Archive: The Power of a Promise Keeper

Last summer my dad and I were back up in the nose-bleed seats of Anaheim Stadium, home of the California Angels. Throughout my childhood, my dad would often take me to the ball park to watch major-league baseball—a ritual bonding experience for men and their sons. On this day, however; we were not in the stadium to cheer on the Angels. Dad and I were joining 52,800 other men to yell, clap, sing, do the wave—and recommit ourselves to God, our churches, and our families. The name of the event was Promise Keepers, a spectacular Christian ministry experience for men.

Founded in 1990 by former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, Promise Keepers will have attracted more than 700,000 men in 13 locations this year. Meetings were held in Pontiac, Michigan; Los Angeles; Boise, Idaho; Washington, D.C.; Houston; Denver; Indianapolis; Atlanta; Seattle; Minneapolis; St. Petersburg, Florida; Oakland, California; and Dallas, Texas. The group is looking into 36 possible sites for 1996.

Promise Keepers is a combination of an old-time revival meeting, a Christian rock concert, and an intense seminar on family values and racial reconciliation. The men eat together, pray together, worship together, and join in unofficial paper airplane flying contests.

With one glance at our contemporary culture it is not difficult to see how a ministry devoted to men has tapped into such a heartfelt need. Divorce, crime, and drug and alcohol abuse are at all-time highs. At every turn, men are confronted with seductive voices and technicolor images that suggest life would be more rewarding with more money or a younger lover. Promise Keepers is a wake-up call to modern men, reminding them that wealth and pleasure are not life’s ultimate rewards.

Unlike some of the various manifestations of the popular secular men’s movement, Promise Keepers does not encourage men to wear loincloths, run around in the woods, and howl at the moon to discover their inner warrior. Instead, Promise Keepers simply challenges men to get right with God.

-Steve Beard

The following interview is adapted from a conversation that Bill McCartney had with Good News magazine and a handful of radio journalists in the press room of the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Q. Can you explain the phenomenal growth and vitality of Promise Keepers?

A. Promise Keepers started as God put me in touch with the fact that when a man is born again, Jesus Christ supernaturally places his Spirit in the heart of that man. If a man who has the Spirit of God inside him will stand up and be counted for Jesus Christ, almighty God will stir him over and over again. That’s what this is. The overwhelming majority of these men have been born again, and when they come together to celebrate Christ, almighty God stirs their spirits. That’s what you see.

Q. What is Promise Keepers all about?

A. If you look up the word integrity in Webster’s, you’d see that there are six definitions of integrity: utter sincerity, honesty, candor, not artificial, not shallow, no empty promises. If you were to reduce it to its simplest terms, a promise keeper is a man who keeps his word. He’s a man who counts his words, he measures them, and then he lives up to them. That’s a real man.

That’s not what the world out there thinks a real man is. They think a real man is a rugged guy, a macho guy, a successful guy, a guy who has the answers. That’s not true. A real man is one who will do whatever he says he’ll do, he’ll deliver. He’s a spiritual man. He’s in touch with the fact that, in and of himself, he can do nothing. It’s only the power of God that gives him real value and significance—that’s a real man. That’s a man’s man.

Q. As the founder of Promise Keepers, what has all this meant to you personally?

A. It’s interesting to me that God would use a guy that’s as broken and flawed as I am. As Promise Keepers has developed, I’m just like every guy out there. I’m learning to die to myself, and to be a loving, attentive, and giving husband and father. I look back at my life; and it’s filled with discrepancies, contradictions. It’s filled with the pursuit of my dreams, at the expense, really, of those around me. But, sovereignly, God can use anyone. He can even use me. That’s how I look at it. There’s nothing that qualifies me, except the grace of God, the mercy of God. Nothing.

There are a lot of people out there saying it’s because I’m a football coach, men identify. That’s nonsense! That’s not true, in my opinion. It has nothing to do with football. It has everything to do with the fact that God will use a surrendered heart, and my heart is broken before God.

