Feb 16-19, 2007
The Kairos Prison Ministry Weekend was incredibly awesome. It was an experience that I believe has changed the course of my life, but not just in terms of how I think of prison and inmates. More than that, I am not the same person I was last Friday before I went into the United States Penitentiary at Lompoc. I experienced the Holy Spirit in a new way that I will forever change my spirituality.
The power of the weekend is evident in the fact that not a day has gone by without some memory of the weekend bringing me to tears. Perhaps the most succinct way of expressing what took place is that I came to the weekend expecting to find hardened criminals, and I found human beings instead - not choirboys, not victims of society, but men, men with feelings, regrets, hopes and dreams. Men who admitted to making bad choices and doing bad things, but who found God's unconditional love and forgiveness in the Kairos experience. The presence of the Holy Spirit could not have been more evident if doves or tongues of fire had descended upon all of the men present.
I saw nothing but honesty in the inmates and the presenting team. The honesty was raw, painful, refreshing and wonderful - but it was always real and vulnerable.
Before I gave my presentation to the men, three inmates who had previously experienced the Kairos weekend prayed over me. They prayed with an incredible vitality and beauty that can only come from those who are filled with the Holy Spirit. Here I was in a closed room with three men: a white man many people would describe as a skinhead, a Latino many people would describe as a gangbanger and a black man who has been in prison for more than 20 years, and I never felt safer and closer to God than I was when I was in their hands.
I would have to write a book to tell you about the experiences of the inmates and the team, but let me just tell you two of them. At one point, one of the men in my small group was looking at the hundreds of prayer shields, and saw that someone had written "God has forgiven you for everything you have ever done" on the back of the shield. He asked one of the team "Is that true?" and broke down in tears when the team member told him "Yes." Another time, everyone was working in small groups, and one of the inmates told me to look around the room, and told me that everyone was smiling. He told me, "Look how happy everyone is."
The Kairos Weekend was essentially a crash course in Christianity. Now the inmates are facing the hardest part: going forward in their faith, living it every day - the same challenge you and I face every day. Praise God for Kairos!
- Tom Halliwell