They looked like football fans on game day packed into the south side of Folsom Field on the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus. But the 22,000 men gathered at the stadium did not have touchdowns on their minds, even if they did perform some of the most spirited “waves” this side of the Super Bowl. Instead, the men witnessed the national kickoff of a growing Christian men’s group called Promise Keepers.
Founded in 1990 by Bill McCartney, head coach of the Colorado football team, the goal of the nondenominational organization is to motivate men toward Christlike masculinity. “To unite men to become Godly men—by making promises to Jesus Christ and to one another that last a lifetime,” reads Promise Keepers’ purpose statement.
It did not take long for Christians from across the country to unite behind that theme. Last year about 4,200 Colorado men attended Promise Keepers’ first statewide men’s conference, an event called “Where Are the Men?”
This year McCartney’s group brought together men from Bonney Lake, Oregon, to Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Wives got some credit for helping boost attendance: more than a few men admitted they received plane tickets for the event on Father’s Day. Bill Bright, founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ, said it was perhaps the largest single gathering of Christian men in America in his lifetime, even if the final head count was less than half McCartney’s stated goal of 50,000.
No Drum Beating
Among the faces in the worshiping and praying crowd was Karl Bear of Powell, Wyoming. Ironically, Bear was returning from a conference at a college that recently hosted a secular men’s “back to nature” retreat featuring drum pounding and caveman-style wandering in the woods. He found none of that in Boulder. “The reason I’m here is that I want to be a better dad,” said Bear.
He had plenty of company, according to Rick Kingham, a member of the Promise Keepers executive board and pastor of Church on the Rock in Arvada, Colorado. “This is not just a Baptist issue, a charismatic issue, or a Presbyterian issue,” he said. “We all want to learn how to be better husbands and fathers and better men of God.”
To that end, conference organizers provided a lineup of 16 speakers prominent in Christian men’s and family ministries. Included were Ken Canfield, founder and executive director of the National Center for Fathering; Edwin Louis Cole, founder and president of the Christian Men’s Network; Dave Simmons, founder and president of Dad and the Family Shepherd; and authors Gary Smalley and John Trent.
Also on the program were evangelist Luis Palau, pastor E. V. ill of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, and Jack Hayford, pastor of Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California.
Later in the day the men attended workshops such as “Healing the Masculine Soul” and “Accountable Relationships.” When they weren’t listening or worshiping, the men browsed among booths set up by groups such as Focus on the Family and Capitol Hill Prayer Alert, or scooped up T-shirts that proclaimed the motto: “Promise Keepers—Men of Integrity.”
‘Biblical Masculinity’
Earlier in the week, about 1,500 pastors and lay leaders attended a three-day Promise Keepers leadership training conference called “Training Men to Train Men.” Topics there included “Biblical Masculinity”; “Healing the Void: Providing Hope and Restoration for a Fatherless Generation”; and “Shepherding the Home Front: Equipping Husbands and Fathers.”
In the end, it was a pep talk from the coach that sent the 22,000 men back to their homes and families. Despite being hammered during the past year by gay activists and other liberals for his outspoken conservative views, McCartney was upbeat. “There’s coming a day when the strongest voice in America will be that of the Christian male,” he said. “Our nation is unraveling.… We were busy, we were passive … but it’s time to take some inventory.”
Explains Kingham, “This wasn’t our answer to the secular men’s movement.… We have a responsibility to reach and teach them how to be better fathers and leaders in their communities and their church.”
While the strong “male headship” message of the conference received an enthusiastic response from the men in the stadium, some evangelicals are taking a cautious approach to Promise Keepers.
“I’m in favor of anything that strengthens commitment to Christ and the effectiveness of the kingdom of God, but I would be opposed to any tendency that leads to sex segregation or hostility,” said Catherine Clark Kroeger, president of Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE). With 1,800 members, CBE promotes the equality of men and women in the church, home, and society. Said Kroeger, “Time will tell whether they move as servants or supremacists.”
Promise Keepers’ three-year plan includes an annual national conference in Colorado, regional conferences, pastors’ conferences, one-day leadership-training seminars, books, study guides, videos for small men’s groups, and a newsletter.
By Brian Paul Kaufman in Boulder.
