Death Row minister Chitoka Webb finds comfort and ease in life experiences, through religious leadership, and health.
Webb, 48, is a Presbyterian minister and chaplain intern who volunteers on California’s Death Row. She frequently has thoughts about life and death in her capacity as non-judgmental minister, according to the Marin Independent Journal.
In 2005 Webb lost her eyesight for about six months due to Behcet’s disease. Webb mentioned that one day while at work she looked down at her computer keyboard and then looked up as someone entered the room, and she could not see them.
“God, I can’t do this,” said Webb, but she remembered God telling her, she can do this.
She believes she has become a “better friend of death by becoming a better friend to people.”
In the report, Webb noted that if you looked at her, you could not tell what she has been through. She faced another challenge when she was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease. Today, Webb awaits a liver transplant.
Webb told the IJ she been involved with the Nashville Juvenile Justice Center but had never worked with people sentenced to death. Ministering to those on Death Row has been an experience where she has learned compassion. Webb also said that if you want to change anything, you must get involved.
She received a letter from a person incarcerated on Death Row. He told her he had received additional time on the exercise yard, which resulted in blisters on his feet.
He wrote to her, “… having blisters on my feet is a good problem to have.” Webb was moved through compassion by this man’s words.
The minister says her belief has always been a part of her life; faith appears not when she wants it to, but when she needs it. “Faith has not failed me yet,” she said.
Webb wrote a memoir entitled “Something Inside of Me: How to Hang On To Heaven When You’re Going Through Hell.” In the memoir Webb shares a life of growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lived in poverty.
Webb moved to Marin City from Iowa three years ago to further her education by obtaining a Master’s Degree of divinity at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, which she received earlier this year.
Her studies at Shaw Chaplaincy Institute have her spending time at Christ Presbyterian Church in Terra Linda, at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin City, and as a counselor for the San Francisco Night Ministry.
Webb said that she did not always care for ministers because of the examples she saw. Therefore, early on she deterred from becoming a minister. She said that she disliked how people were told that certain people will go to heaven while others will not.
Before going to seminary school, Webb became a successful businesswoman and was given a book deal, along with a tour. But she could no longer run from her calling of becoming a preacher.
Webb also said that her motivation to help people was deepened by her experience of facing her own death. A person halts their visualization of life through their own eyes by learning to notice things through other’s eyes. A different lens enables a person to view life differently, she said.
