The Beginning of Kairos Prison Ministry in the US
In 1975, Tom Johnson, a lawyer and Catholic Cursillista from Miami, Florida, attended an ecumenical Cursillo gathering in Atlanta, Georgia. Though delegates came from several denominations doing Cursillo weekends, this Atlanta gathering was heavily Lutheran.
Tom Johnson had been imagining a Cursillo type program in prison for some months. When he heard some of the delegates actually planning a prison weekend in Iowa, Tom approached the Iowa delegate, Pastor Gene Hermeier and sought permission to attend. One week later, Tom was observing a Cursillo weekend in an Iowa prison and knew that he found a calling. He returned to Miami determined to begin weekends in Florida prisons.
The first weekend was held at Union Correctional Institution at Raiford, Florida in the fall of 1976. It was called Cursillo.
By 1978, six or seven states were doing Cursillo in prison. The national Cursillo office in Dallas, Texas surveyed these prison Cursillos and determined that they should be ecumenical, they should be under a central authority and that the format should be significantly altered to better meet the needs of those in prison. Cursillo asked the Florida group to design a program for that particular appliciation.
After the first Kairos was presented in 1979, Cursillo requested those doing Cursillo in prison quit the practice. Most of those districts then became associated with Kairos.
Since the ministry began more than 300,000 incarcerated men and women have been introduced to the Christian community that is Kairos and the current rate of introduction exceeds 10,000 a year.
Kairos has been recognized as the most effective program available to positively change basic attiutudes of those incarcerated.
Testimony of Faith
"I can never repay Kairos for what it has done for me. I came to the Kairos weekend filled with hate, anger and deceit. I only came because I heard that there would be good food, but I didn’t want anybody in my face about God. But as I began to hear these men talk about how God loved me so much that he sent Jesus, His own son to die in my place so that I would be free, something started to happen to me. I began to experience a kind of love that I had never seen or felt before. I now understand that it was love of God, offered to me by His people.
I made a mess of my life and ended up in prison. My family abandoned me and society had written me off. I was worthless, and I felt that way. Life had lost all meaning for me – I was like a balloon with nothing inside. But these Kairos men fed me with the Word of God, and now I hunger after Him. I will be forever grateful to Kairos for showing me that the way to freedom is through the cross of Christ." A Kairos Inmate Testimony
