Kairos Prison Ministry: Paul Cox

Kairos Prison Ministry has truly been the most meaningful experience in my walk with Christ because of the opportunity to meet, be around, and learn to love an element of society that many of us walking in the faith never venture into for mainly fear of the unknown.

I dodged the opportunity for probably two years before I attended a Sunday afternoon two hour closing ceremony at the prison in Venus, Texas on a hot summer day in an un-air-conditioned gymnasium. A closing ceremony follows a Thursday afternoon through Sunday noon Christian education workshop, so to speak, where many of the participants speak of their experience during the workshop.  No, we don't stay at the prison over-night, but we do have three ten hour days there. What I have witnessed each time over the past seven years is men who have been broken by their bad decisions, the pain they've caused to those who at one time may have loved them or by not knowing how to love others of different color or religions or no religion. 

Many times during our time there, the volunteer laymen and lay clergy talk on various topics and tears begin to flow for the first time in a long time for some of them as they learn to trust others in an un-trusting place where weakness maybe exploited. Only forty-two men get to participate in one of the twice a year workshops out of more than 140 who apply. Over an endless supply of homemade cookies, they learn to let their guard down and open up about their lives and the emptiness they experienced until they see the unconditional love of the more than thirty volunteers guys have for them. 

I often wonder how some of these guys landed in prison because many are very fine men who made bad decisions and are paying a debt to society because of it. As volunteers, we experience a joy as we see life changing commitments in this short period of time by many of the participants some who choose to study and themselves become servants of Christ as ministers themselves. When these men receive letters, posters, place mats and home-cooked style meals they become so grateful and appreciative that people out there in the free world would do those things for them. The support of this ministry by AHUMC is truly changing lives in Christ.