Q. What are some of the stories that have really touched you?

A. Just recently, a kid approached me. He told me that his dad is a preacher and he had attended the Promise Keepers event in Los Angeles. At the end of the night, the pastors were brought forward and honored by all the men. This pastor called his son the next day and basically said: “I thought I would have to wait till I got to heaven to receive that kind of affirmation.”

What Promise Keepers is doing is coming alongside clergymen. Pastors are at risk. They’ re beleaguered. They’re broken down. They’re withering on the vine, and what men are being called to do is go home to their churches, love their pastors, encourage them, bless them, strengthen them, and pray for them. And so here’s an example of a faithful warrior who thought he was going to have to wait until he went through the Pearly Gates to be affirmed.

That’s not the way God ever intended. We should see our clergymen as God’s treasures handed down to us. We should see them as a pure gift from God; we should recognize that what God has invested in them is for us, and we should just literally love these guys—day by day as they live out their lives in our presence. But this isn’t being done. That’s why that story touched me so much.

I’ll tell you another story. A guy worked up enough courage to invite his boss to come to a Promise Keepers gathering. After he had worked up enough courage to ask his boss to come, and he said he would come, the problem was that this conference was going to start at 6:30 in the morning. So, at 4:30 in the morning, he got up some more courage and called his boss to make sure he was up! Sure enough, he got him up, got him out of bed, and his boss came to the conference. Halfway through the conference, his boss got a phone call. It was the police. They had found his two daughters (15 and 16) who had run away from home. They had each told the police: “You can do whatever you want with us, but we’re not going home. We refuse to return to that house.” This father, who was attending his first Promise Keepers meeting, asked the officer if they would just hold the phone up to his girls’ ears. This is what he said to them: “Sorry I haven’t been the father that you deserve. But if you’ll come home, I’ll be the man that you’ve needed me to be. Please forgive me.” They both returned, and he went home a changed man.

It’s all about changed hearts and changed lives. Those stories really touched my heart, because that’s what God is doing in men. They’re starting to take responsibility; and I’m in that category.

Q. What do you say to men whose lives are shattered by divorce or separation from their children?

A. I just say to them that you reap what you sow. And you can’t undo what’s been done. However, God will start with you right where you are. He did·that in my life. I’ve been married 32 years, five months, and 27 days. And the reason I know that is I give thanks every day. And I’ve been a taker all those years. It’s always been about me. Now my wife has forgiven me. She’s willing to let me learn to be a giver as she goes through this process with me.

Those guys who have marriages that have been shattered, almighty God can restore a right spirit in those men. He can take their lives from where they are, and he can do something good with them. It happens over and over again to anyone that will turn to the Lord.

Q. What about fathers who put sports ahead of the family, or of accepting Jesus?

A. I rode that train. I would say that we’ve become addicted to a lifestyle where we want to be entertained, where we want to watch performances; so much so that we need to break free from that kind of bondage. We need to retrieve our priorities. Have you noticed that at these conferences, there are no performances—there’s no entertainment. Yet, the messages are really just the opposite. They’re compelling, they’re convicting, and they call out what’s really in a man. Isn’t it interesting that God would use this venue to produce this kind of results?

When those men stood up this morning and cheered, they were cheering from the depths of their hearts to say, “I give up chasing sport as my god. I give up chasing all those things that have kept me from being the man that God calls me to be—a holy man, a righteous man, a godly man.” That’s what men are feeling, and that’s what’s being stirred inside them.

Q. What is going wrong with society?

A. There’s a disease that is slowly destroying our nation. It’s sin—separation from God. Sin is missing the mark. Sin is at the very crux of the problems all across our nation. We’re going to see our nation restored, we’re going to see things reversed when godly men stop sinning and start showing that the church has got to lead the way. God has designed the church to be the instrument by which we can restore our land.

We don’t think it’s in government. We don’t think it’s in politics. We don’t think it’s in welfare. We think it’s in the church that almighty God will resurrect a right spirit and lead.

