“I was in prison, and you visited me.” – Matt. 25:36
 
Twice a year, in the gym of Phillips State Prison in Buford, Ga., the love of Christ pours out on more than 50 inmates selected to be in a long weekend retreat called the Kairos Prison Ministry.
 
Kairos is an international ministry in nearly 500 prisons in nine countries – but mostly in the United States, which holds the record for per capita prison populations. The lay Outsiders who have come to Phillips State Prison are from scores of churches of various denominations in the Atlanta area, including three men from Holy Trinity Parish, my home church here in Decatur.
 
Ron Stein, until the Covid pandemic, was involved in the follow-up program that brings monthly visits to maintain the Kairos community of prayer and fellowship after the inmates’ three-and-a-half day weekend. Pete Pfeiffer has been involved in Kairos for 25 years, starting at Lee State Prison when he was at First United Methodist Church in Cordele, Ga. Since coming to HTP, he has continued to be involved and he talks about it in adult Sunday school. The third HTP member, Tim Ball, who was inspired to join by hearing from Pete in Sunday School, has been involved in the long weekends at Phillips State Prison.
 
It’s an exhausting experience that Tim, at 77, is taking a break from now. He says the prayers, singing and small table discussions “about life” and its choices are a powerful release for incarcerated people. “Working in a prison where men had not been able to speak their minds and talk to anybody else, it’s just a wonderful experience,” Ball said.
 
The ministry is designed to maximize the experience of Christian forgiveness, community and release. It grew out of an older movement called Cursillo, or “short course” in the faith, which began with Catholics in Spain in 1948. In 1979, men of the “Fourth Day” (living into the commitments of their three-day Cursillo weekend) created a prison-appropriate version of a Cursillo weekend, which became the Kairos ministry. (“Kairos” means God’s moment, or “the fullness of time,” in the Greek New Testament.)
 
Kairos has various forms, for women and youth as well as men, and for one-on-one as well as the long weekends. One former inmate named Richard Jones, a friend in our previous church, Grace Episcopal in Lexington, Va., said his Kairos weekend was the best experience of his life. He remembers especially the Saturday evening when he received bags of encouraging letters and cards from people “who didn’t know me from a bucket of paint.”
 
“There’s so much love, you could cut it with a butter knife,” he said.
 
Ron Stein had always been curious about how prisoners survived. But curiosity changed to real relationships once he got involved, even though it remains “in the moment” without reference to the past or future. “I don’t just go for myself,” he said. “Some of these guys, their families have given up on them. They have no one else. . . I realized, we’re the only people who care about them.