In 1979, with the help of the Billy Graham Ministry, The Encounter began as a prison ministry with a simple calling: carry the Good News of Jesus Christ onto Florida's prison yards. Forty-seven years later, that calling hasn't changed, but the ways we answer it have grown.

The yard crusades opened the door. In 2007 we began meeting men and women at the gate on release day with clothing, shelter and food. In 2010 we started mentoring and teaching inside Marion and Tomoka Correctional Institutions. In 2019 we put the Florida GPS-Book into more than 10,000 hands. It is a guide to reentry resources in all 67 counties.

Today our commercial kitchen feeds 2,000 meals monthly to those in our community suffering from food insecurity, including the homeless, through freeze-dried food production.

Now we are looking to build the Encounter Community Restoration Campus: three acres where a Market Place, housing, workforce training and faith come together in one place. No one reentering society or facing homelessness, and no family in need, should have to begin that journey alone.

Everything we do flows from the two greatest commandments and the Great Commission.

LOVE GOD • LOVE PEOPLE • MAKE DISCIPLES

Our Mission

Our mission is to sow God's Word throughout our community, including among the incarcerated and homeless, and to help restore those affected by crime and incarceration. It is founded on the biblical conviction that all people are created in God's image and that no life is beyond God's reach. (Genesis 1:27)

Restoration. Our restorative approach recognizes the God-given dignity and potential of every person, so that through Christ individual lives can be restored and made to flourish.

Reentry. Through a Christian approach to reentry, those who once broke the law are transformed and mobilized to serve their neighbors, and the cycle of crime is replaced by a transformed life.