‘Bring the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ’

St. Thomas the Apostle Parish embraces international prison ministry

By Gabrielle Nolan

A team of East Tennessee men enters a local prison on a regular basis to bring the love of Christ to inmates.

Since 2017, Stu McFadden has joined other men at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Lenoir City in a local chapter of Kairos, an international and ecumenical prison ministry that holds retreats for prisoners.

The men from St. Thomas the Apostle, along with men from seven other local East Tennessee Christian churches, host their retreat twice a year at the Morgan County Correctional Complex in Wartburg.

“The Lord asked me Himself to be part of this ministry,” Mr. McFadden shared. “My faith has grown so much stronger being part of this ministry. You watch the Holy Spirit work on these guys over a weekend, and it’s just amazing. Sometimes you just plant the seed where it may grow two years from now. It’s a real impact on the guys, and when you see the impact on them it’s pretty powerful on the team members, too.”

Curtis “Chip” Young, also a parishioner at St. Thomas the Apostle, became involved with the prison ministry in 2019.

“The thing that I like about it is the message gets really concentrated on the idea of Christ’s salvation, or the salvation that Jesus offers us through His death and resurrection,” Mr. Young said. “Just the whole message that we bring to guys that are in a very dark place and the opportunity to give them some hope.”

‘Christ loves him no matter what’

Based on a Catholic Cursillo retreat, the Kairos retreat lasts 3.5 days and can host between a minimum of 18 inmates up to around 30 inmates. The prisoners, called “insiders,” are placed into family groups with Kairos team members, called “outsiders.” The family groups are named after the disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and James.

The first night of the retreat, a Thursday, is a meet-and-greet between the insiders and the outsiders, with some instructions on what to expect during the retreat. The team is there for about four hours, sharing a meal with the inmates and getting them to relax and enjoy themselves.

The 10 retreat presentations begin on Friday morning and are staggered throughout the day, continuing through Saturday and Sunday. The Kairos team spends about 12 hours in the prison on Friday and Saturday, while Sunday is an eight-hour day.

“It’s a series of talks where they get to listen to the talk and then discuss at the table what that means to them, and then they get to make a poster, a drawing, or something of what they think that talk meant,” Mr. McFadden explained. “The very first talk is on making choices—good, bad, even not making a choice is making a choice. So, you get into that and then you slowly bring in the love of Christ over the next two days and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.”

“Saturday night culminates in a forgiveness ceremony where they learn how important it is to forgive others and for others to forgive them and knowing that they’re a precious child of God and that Jesus Christ loves them as much as anybody,” Mr. McFadden continued. “Sunday, we talk pretty much about the love of Christ and what it means to change your life and what it means to be a Christian and Christian action.”

The team sleeps in a nearby Baptist church about two miles away from the prison.

Mr. McFadden said the most physically challenging part of the weekend is the lack of sleep and the long hours, but the experience is worth it because it is spiritually uplifting to the team members.

“If you see a guy realize that Christ loves him no matter what he’s done, and he would like to be saved. … To see a guy changed and accept that is absolutely, totally amazing. You can watch the Holy Spirit work. You almost physically can see the Holy Spirit working in these guys,” Mr. McFadden remarked.

He said that the team is there to help “break down barriers” for the prisoners.

“Each one of these guys has got a barrier or wall built around him for his own protection,” Mr. McFadden said. “There are two things we don’t do: we don’t ask them what they did and we don’t ask how long they’re in for. They might tell you, but we’re not there to be prejudiced against them in any way, no matter what they’ve done. So, we don’t ask them. We’re there to bring the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ to them.”

In Mr. McFadden’s opinion, the best job during the prison retreats is to sit at a table with the insiders and “actually get to know them, talk to them about their issues, and what they think about things.”

“If they weren’t in a prison uniform, and you didn’t know where you were, you would think you were sitting at a restaurant talking to an average person,” he said. “These guys have made some bad decisions along their lives, and they realize it, and they want to change. A lot of them are [at the retreat] because they realize at some point when they get out, they don’t want to come back in.”

However, not every prisoner has that experience.

“Out of the 30 people that may come on the weekend, not everybody is going to be convinced that they’re a precious child of God,” Mr. McFadden said. “Almost every one of them has come from a broken family of some sort, and gangs wind up being their families and they get in trouble. Drugs are prevalent.”

Mr. McFadden shared that when the men are released from the prison, the Kairos ministry team wants them to “become faithful Christians and good citizens.”

“The recidivism rate is way lower for people who go through the Kairos prison ministry and attend a weekend,” he said.

One prisoner who attended a Kairos retreat in 2005 now helps lead them.

Bill Mongeau, a nondenominational pastor who leads services at the Morgan County Correctional Complex, was released from the prison in 2006.

“I go back and see those guys, and some of them remember me from when I was there, and then even the ones that don’t remember me, when we have conversations, I can relate to them because I’ve been in their shoes,” Mr. Mongeau said. “I had to reside there, so that makes us relatable.”

He believes that when a person is passionate about something, it will shine through.

“When your heart is into something, like it is with me and Kairos, it’s evident—just by communicating it it’s evident that you love it. That speaks volumes when you’re talking to people who have not really experienced love that well. They actually get to see it, and it makes a big difference. That’s like going down and feeding people who are hungry, you’re filling a need, a desire that they have. At the same time, and when you’re passionate about it, people see that,” Mr. Mongeau remarked.

