Chris Hoke: Gangs, Prisoners, and the Value of Embrace and Trust

Radix board member Ryan Pemberton recently interviewed Chris Hoke on his work with and alongside incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women. Chris Hoke is the cofounder and executive director of Underground Ministries, which mobilizes faith communities and businesses across the Pacific Northwest into relationships of mutual spiritual transformation with men and women released from prison. He is the creator of the “One Parish One Prisoner” model and movement that empowers churches to draw closer to the tombs of America’s mass incarceration system through relationship with one releasing individual, rolling away the heavy reentry barriers that keep millions of Americans shut out of our communities. Based in his years as a jail chaplain and pastor among gang members in Washington’s Skagit Valley, Chris Hoke created Underground Coffee with a former meth cook and a local coffee roaster, which led to networks of more Underground Employers in multiple industries who hire individuals leaving prison and addiction, putting the street’s “transferrable skills” to productive work in our communities today. He is the author of WANTED: A Spiritual Pursuit Through Jail, Among Outlaws and Across Borders (HarperOne), and lives with his wife and two small boys in Mount Vernon, WA. This is the first interview of a two-part series.