ACTS and Other Ministries in Prisons

There is no place with more of a need for spiritual learning than a prison.

The Kairos Prison Ministry is an international organisation conducting three day movement programs for people serving in prisons and more recently as Kairos Outside for those directly affected by the imprisonment of another. Kairos Torch is the program for juvenile offenders. 

It originated in 1976 under the name of "Cursillo in Prison", first offered in Raiford, Florida. It was renamed to "Kairos" in 1979, after the Kairos retreat targeted to students. Attendees of all faiths are welcome. The Kairos program currently operates in more than 350 prisons worldwide, in the USA, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and Canada. More than 170,000 inmates have attended the program. The Kairos Outside program currently operates in the USA, Canada, England, Australia and South Africa.

In Alaska, there is a Kairos prison ministry in the Wildwood Correction Center on the Kenai Peninsula.

 In Juneau, there is an ACTS ministry in the Lemon Creek Correctional Center.

National Geographic Channel Airs TV Show on Fixing Churches

In Anchorage, new episodes of the show "Church Rescue" airs on NatGeo channel 54 on cable, or channel 631 in HD, on Monday nights at 9:00 PM.  The show re-airs at various times the rest of the week.

The show pays a lot of attention to the unheralded aspects of church management, especially church building maintenance, recruitment, and finances.  Most surprisingly, the show treats churches a normal part of American society.

On "Church Rescue," three faith experts team up to travel the country, helping churches of all sizes and backgrounds grow and thrive. America is one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world, as people from all walks of life worship in their own community of faith - from biker churches to traveling rodeo parishes and everywhere in between.

Unfortunately, running a successful parish isn't as easy as just gathering your neighbors in praise. Forty percent of new churches fail within the first year and eighty percent go under in five years. 

So what happens when a church is failing to thrive? Enter the Church Hoppers. The team is comprised of Kevin “Rev Kev” Annas, Anthony “Gladamere “ Lockhart, and Jerry “Doc” Bentley. 

 Rev Kevin is the resident business guru, who applies his entrepreneurial experience to churches' finances and operations to make sure they're running smoothly. Gladamere is the crew's sales and marketing specialist, helping refine churches' brands and promote their message to the community. Doc is a counselor, motivational speaker and the Hoppers' Church Systems Analyst, getting to know each individual parish's faith to help the church meet its goals.

In their quest to save America's churches, the three-man Hopper team travel from a North Carolina "Bapticostal" sanctuary to a synagogue on Venice Beach, doling out tough love and wisdom along the way.

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Juneau's Shrine of Saint Therese

The Shrine of Saint Therese in Juneau is a chapel built upon a "tidal island", which means it naturally is connected to the mainland at low tide but is an island at high tide.  The cornerstone was laid October 30, 1938.  Bishop Burns recently described the initial construction as:

High tides and severe winter storms created many difficulties for the construction of the 400-foot causeway connecting the island with the mainland. Construction of the chapel proved difficult as well. The original intention was to build it out of logs, but for two years in a row the logs for the project, which had boomed up and floated down Lynn Canal, were lost to storms. However, there was no shortage of cobble stones on the nearby beaches, and when stonemason D.P. “Doc” Holden providentially arrived in Juneau and expertly constructed the fireplace at the lodge, he was taken on for the construction of the church, the bell tower and the 14 Stations of the Cross around the chapel.

Building special chapels on tidal islands is a very old tradition, and some of the most fascinating buildings in the world are built on the special landscape that a tidal island provides.

Why Do Men Hate Going to Church?

Longtime Alaskan resident David Murrow is not a pastor, professor or theologian. He’s just a guy in the pews who noticed a disturbing trend: churches are losing their men and boys. So he wrote a book titled Why Men Hate Going to Church, which became an instant Christian bestseller, with more than 100,000 copies in print.

Studies have shown that church attendance on Sunday is more than 60% female and that 20% of married women attend church without their husbands.  Many of the men that do attend would rather not be there.

The pastorate is a men’s club. But almost every other area of church life is dominated by women. Whenever large numbers of Christians gather, men are never in the majority. Not at revivals. Not at crusades. Not at conferences. Not at retreats. Not at concerts. With the exception of men’s events and pastoral conferences, can you think of any large gathering of Christians that attracts more men than women?

Visit the church during the week, and you’ll find most of the people working there are female. Drop in on a committee meeting, and you’ll find a majority of the volunteers are women—unless it’s that small bastion of male presence, the building committee. Look over the leadership roster: the pastor is likely to be a man, but at least two-thirds of the ministry leaders will be women. Examine the sign-up sheets for volunteer work, prayer, Sunday school, and nursery duty. You’ll be lucky to see more than a couple of men’s names on these lists. One pastor recently told me, “If it weren’t for the postman, every visitor to the church during the week would be a woman.”

