About the Staff
Converge Heartland Director of Jail Ministries
Dr. Greg Friesner - Chaplain
,r My name is Greg Friesner and I spent the first 46 years of my life knowing about God while striving for and blazing my own path in life. Fortunately God was not satisfied with my knowledge of Him but desired a deeper relationship with me. God dramatically transformed my life in 2007. I had known Jesus Christ as my Saviour since the age of four but September 1, 2007 Jesus became Lord of my life. This revelation changed my life. He began to refine me and gave me a desire to serve rather than being a passive participant sitting in the pew at church.
God has blessed me with a strong gift of mercy and I sensed early on in my calling that God’s instruction to me was to “take care of my people”. I have been a Chiropractor since 1985. Taking care of people was nothing new to me but now he was asking me to go a step further. Now I was to continue to take care of people’s physical well-being but also care about their spiritual well-being. Rather than doing Christianity I was being a Christian.
My path to jail ministry began in 2009 when I met Chaplain Bruce Anderson as a patient at my office. Bruce’s wife Alice had recently had a significant stroke and, though they attended a different church then me, they were on our prayer chain and I had been praying for them. We had an instant connection and as time went by Bruce asked me to join his team as a Bible study leader. In 2012, I felt God calling me to accept both the call to jail ministry and to Sioux Falls Seminary which I graduated from in 2016 with Masters of Divinity. This meant that I began to step away from my perceived security of being a full time Chiropractor and begin to trust God to supply my needs.
As time went by God continued to guide me and after almost five years God has opened the door for me to take over the leadership of the Grace team, our team of dedicated volunteers that serve the inmates and staff at the Minnehaha County Jail. It still amazes me that God lets an ordinary person like me participate in such an extraordinary ministry. God is blessing our ministry and I would invite anyone that has interest in jail ministry to contact me.
God has blessed me with a strong gift of mercy and I sensed early on in my calling that God’s instruction to me was to “take care of my people”. I have been a Chiropractor since 1985. Taking care of people was nothing new to me but now he was asking me to go a step further. Now I was to continue to take care of people’s physical well-being but also care about their spiritual well-being. Rather than doing Christianity I was being a Christian.
My path to jail ministry began in 2009 when I met Chaplain Bruce Anderson as a patient at my office. Bruce’s wife Alice had recently had a significant stroke and, though they attended a different church then me, they were on our prayer chain and I had been praying for them. We had an instant connection and as time went by Bruce asked me to join his team as a Bible study leader. In 2012, I felt God calling me to accept both the call to jail ministry and to Sioux Falls Seminary which I graduated from in 2016 with Masters of Divinity. This meant that I began to step away from my perceived security of being a full time Chiropractor and begin to trust God to supply my needs.
As time went by God continued to guide me and after almost five years God has opened the door for me to take over the leadership of the Grace team, our team of dedicated volunteers that serve the inmates and staff at the Minnehaha County Jail. It still amazes me that God lets an ordinary person like me participate in such an extraordinary ministry. God is blessing our ministry and I would invite anyone that has interest in jail ministry to contact me.
