Transformative Moments in Chaplaincy

Book excerpt: The book celebrates Rev. Dr. Pierre and Judy Allard’s fifty years of reconciliation ministry by weaving their life experiences within broader initiatives started within Canada and overseas. Three quality moments of time, referred to as kairotic events within the contemporary history of corrections and chaplaincy, are identified. The rise of prison visitation and ex-offender reintegration organizations across Canada in the 1960s and 70s represents the first quality moment of time. Rev. Dr. Pierre Allard’s collaboration with Correctional Service Canada Commissioner Ole Ingstrup in the early 1980s in developing a new Mission Statement for the Service represents a second kairotic moment. Pierre and Judy Allard’s establishment of Just Equipping in 2006 as a response to an international call to bring about reconciliation between offenders and victims in Rwanda and other countries in Africa represents a third quality moment of time. The book analyses these three historical occasions and weaves them together with nine other Canadian chaplains’ stories of prison ministry.