David Murrow Interview

ACTS by the Numbers

According to ACTS Missions and training material, these are some interesting ACTS numbers:

• 25 =  average number of ACTS Retreats held every weekend 
• 750 =  average number of new ACTS retreatants every weekend
• 1,200 = total number of ACTS Retreats held last year
• 40,000 = total number of new people experiencing the ACTS Retreat last year
• 500 = number of parishes holding ACTS Retreats
• 50 = number of  diocese holding ACTS Retreats
• 26 = number of U.S. States with ACTS Retreats
• 7 = number of countries holding ACTS Retreats -- Canada,  England, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, South Africa, and USA.

A "Woman with a Purpose" Writes About Her ACTS Retreat Experience

The author of the the blog "Woman with a Purpose" wrote about her anxiety leading up to going on an ACTS Retreat.

If you have asked someone what it is about…they probably didn’t tell you. Before I went on my ACTS retreat, I dug around the Internet, asked parish members and still couldn’t find answers. “I can’t tell you exactly what we do, but I can tell you that you should definitely go and experience it,” was the canned answer I got from everyone.

Click to see how she felt after the retreat.

Why do people not attend church?

The Church Visits blog at the Alaska Daily News has reviewed a book (The Unchurched Next Door) why people do not attend church, and he has found three major points:

1. Most people come to church because of a personal invitation.

I’ve been in Alaska since 1999 and have never received a true invitation to anyone’s church. In an Outreach magazine article in 2007, Thom and Sam Rainer are quoted as saying “Perhaps one of the most underestimated reasons people return to church is that someone simply invited them back.”

2. 7 out of 10 unchurched people have never been invited to church in their whole lives.

If invited, 8 out of 10 unchurched men and women would come to church. I belong to a well-known national service organization and member behavior is documented to such an extent that we are aware only 15% of our members have ever invited someone to join our organization. The same thing is happening with churches and their members but bare knowledge of this does not yet seem to be affecting behavior.

3. The top “rational” reason adults seldom or never attend church is they don’t agree with organized religion or what they preach.

Another way of saying this is the “talk doesn’t match the walk”. This is unfortunately one of the major reasons coming out of studies of why the 18-29 year-old set is deserting church. It’s quoted over and over again. This younger set talks about the inconsistencies in the lives of church people surrounding them noting their preoccupation with pornography, gambling, and entertainment, to name a few, while decrying the issues the younger set is realistically dealing with such as premarital sex and alternative views of science.

Jerusalem The Movie: Filmed for IMAX

After a year of research and preparation, the giant screen film JERUSALEM advanced into production with an unprecedented aerial shoot throughout Israel and the West Bank. Scheduled for worldwide release in 2013, the film will take audiences on a spectacular tour of the Holy Land and the city once believed to lie at the center of the world.

If the movie is as good as the preview, it will be spectacular and change the way you envision the stories of the Bible.  Be sure to maximize the video (click on the brackets in the lower right corner) as the video is all in high definition.

ACTS Retreat Follow Up "Day of Renewal"

An article from the Rockport Pilot, near Corpus Christi, Texas:

ACT now to attend ‘Day of Renewal’

By Norma Martinez | Posted: Wednesday, September 25, 2013 9:04 am

If you have attended an ACTS Retreat but have not had the time or opportunity to serve on a team since then, there is something special coming up next week you might want to consider – an ACTS Day of Renewal.

I must give credit where credit is due – the idea of such a day was created by Deacon Danny Boehm. The format for the event was submitted to ACTS Missions of San Antonio, from which all ACTS Retreats are initiated.

The executive director of ACTS Missions reviewed the proposal and approved allowing our Sacred Heart Catholic Church Parish to go forward with hosting the first-ever Day of Renewal.  Boehm then organized a committee to put the event together and it was held May 18 with about 50 people in attendance. Feedback sent back to ACTS Missions was filled with the positive comments received by those who attended. 

The executive director then gave the okay to allow SH to host a Day of Renewal at any time. With that in mind, the ACTS Core Team approved a second Day of Renewal for Saturday, Oct. 5. The Day is open to anyone, man or woman, who has attended an ACTS retreat. The Day is a condensed version of the Retreat experience. The cost is $15 per person presale or $20 if paid after Oct. 2 or at the door that day.

The fee covers a catered meal by Butterchurn, and any profits will go toward Retreat scholarships. To reserve your spot contact Rachel Guerrero at Rockport School, Room. 11 (790-92250, ext. 5); Norma Martinez, 1002 Wharf St., (230-0016); or Dana Simpson, 115 Georgian Oaks (790-3678). Many attendees from the first Day of Renewal are excited about coming back, and/or are inviting others who missed that one to attend this next one. 

One individual so moved by the ACTS experience and wanting to feel that experience again will be coming to the Day of Renewal all the way from Minnesota. 

Surely those of us who live here would want to experience it too. I know I will be there. Enough said.

Norma Martinez can be reached at managingeditor@rockportpilot.com

What Do People Tweet after an ACTS Retreat?

Every Sunday, hundreds or even over a thousand people return from an ACTS Retreat. Let's see what people "tweeted" (e.g. posted on Twitter.com) using the term "ACTS Retreat" in the last few days.  The Twitter "tweets" are a widescale view of what people returning from a retreat are feeling, both good and bad.

So here is what results from Twitter tweets last Sunday.

More tweets on the next page