have witnessed this kind of transformation within a rotting prison culture and the results are measurable in terms of reduced disciplinary problems and reduced recidivism.