That’s what the 40-year-old ex-convict used to think, anyway. When he first turned to God in the early 2000s, life seemed to get worse: prison, divorce, his sister died and more. But today Lang knows his perils were a kind of blessing.

“The pain happened so God could accomplish his purpose in me,” said Lang, the new Program Coordinator at Freedomworks, a post-prison outreach ministry in Minneapolis. “I couldn’t do the ministry I am doing today if I hadn’t lived through everything I have.”

Lang lives at Freedomworks’ North Minneapolis facility, which includes an office and eight apartments. He ministers to former offenders who live there and to men imprisoned at Minnesota correctional facilities.

Such men take Lang’s message seriously because he has street credibility: He used to be a millionaire bar owner and drug dealer with plans to murder his enemies. Enemies he now prays for.


Thug life
Lang grew up a marauding deviant on the west side of St. Paul. He was the youngest of six siblings whose parents were rarely home.

Lang fended for himself. As a boy he earned money by selling stolen bicycles, TVs and other valuables. Violence was an everyday part of neighborhood life. So were drugs, a trade in which Lang became a major player. Cocaine possession landed him in prison for three years in the early 1990s.

He got out of prison when he was 26 and cleaned up his act. He became a husband, father and prominent printing manager responsible for 90 employees. The good life lasted nearly a decade.

He returned to trouble in 2001 after buying a St. Paul bar known for backroom drug deals. Lang started the venture with good intentions; he had wanted to own a respectable business for years. He drove out the drug dealers—people he knew and grew up with—and made the place more dignified.

But a year later a shooting occurred in the bar involving a gang member who got in. Four people were injured, including Lang’s brother, Tom, who worked as the bar’s night manager. State officials shut down the bar for months. By the time it reopened in 2003, Lang was financially drained and trouble followed.

“To finance the bar I started doing criminal things and fell back into my old ways,” Lang said. “I made one phone call and was selling drugs again. I wiped out all the other neighborhood dealers in no time.”

The dealers—all gang members—weren’t happy, and not just because Lang was taking their profits. They were on edge because police were pressuring Tom to testify against the gang member who shot him.

“If my brother would have testified, the gang members would have killed him,” Lang said.

Police decided to get to Tom by implicating Lang. They pulled Lang over and found a gun in his truck that Lang swears belonged to his brother.

“It didn’t matter that the gun wasn’t mine,” Lang said. “It was in my truck and I was the only person inside. I couldn’t have a gun because of my past felony.”

Police gave Lang two choices: have Tom testify or be charged with a felony that would likely put him in prison.

“If I didn’t take prison, Tom was dead,” Lang said, adding that gang members sent him a message by blowing up his truck while he was roasting marshmallows with his kids in his backyard. “I had gangs coming at me, the city and police coming at me, and my brother’s life was on the line. Every weight you could think of was on me.”

Lang, choosing to keep his brother safe, took on the law and pleaded innocent to felony firearm possession. A trial followed.

It took jurors three days to deliberate. Twenty minutes before they finally announced Lang’s fate, he prayed his first prayer in years: “God, do whatever you think is best for me, because I can’t live like this anymore.”

The jury’s verdict: 5 years behind bars. Lang’s walk with God had begun.


More trials
For the next few years Lang experienced many more trials. But they weren’t the kind held before a jury. Just under a year into his prison sentence, Lang thanked God that his wife had stuck with him. It was his second prayer since the trial.

“Two days later my wife said it was over,” Lang said, adding that she had given birth to their fourth child just before he was imprisoned. “My whole life had fallen apart.”

He prayed again one month later, when he thanked God for his sister, the only person left who cared about him.

“A few days later she died of a cerebral aneurism,” Lang said. “She was an accountant and died while doing the books for my bar, working on her own time.”

The bar eventually vanished, too. Lang’s wife took it when she separated from him. Every penny of the $1 million-plus the couple was worth transferred to her, a judge decided.

The hits kept coming. In July 2004 Lang was sent to solitary confinement for 10 days. During his second day, he received a letter saying his cousin was having an affair with his wife.

He was utterly alone, dwelling in the lifeless and ringing silence of the “hole.” He could be dead and not one person would care, he thought.

“I fell to my knees and cried out, ‘God, I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t do it.’”

Weeping, Lang shut his eyes and asked God to come into his life. Then he fell into a deep sleep.


New life
Lang awoke reborn. When he opened his eyes it was “the most peaceful moment of my life,” he said.

Soon after, a female corrections officer came to his door with a Christian book called “Praise Works.” The next day she gave him a Bible.

“That was about my first real introduction to God,” Lang said. “I went to a Catholic church as a kid, but never understood the gift of Jesus. All I knew was there was a creator, and that was it.”

He read the Bible all through his days in solitary confinement.

“God poured a ton into me during those days,” Lang said. “I was at peace.”

Lang walked with God for the rest of his sentence. His newfound faith started to demolish his plans of killing the people who’d wronged him.

“My spirit began driving me the right way,” Lang recalled. “It’s incredible how I could go from that much anger to praying for my enemies today.”

He eventually connected with Freedomworks during an 18-month faith-based program. He was released from prison for good behavior in April 2006. After four months at a halfway house, Freedomworks accepted him as a program participant. He’s lived at the Freedomworks facility ever since, and now works in Plymouth as a machine operator at Lundell Manufacturing.

He moonlights as Freedomworks’ Program Coordinator, a position he took in September 2007. His job entails keeping the facility in check and coordinating faith-based outreach programs for men who have walked in his very shoes.

“I can’t tell you how rewarding it is for me to see God’s hand in people’s lives,” Lang said. “I don’t really have anything anymore, but I know I have my relationship with God. I can’t put a price on that.”

*Story as told by George Lang. The name of his brother was changed.


ACTION POINT:
For more information about Freedomworks visit www.fwppo.org.