Mr. McFadden also emphasized that what is said in the prison stays in the prison.

“We don’t talk about a guy or anything outside that. Trust is hard to find anywhere in a prison,” he observed. “But there are guys who have been on the street and really had a tough life, and to have a prisoner at the end of the week tell you that he loves you is just mind-boggling. I’ve had prisoners tell me they’ve never felt love like that before. We go in and listen, listen, love, love. That’s our motto. The guys, in their upbringing, many of them have never felt real love before.”

A unique attribute of the Kairos prison ministry is that once a retreat ends, the team continues to visit prisoners with monthly reunions.

“We go in and support the guys who have been through Kairos and who are interested in coming to a future Kairos,” Mr. McFadden explained. “The objective when we leave is that they form their own prayer and share groups and continue their learning and development, their journey of faith. So, we go back monthly; it’s the fourth Saturday of each month in the evening for about an hour and a half. It’s quite a commitment of time when you’re part of the ministry.”

‘This is a really, really good thing’

The Kairos ministry has an advisory council that reports to a state Kairos ministry, which reports to the international Kairos organization, located in Florida.

Before being allowed to enter the prison as a volunteer, each man has to apply through the state Department of Corrections to complete an application, submit to a background check, and then participate in online class training. After those tasks are complete, there is orientation training in the prison itself.

Before the Kairos team goes into the prison for a retreat, the men attend trainings for five Saturdays to learn their assignments, practice giving talks, and complete other tasks for the retreat.

“You work your way up to be a leader, if possible,” Mr. McFadden said. “You’re asked to be a leader only once because being a leader involves about a full-time job for about six months because you have to organize everything and get the team together and volunteers. If you have 30 prisoners, the team will be roughly 28-34 team members. We try to have new team members on each team to keep building the ministry.”

When the team is not hosting retreats, they are recruiting men for the ministry.

“It’s not very easy to recruit people to want to go into a prison,” Mr. McFadden said. “You just can’t put a notice in the bulletin saying, hey, you want to go in a prison? Nobody does that. It’s talking to guys and making presentations at different churches. We presently have five people from St. Thomas who are in the ministry.”

Mr. Young noted that to become involved in prison ministry is a calling.

“From a volunteer standpoint because it isn’t for everybody,” he said. “It’s not an easy thing. I was a lot more worried about it before I went in than afterwards. Once I went the first time, I went, this is a really, really good thing.”

“You hope you change somebody inside the prison, but you end up coming out changed yourself. That’s a big deal,” Mr. Young continued.

Other St. Thomas parishioners get involved, however, by baking cookies for the retreats.

“We bring in a dozen cookies for every person in the prison, which there’s 2,000 prisoners in that prison,” Mr. McFadden explained. “The guys on the weekend get to eat cookies all weekend, as much as they want. We bring in somewhere around 2,500-2,600 dozen cookies for a weekend. All the churches that are involved cook a lot now. St. Thomas, we usually cook about 600 dozen we provide for the weekend. We’ll put it in the bulletin about two months before the weekend, and it’s become a routine where a lot of ladies will ask, isn’t it time to cook cookies again?”

The ministry uses Gordon Food, which sells a frozen cookie dough in boxes of 10 dozen. The parish buys the cookie dough, and then the Kairos ministry reimburses the parish after they make their sales.

The Kairos prison ministry depends on donations to succeed, as a retreat weekend costs roughly between $6,000 and $7,000.

“We sell meal tickets, too, for five bucks; you buy a meal for a prisoner,” Mr. McFadden said. “During mealtime, we’ll put that little piece of paper at his plate and say, Fred or Charlotte or somebody bought you dinner tonight. They get Sunday school kids from different churches to make little paper place mats, and actually the guys love those. To see a little 5-year-old kid make a little picture on a place mat and say God bless you or Jesus loves you or something like that on there, it touches the hearts of the guys.”

Mr. Young would like for others to “consider it a personal invitation to join us and learn more about Kairos.”

“They can support the ministry in many ways, of course be prayer warriors for us. We actually have a prayer vigil wall. It’s an online thing where you can go on and people can sign up for a 30-minute slot throughout the whole weekend that we’re in the prison. So, they can help us out by praying for us. We bring cookies and food in; they can help us, support us by baking cookies and donating money so we can buy the food that we bring in. And then most importantly, just kind of search their own hearts and talk to us, contact us and find out more about it and see if they’d be interested in participating.”

Mr. Mongeau noted that it’s inevitable for the Kairos team members to form bonds with one another because of the amount of time spent training and planning together.

“I get to know all of the weekend leaders, I know all the leadership on the Kairos team, we’re all very good friends, brothers you know, all of us are,” he said. “So, it’s basically a men’s group inside a men’s group. Outside of the body, the great body, is larger than any of us or larger than any denomination worldwide. The believers are all over the place, but when you bring a few of them together, miracles happen, beautiful things happen. When you let God take care of the logistics, He creates miracles. The Scripture says, Jesus said, these things you have witnessed Me do, but you’ll do greater things than I.”

For more information on Kairos Prison Ministry International, visit kairosprisonministry.org.

To learn more about St. Thomas the Apostle’s Kairos team, contact Stu McFadden at sjmcfadden1999@gmail.com.