April 29, 2002
Kairos ministry believes time is right
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___BEAUMONT--"Kairos" is a Greek word that describes a time appointed by God for a specific event to take place. Kairos Prison Ministry is built on the belief that the time for many men to meet God is when they are at their lowest, behind steel bars.
___Kairos differs from many prison ministries in that volunteers are not in the prison weekly or even monthly. It is built around a three-day short course in Christianity resembling a lay renewal weekend for churches.
___The prisoners come together and hear the message of Christ's love. But much of the interaction takes place in small-group sharing sessions that continue after the weekend is over.
___Bill McKinley of Calder Baptist Church in Beaumont is one of the volunteers who takes the Kairos ministry to the Stiles Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections.
___"The Stiles Unit is a real bad one," McKinley said. "That's where they send ... a lot of the prisoners who are just bad."
___Yet prison officials report the ministry has changed the spirit of the prison, McKinley said.
___Twice a year, McKinley and a team of 84 others go into the prison to work with 42 inmates. The inmates are chosen from a list provided by the warden in consultation with the chaplain.
___It's not just the model prisoners who are chosen, but often the worst offenders, because they can make the biggest difference in the climate of the unit.
___The changes in the men come as they first hear about Christ's love and then allow Christ to work in their lives.
___"We don't do typical evangelism," McKinley said. "We don't do a lot of talking. Our motto is 'Listen, listen, love, love.' We stay quiet mostly."
___The prisoners keep listening to the preaching and coming back to talk about what they have heard. "At first they don't say much, but after a day or two it starts coming out of them. All the stuff they don't want in their lives anymore," he said. "We're careful in the small groups not to preach and judge, but to just let it come out of them."
___All during the weekend, many other people, primarily women, are outside the prison at a nearby church preparing homemade lunches and dinners and making cookies and providing fresh fruit for snacks.
___The prisoners "don't know how to handle it at first, but then they begin to realize this is love--the love of Christ being lived out in his people," McKinley said.
___While McKinley and his wife are the only ones from Calder to be directly involved in the Kairos ministry, his friends at church do help bake 288 dozen cookies. Those cookies are passed out not just to the 42 inmates involved in the program that week, but every man in the unit.
___The weekend begins on Thursday evening with a time of orientation and continues until Sunday evening. The last session is something special, McKinley said, as various prisoners describe the changes that have been made in their lives.
___"We don't win them all, but we make an eternal difference in many of the men's lives and their families," McKinley said.
___Prison statistics tend to bear that out. The recidivism rate for those who accept Christ is only about 10 percent, far lower than the prison population at large.
___The ministry is national in scope. For more information, see www.kairosprisonministry.org.
___
The Baptist Standard
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
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