5 Florida United Methodist Review Online

Ministry changes attitudes behind bars

By Michael Wacht

LAKELAND — One prisoner the Rev. Bill Roughton met recently in the Polk Correctional Institution said he had been involved in a Satanic cult, serving as a recruiter and enforcer. His job was to recruit kids who felt “left out,” Roughton said. He was also responsible for making sure nobody left the cult, which is what landed him in prison.

Roughton, a retired United Methodist pastor living in Lakeland, met this prisoner during one of 25 weekends he has spent in prison in the past nine years. Roughton wasn’t serving time, but serving prisoners through Kairos Prison Ministry. He says being involved has given him some of the “most exhilarating experiences” in his ministry because he is seeing “genuine transformation in many prisoners.”

Kairos is an international ministry active in 190 facilities in 28 states, Canada, Australia, England and South Africa, according to the ministry’s executive director, Ike Griffin. Twenty-five of those ministries are active in the Florida Conference.

“Founded in 1976 in Florida, Kairos is an outgrowth of the Cursillo movement,” Griffin said. The name Kairos, which means an opportune or seasonable time, was adopted in 1979 when the ministry became an ecumenical effort incorporating the United Methodist Walk to Emmaus, Lutheran Via de Cristo and other similar ministries.

The Walk to Emmaus is a spiritual renewal program designed to develop Christian leaders, according to International Walk to Emmaus in Nashville. Participants have opportunities to experience Christ’s love through the leadership team’s witness, conversations, prayer, meditation, worship, and letters of love and encouragement from family and friends.

The structure of the Kairos ministry is similar to the Walk to Emmaus, Roughton said. Participants are invited to attend the three-day weekend event by friends or acquaintances who have been through the program. A team of 30 volunteers spends three days in the prison giving talks, leading discussion and counseling prisoners.

Team members are volunteer laity and clergy from “liturgical churches” who have participated in a Cursillo-based program, Griffin said. Although the pool of potential team members includes many people from the largest denominations in the United States, there are not enough volunteers to go around, according to Griffin. “The challenge is to find enough people to present the ministry everywhere it’s asked for,” he said. “There’s more demand…than we can meet.”

That demand results from the success the program is having reducing violence in prisons and the number of repeat offenders. According to a 1997 study by the Florida Department of Correction’s Chaplaincy Services office, inmates who attended Kairos and remained active in follow-up programs re-offended at a rate of 9 percent, compared to 28 percent among those who never attended.

“They [prison administrators] see tangible evidence of Kairos making their place a safer place to work,” Griffin said.

Roughton said he has witnessed many prisoners’ attitudes change throughout the course of the weekends. The prisoner involved in cult activity told Roughton he attended Kairos to observe and criticize the event. At the closing ceremony, he told Roughton: “I can’t criticize it [Kairos]. I’ve experienced more love here than I’ve known in many, many years.”

For more information on Kairos Prison Ministries, visit its web site at http://www.kairosprisonministry.org.