Perhaps you have agreed to serve as a Christian Science worker in a prison. How can you prepare for the assignment? If you are experienced in branch church work, have had class instruction, and have healed yourself and others, you have actually been preparing for institutional work for some time.
By far the most important aspect of the work is prayer—prayer that acknowledges the power of God and His Christ and denies a presence apart from God. This impersonal prayer for the institution is even more vital than such essential duties as holding personal interviews and church services. It is the very basis of success.
Through prayer the worker learns to view the entire institution spiritually instead of materially. Some of the false beliefs that may need consistent refutation are scholastic theology, medical domination, psychology, occultism, immorality, lust, prejudice, and resistance to the truth. One should never accept the common belief that staff members are mortals who can be negligent, indifferent, careless, or apathetic. Nor should one accept the general belief that the prison is just one of the sordid facts of life, a God-forsaken place, and that the inmates are criminals and losers. All these erroneous beliefs can be firmly replaced with the facts of Science, which reveal man and the universe as they are in truth—spiritual, perfect, complete, and harmonious. Each staff member and each inmate can be seen as the spiritual idea of God, expressing His thoughts and qualities and nothing else.
