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In 1990 Bill McCartney, head football coach at the University of Colorado, launched Promise Keepers, a stadium-based ministry encouraging men to commit to God, their families, and "Christlike masculinity." Central to its focus were the "Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper." In 1996, PK held 22 stadium rallies with a cumulative attendance of nearly 1.2 million men. However, in 1997, the Denver-based organization had to cut its staff by 20 percent, even as it prepared for the heavily publicized "Stand in the Gap" rally in Washington, D.C., that October. The PK board that fall also removed the $60 entrance fee to stadium events, calling for donations instead. In 1998, McCartney laid off 345 paid staffers, citing financial woes.

McCartney resigned on October 1. McCartney had been on a board-approved leave of absence since March 1 to care for his wife, Lyndi, who has a severe respiratory illness. The PK board then announced Thomas S. Fortson, Jr., 55, as the new president and CEO. Fortson, executive vice president of administration and operations at PK since 1996, received his doctorate in administration and higher education from Michigan State University and worked previously for General Motors. PK, now with 70 full-time and 15 seasonal staff members, expects that about 170,000 men will attend its 17 conferences this year.

CT associate news editor Stan Guthrie interviewed Fortson.

How does Promise Keepers compare now with its early years, and where do you want it to be in five years?

When it first started, we were very entrepreneurial, we were creative in our process, we were exploratory. Some things worked and some things didn't. I think we touched a need. And that was the fact that men wanted to connect.

We tapped on a nerve there where a guy, in an event, surrounded by other men, could be more expressive with his feelings and with his emotions. Thirteen years ago, probably men were confused over masculinity, about what it means to be a man. What does a man look like, especially what does a godly man look like? So through the process of Promise Keepers, we tried to develop a profile for what a godly man looks like.

You saw a quick rise in Promise Keepers where there was just a tremendous surge in the stadium events, and then you saw a quick drop. Well, there are probably a number of reasons. We might have made some mistakes in terms of our format. We stopped charging. We said we would counter that by the donation in the arena/stadium, and that didn't quite meet our expenses. And so we reinstated the registration fee in 1999, and it did hit us hard. I think we recovered. And so now we've changed our strategy, we've moved from stadiums to basketball arenas [that hold] between 16,000 and 18,000. We find that even more conducive. We don't have to worry about weather, and we can go into smaller cities and do more.

In the next decade, under a transition in leadership, we're probably [going to be] more strategic in our approach—not that we weren't strategic in the past, but I think times have changed. The constituency or the age level of men has changed. Whereas a guy who attended the event 13 years ago was 22, well, he's 35 now. His needs are different. He might have just gotten married at 22 and now he has three or four children and even some teenagers. So our constituency has changed.

We're [also] moving more globally. Our vision is men transformed worldwide. We've never fully done that. We've had some starts and stops. But I think as we look at our vision, we need to develop strategies to attain our vision. The Bible truly says, "God so loved the world." It's not just the United States that he loves or men in the United States. It's men around the world. And I think we've always had a heart for that, but we just have been unable to do that, and we see ourselves doing that over the next decade.

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November (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47