Faith
Mark Stark, 4-21-24
The Kairos Weekend Retreat
This 3 ½ day retreat was presented as part of an international Christian ministry, called Kairos Prison Ministry. It was held inside Columbia Correctional Institution Annex, a high security Florida State prison, housing over 1000 convicted felons, including people with life sentences for murder. 26 volunteers from the outside teamed with 8 inmate volunteers to present a pastoral and discipling retreat for 30 inmates. This includes over 30 hours of teaching and fellowship, from Thursday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.
The inmate participants arrive with a range of spiritual conditions, from neutral or hostile nonbelievers, to those that know about Jesus but aren’t living as followers, to those who have walked closely with God for years. The retreat consists of a series of talks and meditations that tell the men about Jesus and lead them to assess their spiritual state. We explain how sin separates us from God, about God’s unconditional love is expressed in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and how we need a personal relationship with God through repentance and acceptance of Jesus, in order to have an eternal relationship with God. There is also instruction about the important parts of life as a follower of Christ, including prayer, Christian fellowship, Bible study, and sharing God’s love with others. The participants sit in small “family” groups, where they discuss and process the talks.
There is a lot of singing, sharing of meals, and fellowship, where we try to be living demonstrations of God’s unconditional love or “Agape”. Other symbols of Agape are shared during the weekend, including lots of cookies and good coffee, and a special BBQ meal. Visual signs of Agape include handmade posters and prayer chains collected from Christians outside of prison. These are used to decorate the meeting room, which transforms the bleak prison environment into a celebration, and gives the men a visible demonstration that they are part of God’s family, and that people outside care about them and are praying for them
The weekend is usually a “mountaintop high” experience. Our goal is that this renewed spirit and energy will lead many of the men to participate in weekly “Prayer and Share” groups, that will help to establish and grow a community of Christians inside prison.
Effects on my personal spiritual walk
I was asked to be the leader of this Kairos Weekend. This job is a somewhat overwhelming task that includes responsibilities of recruiting and training a team of volunteers, assigning roles and talks, planning training and team building activities, guiding the team’s spiritual development, working with the prison to arrange facilities and security, organizing supplies and logistics, and setting up lodging and meals for the team. During the actual weekend, the leader serves as the moderator, and delivers a series of introduction, transition, and summary talks. I am a good organizer, but I am a quiet introvert. Thinking about how this job would require me to be calling and speaking to lots of individual people, and then speaking to large groups, created a high level of anxiety for me, as I felt totally inadequate to fill the role. I also had uncertainties about the responsibility of guiding the team building and spiritual development of a volunteer group that included many mature Christians, some with 20+ years of experience in this prison ministry. As I thought about this job in the fall of 2023, my anxiety actually triggered an episode of an abnormal fast heart rhythm.
So I really didn’t want to do this job! But I have been trying to learn to trust and obey God. I carry some cards with Bible verses which I meditate on. One of the verses is Isaiah 6:8 – “And then I heard the voice of the Lord saying ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said ‘Here I am Lord, send me.’ “ My wife and I have a personal guideline that we will say “Yes” when those with authority in our church or ministries ask us to serve. So, I decided I needed to say “Yes” to lead the Kairos Weekend.
Because I did not have the natural abilities for the role, I asked God to use the Holy Spirit to help me. I prayed the promise of Psalm 29:11 “The Lord will give strength to His people. The Lord will bless His people with peace.” And I decided I would step out in faith that God would provide whatever I needed to accomplish this role. In short, God did provide the peace, strength, wisdom, words and courage I needed, and our Kairos Weekend was successfully completed.
There were other answered prayers related to my physical condition. I have a weak voice, and usually develop hoarseness and cough if I do a lot of speaking. I have some variable double vision that makes it hard for me to speak from a podium and glance at the text of a speech while trying to maintain eye contact with the audience. So I was concerned about the parts of this job that would require lots of speaking during training meetings and the weekend itself. I prayed that God would provide ways to overcome these issues, and found that my voice remained strong all weekend (despite lots of singing!) and that my double vision was minimal during my public speaking role.
This experience of watching God fulfill my needs, answer my prayers, and use me as a tool to accomplish His work has helped me to be more faithful in trusting and obeying God.
Utility of the Intensive Retreat Format to facilitate evangelism and discipleship
My role as leader gave me a better understanding of the principles and methods that the Kairos intensive retreat format uses to facilitate friendship evangelism and discipleship. Friendship evangelism (Make a friend – Be a friend – Bring a friend to Christ) usually requires time and multiple interpersonal interactions, which are required to develop the trust and level of comfort that would allow spiritual conversations. The friend needs to know that I am “real” and that I “walk my talk”. It is hard to do this with men in prison, because access is limited and brief, and it is hard to develop relationships over time. The weekend retreat format allows for a sort of time-compressed friendship evangelism. After our team is there for about 8 -12 hours, the inmates begin to really understand that we really are there just to share God’s love. They begin to trust and be open with us. With the usual pattern of human interactions, this level of comfort and trust would usually take weeks to develop, but the intensive retreat format helps this happen more quickly. Once there is a level of comfort and trust, it seems the participants are open to talk about spiritual ideas, including the gospel message and ideas about Christian discipleship.
