Kairos Prison Ministry: One Wall, One Heart at a Time

Have you ever been asked to do something really hard -- something that in your wildest dreams you'd never say "yes" to? Think Moses and his marching orders from the burning bush, or Paul on the road to Tarsus, or the angel's drop-in visit with Mary.

Each was asked to do something which, on its face, sounded impossible or implausible. But despite their deep doubts, they were obedient. I've never received an assignment as tough as those, but I was mightily challenged more than a decade ago by a friend who asked me to join him for a four-day program with prisoners at Nottoway Correctional Center in Burkeville, a state prison halfway between Richmond and Lynchburg.

The program, Kairos Prison Ministry, is an ecumenical, grassroots effort that invites men and women in the nation's prisons to examine their faith lives. It's also meant to help in the transition to becoming productive citizens.

In Virginia, Kairos currently serves eight men's prisons and three facilities for women. Though we come from different Christian denominations and perspectives, we find common ground inside the prison walls as we seek to follow Jesus' mandate to "love one another as I have loved you."

Despite my initial hesitation to try to include prisoners in that "one another" part, my friend reassured me, "You'll get a lot more out of this than you can ever put in." Today, after participating in about 10 programs since the late 1990s, I can attest to the truth of his prediction. What's harder to convey is the miraculous way in which God uses Kairos to transform people's lives, not only at Nottoway, but around the nation.

The beauty of Kairos is its simplicity and its effectiveness. Volunteers really need only practice one thing: to "listen, listen," and to "love, love." From Thursday night to the weekend program's closing service on Sunday evening, we do a lot more listening than talking -- though we do present more than a dozen talks.

The first one, known as the "choices talk," asks participants to consider the choices -- for good and ill -- we all make in our lives. Obviously, most of the men are incarcerated because they've made some very bad choices. So it makes sense to begin by asking them to own up to those choices, and then, later in the weekend, to consider choosing to seek God's forgiveness.

We don't seek to inspire easy "jailhouse conversions," by the way, and volunteers must adhere to strict standards designed to avoid getting involved in prisoner's legal issues or private lives. Participants freely choose to sign up for the program, and are always free to leave.

We are not there to judge (they've already received plenty of judgment). We're not there to debate the Scripture (such debates might drive people apart -- and not just inside of prison). We don't ask about crimes. We don't look back. Instead, we seek to live in God's eternal moment (Kairos is Greek for "God's special time," or put another way, "in the fullness of time.")

By focusing on giving and receiving forgiveness, we seek to remind our new friends that forgiveness is not only possible, but crucial in restoring a relationship with their Creator.

To illustrate the point, Kairos volunteers share our own stories of falling, and rising, with God's help. As prisoners get to know us as flawed, but caring, human beings, they begin to open up the doors of their hearts to receive God's "agape" (selfless) love.

Why do this? I can only speak for myself when I say it's based on my reading of Matthew 25:36, in which Jesus says, "I was in prison and you visited me."

Honestly, when my friend first invited me to enter prison, my initial reaction was, "Thanks, but no thanks."

Prison ministry sounded fine and dandy, but it wasn't for me, nosirree Bob. Funny how God works, though. No matter how often I denied it -- like Peter after his friend Jesus was arrested and the cock crowed twice -- I couldn't escape the truth of his words and example. Visit the poor, the hungry, and the sick, but don't forget those souls locked up in prison.

Yet, I recoiled at my first sight of the big rolls of barbed wire encircling Nottoway. I gulped when I approached the guard for the required pat-down search, and then was lined up to enter the prison. I flinched at the ominous sound of the sally port door sliding shut. My mind played reruns of movies and cable shows about riots, shivs, and violence.

Following the sidewalk that runs parallel to the prisoners' cramped living quarters -- the pods -- I wondered about the men living here day and night. What were they thinking about the nervous passersby?

The answers always come, but rarely in ways we expect, and definitely not according to our detailed plans and schedules.

After we first meet on Thursday evening, we return early Friday morning for three consecutive days of intensive 12-hour meetings. Only as we begin to know each other -- sitting in small groups around assigned tables named for the saints -- do the men begin to drop their guard a bit. Slowly, as the trust builds, some begin to knock down the protective emotional walls they maintain to survive in the tough prison environment.

But those same walls too often keep them from accepting the possibility -- lived out by an earlier prisoner who was busted for fomenting religious unrest -- that they can be forgiven and redeemed.

Along the way, we try to make the experience personal and fun -- whether it's singing together or bringing in thousands of chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies. The cookies are all homemade -- yet another sign that someone cared enough about these guys to bake real cookies. We also bring in posters and placemats made by kids at churches around Virginia.

"They made these for us?" is a common question. "Why?"

Even prisoners who profess other religious faiths, or no faith at all, can't help but be touched by the sure knowledge that kids, wives, grandparents, all sorts of other people on the outside have sent along their cookies and posters to underscore Kairos' message of love to the men inside.

This becomes all the more powerful for the men I've met who quite often have had no visitors in 10, 20, or even 30 years. This grassroots effort -- which has been credited by prison authorities for lowering the number of violent crimes inside the institutions -- needs many more volunteers. If you are at all interested in helping out, you can email the Kairos volunteer coordinators at . And you can learn more at the Kairos of Virginia web site at http://kairosvacom.homestead.com.

If you're like me, wondering whether you should serve inside a prison, please consider the words of one of the men I met at last May's Kairos -- the 24th held at Nottoway. The visually-impaired gentleman took the podium to declare, "I've been in here 30 years and I never knew there was this much love out in the world."

He seemed to look past us -- and on past the prison walls, the security cameras, guards, and barbed wire. In that moment -- in God's special time -- I sensed he was looking into the face of Jesus.

Chip Jones is a writer and teacher who worships at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond. Contact him at http://www.redwhiteoryellow.com.