Kairos Prison Ministry Australia was featured on Sydney Radio Hope 103.2 and Sight Magazine in November 2024. Have a listen and a read below.
Radio Hope 103.2
On the 19th November 2024, Andrew Fisher of Jesus Racing and Life Choices Foundation was interviewed on Radio Station Hope 103.2 about the Kairos Awareness Event being held on the 30th November. Have a listen to the full interview below.
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Sight Magazine
Australian prison ministry seeks new volunteers – with a little help from “Fishtail”
“I’ve seen the power of God’s love operating inside [prisons] with people who would never think would let it affect them but the Holy Spirit is just stronger than anything we realise.”
So said Colin Stiller, recounting some of the impacting experiences he had when first encountering Kairos Prison Ministry Australia in a Queensland prison back in 1998.
Stiller is these days the chair of the ministry which, drawing on the success of Kairos Prison Ministry in the US, started its work in Australia in 1995. It now operates in mens’ and womens’ prisons across the states of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia with small representations in Victoria and Western Australia and has between 2,000 and 3,000 volunteers involved.
Programs are aimed at inmates inside prisons which are aimed at creating Christian communities inside prisons as well as programs aimed specifically at juveniles in prisons and weekend programs run outside the prisons which are designed for women who have been impacted by incarceration.
The ecumenical organisation is now seeking more volunteers to help in its work inside and outside prisons and to that end is holding an event at Stanhope Anglican Church in western Sydney on Saturday, 30th November, which will feature an appearance by racing driver Andrew “Fishtail” Fisher, founder of Jesus Racing and of the Life Choices Foundation.
Fisher, who in his role with Life Choices Foundation visits prisons around the country to share his story and engage with prisoners about their life choices, said the value of Kairos’ ministry can be seen in their ability to “walk alongside [prisoners] and take it to the next level in terms of providing information and education and an understanding of the values that come from the Christian world view.”
“We all talk about wanting to be more like Jesus but at the end of the day Jesus was in the marketplace, He wasn’t in the church, He didn’t spend his life in the synagogue all the time…and the jails are part of the marketplace and there’s an opportunity.”
Stiller said the ‘Changing Lives from the Inside Out‘ event, as well as recruiting volunteers, is also aimed at raising awareness of the ministry and will feature some of those who have been recipients of the ministry’s work sharing their stories.
“We’re finding…that the first thing you do to create a little bit of awareness, to create a little bit of involvement, is to have personal accounts of how Kairos has affected the individual,” said Stiller.
He said Kairos volunteers, which come from a range of Christian traditions and who work with chaplains inside the prisons, are given about 40 hours of training before going into prisons.
“COVID has really knocked our volunteer base around in 2019 and 2020…and so we’re coming out of that and now we’re finding – [given] we can back into prisons again – we’re needing this volunteer base to be reignited.”
Stiller said that with about 41,000 inmates in Australian prisons costing somewhere between $A130,000 to $A150,000 per prisoner, per year.
“If we can affect a change in a person – obviously the Holy Spirit does the work – but if there is a change in a person, and let’s say there’s 10 people, then, mate, we are in the millions of dollars that we are saving society.”
Above article reprinted from Sight Magazine