Development of community in prison
The goal of Kairos is to facilitate the development of small “Prayer and Share” groups of inmates that meet on a regular basis. These groups help the inmates become Christ to one another, and to grow in faith, courage, and hope as they support and care for one another. Participation in a group like this, and being open or vulnerable in any way, is not a usual part of life in prison. To join a group like this means you are admitting a need for fellowship and support. This is a foreign concept in prison, and will be seen as a sign of weakness. Prison populations are made up of takers (“hawks”) and the taken-from (“prey”). The hawks watch the rest of the population for signs of weakness. When they spot it, they descend on the prey. If the target person has money, they ask for it. Or they may seek services … “make my bed,” “sweep the floor for me,” “iron my clothes” , or the services they demand may be sexual. If they are denied, the services are taken anyway by force.
The Kairos weekend program is designed to break down these barriers to vulnerability and fellowship, and to help the participants recognize the need for, and the possibility of Christian fellowship in prison, despite the challenges and difficulties it may bring.
The weekend is a “bath” in God’s love, expressed by the team members and the expressions of Agape (posters/chains) from the Church. The participants are seated with a family of the same 9 men for the entire weekend, which helps them become comfortable enough to open up to that group. During the talks of the program, the team speakers are open and vulnerable as they share the challenges and failures they have had in their Christian walk. The intensive Kairos weekend experience typically leads the inmate participants to become comfortable enough to be open and vulnerable with their family table. They share their worries, failures and concerns. Men openly cry, who would never do so in the prison population.
So through this intensive retreat format, and the design of the weekend program, the participants actually experience some of the benefits and joy of Christian fellowship. They see that community is possible with other inmates, and realize this type of community is God’s desire for us.. Typically, by the end of the weekend, the participants are wanting to find a way to continue the fellowship and support they experienced during the weekend, and they are anticipating the possibility of ongoing fellowship with some excitement. A week later, our team returns to do a 6 hour program, where the men are instructed and practice ways to do a “Prayer and Share” fellowship group with other inmates.
Effect of the weekend on an individual participant
At the end of Kairos weekends, most participants express their need and plans to change their lives through a closer friendship with God. Sometimes, a person decides to trust Jesus for the first time. Always, there are men who are invigorated and strengthened in their Christian walk through the “mountain-top” experience of the weekend.
At our Kairos Weekend #37, a participant named Jose spoke at the open mike time of the final session. He was from Mexico and English was not his first language. He said that he was grateful to God for the love and fellowship he had experienced at Kairos. He didn’t realize how much he needed this, and found it hard to believe this was possible in prison. He said he had grown up going to mass and repeating formal prayers at church, but he was happy that he had learned about a new way to have a friendship with God, through the Kairos weekend talks and family discussions. He said that by listening to others pray, he had learned new ways to talk with God, and he was excited about this. He was committed to finding a way to continue the Christian fellowship with God and others, that he had experienced during the Kairos weekend.
Closing and invitation
For me personally, I find these weekends great because they always give me a real sense of the presence of God, and the work of the Holy Spirit. Serving in this ministry is not in my natural comfort zone, and I am not a very gifted communicator, so I must rely of God to give me the words and strength needed to be a part of the team. This always make me feel close to God. We end the retreat with everyone holding hands in a big circle around the room. We say the Lord’s Prayer, and sing the song “Surely the Presence of God is in this Place”. And when I look around and feel brotherhood with these men who are different in so many ways than me, it always makes me tear up, and think that this is a foretaste of the fellowship we will find in heaven.
I got involved with Kairos as a way to try to be obedient and grow as a follower of Christ, after reading what Jesus said about visiting prisoners in Matthew 25. I have stayed involved because of the positive effects I have watched in these men’s hearts and minds, and how it has helped me grow as a Christian. If you have ever experienced a similar call to action, we could use more team members. You don’t have to be skilled, or knowledgeable, or outgoing. You just have to be willing to trust God, and to be available. I would be glad to meet with anyone and answer any questions you have about how it works.
Mark Stark Is a recently retired physician at Mayo Clinic and a member of Mercy Hill Baptist Church. [email protected] M 904-333-8196 Amelia Island, FL
More info on Kairos: https://www.kairosprisonministry.org/
