By Barrett Newkirk
barrett.newkirk@heraldbulletin.com
PENDLETON — Several inmates at the medium-security Correctional Industrial Complex are spending the weekend participating in an intense religious workshop.
Kairos Prison Ministries, a Florida-based lay Christian ministry, is working with 42 men in the prison for three days. The daily, 12-hour sessions include lectures, small group discussions and some of the best food the inmates have tasted in quite awhile.
The food serves as a small incentive for the inmates, Kairos volunteer Bill Farrer said. When Kairos first came to the Correctional Industrial Complex in April, only about 60 men were interested, but for this second weekend, the prison had close to 400 applicants for 42 spots.
“They come for the food,” Farrer said, “but they get fed something else when they get here.”
Along with 3,000 dozen home-baked chocolate-chip cookies that were shared among the prison’s 1,400 inmates and its staff, the men participating in the Kairos seminar will get all the Big Macs they can eat for lunch Sunday, shortly before the program concludes.
Thomas Murry, 26, has been living at the complex for four years. He said he’d heard about the food at Kairos but also had bigger reasons for participating.
“I’m here for the spiritual food,” he said.
Murry, a Baptist, and the other men listened Friday morning to a speaker discuss making good choices. It was a surprise moment when the speaker told the inmates that he had once lived in the Correctional Industrial Complex.
“It makes it more real because he was really talking from experience,” Murry said.
“Kairos” is a Greek word that roughly means “God’s time.” The program has visited 8,000 prisons around the world, encouraging inmates to break down divisive barriers.
Farrer said he’s seen rival gang leaders hug by the end of the weekend.
He and the other volunteers will run the same program at Pendleton’s maximum security prison on Nov. 15. They facilitate the discussions but don’t take credit for the work that’s done.
“The Holy Spirit does the work,” Farrer said. “We just follow the Holy Spirit’s lead.”
Prison chaplain Bob Schafer said the Kairos weekend is a strong supplement to the facility’s ongoing religious programs, which range from Catholic Mass to an American Indian sweat lodge, where inmates sit under a domed-box while wrapped in a blanket. It serves as a type of sauna.
“It makes a big difference,” he said. “We saw some big changes in our first group.”
He estimated that between 300 and 400 inmates participate in some sort of religious program.
“That doesn’t seem like a whole lot when you consider we’ve got 1,400 men here,” he said, “but we’re constantly trying to expand (the participants).”
