Kairos Prison Ministry International, Inc. (Kairos) is a lay-led, interdenominational Christian ministry in which men and women volunteers bring Christ’s love and forgiveness to prisoners and their families. During the initial Kairos weekend, Kairos volunteers serve as God’s instrument through which His love, grace and mercy are expressed to the participants/guests in a real and profound way. God begins changing hearts.

Following their weekend experience, participants/guests are encouraged to take responsibility for their life choices and their relations with God; they are invited to engage in small accountability groups. 

There are two Greek words for time. One of them, with which we are all familiar, is “kronos,” meaning linear time … clock or calendar time. The other is “kairos,” used in the sense of a time set by God for a particular occurrence. “Kairos” is considered “God’s Time” and was found to be a word of very special significance in the environment of the correctional institution where the word “time” is what all the residents are doing.

Since Kairos came to Ohio, hundreds of residents have participated in the 3-day Kairos weekends. Kairos is now in 25 Ohio institutions.

St. Andrew’s parishioner Pat L. will serve on Kairos Weekend #50 at the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW) March 28-31, taking the love of Christ to 42 women who will be participating on the weekend. Kairos is a community effort, and your help is needed.

Here’s how you can participate …

Be a Prayer Partner
The team need your prayers now, and is hoping to cover the entire weekend in prayer for the participants to know the love of Jesus Christ. Pat will be soliciting many of you to volunteer to pray for specific time slots. The team will create a paper chain with each prayer pledge written on a link so that the women will have a visual of how much and how long and how wide they are truly loved.

Be a Support Volunteer
Each Kairos weekend has opportunities for outside support, such as writing letters of support, or preparing posters. Pat is looking for folks to help decorate the following with washable markers or colored pencils:

• Posters that are uplifting and all about the love of Jesus for the women participating. They will need enough to fill the walls of a large community room.
• Placemats for possibly 100 people each for nine meals.
• About 44 letters/cards written and decorated from each volunteer. (Pat will do the writing, but needs help with the decorating.)
• Lunch size paper bags decorated.

Be a Ministry Financial Booster
Each Kairos team is expected to raise funds for the entire weekend. The major expense is food, of course, for that many people for three and a half days. Since the new rules are absolutely no homemade foods to enter the prison, the team must contract with the same company that already has the food contract for the prison. There will be a meeting soon with the exact amount it will cost. What is known at this point is to expect it to cost more than when team members cooked the food themselves, as was done in the past. Pat will be happy to accept anything you can offer. Checks can be made out to Kairos with Kairos #50 ORW in the memo line. They may be given directly to Pat, or placed in the Offering Basket at church.