I personally believe that if just the Christians gave, we could pay off the national debt. I believe that if every church in the United States would take two families, and take them off welfare—come alongside them, love them, nurture them, and help them to be able to stand on their own, and finally to be able to take care of themselves over a period of time, there would be no welfare problems.

Q. Promise Keepers has been accused of being sexist. Is it?

A. If you will stay and listen to the content of what’s being presented, then you’ll be one of the first to put that to rest—that nonsense about Promise Keepers suppressing women. That’s not what we’re calling men to do. We’re calling men to come alongside their wives.

Women have held up the mantle. Women have worn both hats. And men have abdicated. We’re calling men to come alongside their wives and to be part of the solution.

In Isaiah 38:19, almighty God mandates that a father shall make known the truth to his children. That’s the Lord. He’s saying, “Fathers, take responsibility for the spiritual temperature in your home.” But the way you do that is to come alongside your wife. You’re not exercising dominion over her, you’re loving her. Love her like Christ loved the Church.

What did Christ do for the Church? He died for it. So, we need to die for our wives. We need to serve them. We need to give it up for them.

Q. What about the racial reconciliation that you are so impassioned about? How’s Promise Keepers doing?

A. I’ll be honest with you. This conference right here breaks my heart. This is not what God intended. The distribution of minority brothers out there is not what God had in mind. But this conference filled up so fast. It’s the Anglo that moves that quickly today. He’s the one with the most substantial credit card, and he can fill up this stadium. It’s remarkable how fast this stadium filled up.

In the last two weeks, I have had three separate meetings with what we call “gate keepers.” A gate keeper is a clergyman who has tremendous influence throughout his region. He’s a guy that other clergy look to. He’s gained that kind of acceptance and credibility. He’s probably well along in his years. We’ve brought in eight Hispanic gate keepers from around the nation. And these guys strategized as to how we could get, first of all, the Hispanic clergy to come to Atlanta in February for the Clergy Conference. We haven’t even opened registration for that. We’ve seen what happened here at Indianapolis, and we’re trying to prevent it from happening in Atlanta. It’s not that we want to turn away Anglos, it’s just that we want to see a mosaic. We want to see the cross section of God’s men so everyone is represented.

Then, we had a group of five Native-American gate keepers. We had a group of five Asian-America gate keepers at the same time. And then we had 12 African-American gate keepers. It was an extraordinary meeting, because these guys have so much wisdom.

What happens when you’re an African-American, and you’ve lived out the contradiction, you’ve lived through the oppression, you’ve lived through the pain, you’ve lived through the denial, and you’ve come through it in love. Now that’s an extraordinary guy! And we had 12 of them come together. You think they don’t have wisdom and compassion and heartfelt solutions? They do! We asked: “How can we bring all the clergy of our nation together in Atlanta and have a full representation of the African-American clergy there?” And what these guys did was plotted, and strategized, and prayed, and sought the Lord for how that can happen. We’re trying to prevent the disparity of numbers, the overwhelmingly white audience. We’re trying to reach out, but there’s so much pain, there’s so much history, that it takes time to work through those things.

Q. What can we expect of Promise Keepers in the future?

A. We feel the call to rebuild the cities. To come alongside the oppressed and the poor. To dissolve the gangs. To get this nation’s poor off welfare. And the way that is going to happen is through a lot of prayer and a lot of people moving out of their comfort zones, and moving in to help. If a guy just writes a check, and says, “I did my part,” that’s baloney! He didn’t do his part. But if he gets involved, then writes the check—now we’re talking about progress! We’re talking about people entering into other people’s pain. As soon as a man does that, he has done something substantial.

Q. Coach McCartney, certainly you have heard talk about revival—sensing God’s spirit moving in a movement like this. What would it take to have revival in America?

A. Traditionally, revival has come out of repentance, it has come out of fasting, and it has come out of prayer. That’s what is going to stir revival. Revival really is the fire of the living God igniting the fire that’s inside us. The only way we can build that kind of substantial fire is to be men and women who are repenting, fasting, and praying to God. That’ll stir the right kind of flame in us that God will ignite.

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