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Central Ohio Emmaus Community |
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Central Ohio Emmaus Community |
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Do volunteer faith-based initiatives make a difference? |
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On February 9, 2007, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitations and
Corrections together with the Ohio Institute on Correctional Best Practices in
London Ohio and the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State University
held a one day symposium on “Faith-Based Programming, Reentry and Recidivism”.
The question being answered was, “Do volunteer faith-based initiatives make a
difference in the rehabilitation and reduction of repeat offenses in the state
prison system?”
Kairos Prison Ministry International (one of the faith-based initiatives in Ohio) does exactly that over a 4 day weekend in ten prisons in the State of Ohio reaching over 800 prisoners a year. The success has been so dramatic that five additional prisons have asked to have Kairos Prison Ministry come into their institutions as well, but there are just not enough volunteers to meet this demand. Kairos is an international prison ministry that brings the message of Christian love and forgiveness to those incarcerated in prison and to their families. So what happens on a Kairos weekend anyway? First of all, there are plenty of cookies and good food, in some cases over 300,000 home baked cookies on a single weekend. This attracts 42 institution residents for each weekend. During the weekend they hear presentations about making choices, changing lifestyles, and accepting Christ as their Lord and Savior. But does it do any good? I can only relate some of my own personal observations. On one weekend the leader of a white supremacy gang decided to “try out the cookies and food”. Everyone knew that he was too strong to be broken down by this Christian stuff. Well, by the end of the weekend he had accepted Jesus. When his gang members found out, well let’s just say that the prison administration moved him to a new prison where his safety was more secure. What’s he doing now you might ask? Well he is writing daily devotional articles for a monthly publication which gets distributed to all the prisons in Ohio and some adjacent states called “Prisoner to Prisoner”. But that is not the end of the story. That white supremacy gang, they elected a new leader, one who was even more hate filled than the original. Sure, he decided to come on one of these weekends, just to disrupt and disturb. We sat him right across the table from a leader of a black gang. That was an interesting weekend! You would not believe the amount of prayer that weekend. At the closing on Sunday Evening, weekend participants get a chance to tell about their weekend and what they intend to do with what they had learned in front of several hundred inmates and outside visitors. The leader of the black gang got up to the podium, turned toward his white supremacy enemy and asked for forgiveness for his prejudice attitude toward him all weekend. The formerly hate filled white gang leader stood up, walked over to his brother and gave him a hug in front of everyone. Human power and even the noblest motives of a human could not have effected such healing. It is clear to me that the Holy Spirit is at work on every Kairos weekend. Is your life in need of a little God Powered excitement? The need is there for new volunteers. If you have been thinking about serving our Lord in this way, you can obtain information about this Ecumenical Christian Prison Outreach Ministry called Kairos by sending a request for information to: David Dickinson |
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© 2008 Central Ohio Emmaus Community |