Kairos - The Sword of the Spirit’s Youth Program
Written by Stephen Giles
Kairos is the regional youth program for the Sword of the Spirit North America. Our main priority is to serve middle and high schoolers in our region through retreats, trips, and service opportunities. In addition we offer training for youth workers around the country and resources for parents. In short, we want to see every young person in our region grow up to know and love the Lord and to live their whole life for him. We are far from alone in that desire or in contributing to that work, but Kairos is in a unique position within the larger framework.
One of our unique contributions is to connect people from different communities and give them the chance to build relationships that last a lifetime. This happens to some degree at the YES Retreat each spring, where 200 some high schoolers from all over North America come together to worship the Lord, pray together, and grow in their knowledge of him. However, the weekend is so full and so fast that people often don’t get the chance to build as deep of relationships as they’d like. This relationship building happens at its deepest on our summer trips. Each summer we run adventure trips for boys and girls from 7th grade through senior year. Some of these are backpacking or canoeing trips, some are mission trips, and one is more like an extended retreat. Each of these offer a tremendous opportunity to build lifelong relationships with people from other communities. We see this year after year and one of the fruits of this is that it can expand people’s vision of what the Sword of the Spirit is and what God might be calling them to.
To help us run all of these summer trips each year, we bring on a few Kairos Adventure Guides to serve as junior staff. The Kairos Adventure Guides program is one of the few remaining regional mid-length service opportunities for our young people. Adventure Guides spend roughly two months serving on our summer trips, growing in their ability to offer both practical service and relational youth work. It’s a challenging and tiring summer, but one that produces amazing fruit in the lives of the trip participants, as well as in the lives of the Adventure Guides. It is a real privilege each summer to work with them and see them grow throughout the summer in confidence and competence.
If you’d like to learn more about Kairos, our values, and what we offer you can visit our website at kairos-na.org. You can also feel free to drop us a line through our contact page. We love talking about youth work, the challenges young people face today, and how we can help them live their full lives for the Lord!
