Doubts About Promise Keepers' Global Appeal

No doubt about it. What happened on the Mall last Saturday was a genuine spiritual revival, say local pastors who stood among the hundreds of thousands of worshipers at "Stand in the Gap: A Sacred Assembly of Men," organized by the Promise Keepers.

What's not so certain is whether a commitment by founder and CEO Bill McCartney to go global in 2000 is viable or advised, and how the Promise Keepers evangelical Christian men's movement fits into a larger "spiritual awakening" that has begun to swell as a new millennium approaches.

"Here is a passionate football coach laying out his game plan," said the Rev. John Yates, rector of The Falls Church Episcopal Church, referring to McCartney's former job as head coach of the University of Colorado's national championship football team. "I greatly appreciate his desire to support the local church, and I believe his basic concerns are quite positive. But I'm not sure the Promise Keepers' methodology will be readily accepted abroad."

If the organization "can stimulate spiritual growth abroad among men, it will be a positive thing for the worldwide church," Yates said. "I just hope they are culturally sensitive and go as learners as well as leaders. That seems to be the spirit of Promise Keepers. We'll have to see about that."

Robert Burnett, pastor of New Life Foursquare Gospel Church in Frederick, Md., would like to see Promise Keepers become more action-oriented on a local level -- encouraging more men at more churches to "take what they're being taught at stadium and Mall events and implement them in the community and in homes."

Yes, the organization could help Christian men in other cultures, Burnett said, but he is unsure whether that will happen. Promise Keepers "can only get so big. It will continue to grow as a healthy thing or it will come to a halt."

Burnett, whose church is part of the Pentecostal movement founded in 1927 by Aimee Semple McPherson, has seen the power of the Promise Keepers program through the impact it has had on the men in his church. Since attending their first rally at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1995, the men of New Life have formed monthly Promise Keepers groups and have taken such initiatives as giving time to "boys without dads" in the congregation. The men take the boys fishing, hiking and shooting bows and arrows.

Lon Solomon, pastor of McLean Bible Church, said he fully supports McCartney and his plans for taking the group abroad. "He's the leader of Promise Keepers, and he's the man God gave the vision to," Solomon said.

But Solomon, who calls himself "a Jewish person who believes Jesus is the Messiah," also sees the importance of the local emphasis. He praised McCartney's call for Promise Keepers to gather on the steps of their state capitols on Jan. 1, 2000, adding, "The more we show the impact we're making on localities, the better off we're going to be."

Solomon said that in one respect, Saturday's rally reminded him of Woodstock. He remembers being at the rock festival in 1969 and thinking, "Wow, there are a lot more of us than I ever realized." But last Saturday, instead of looking around at people with long hair, wearing beads, he saw thousands of Christian men trying to improve their spirituality.

The Promise Keepers, Solomon said, is "not an organization but a spiritual movement from God." Like all such movements, he said, it will "last for a while and then be over. . . . But I'm in no hurry [for that to happen]. That's God's call."

Just as it was God's call, through McCartney, to summon Christians from across the land to an emotional gathering on the Mall, Solomon and other pastors said.

"Something happened to me within the first half-hour, when thousands of men began singing `Holy, Holy Is the Lord,' " Burnett said. "I never experienced such a huge crowd, and I had an overwhelming sense of how pleased God must be."

The six-hour event climaxed with a speech by McCartney, whom Burnett called "a simple man with a simple message" who, like the Rev. Billy Graham, was "chosen by God" for a special mission. "God is using him," Burnett said. "But he is just a man, a nobody."

In his message, McCartney told the gathering "to stay hungry for God." That hunger, he said, would result in a "shifting strategy" that would end the practice of charging admission to future rallies and take the organization to an international audience.

A subsequent appeal for donations, made by James Robison, a Dallas evangelist, lasted far beyond the allotted 10 minutes, pushing the rally past its 6 p.m. closing time. The U.S. Park Police pulled the plug on the event before a special videotaped message by Graham could be shown.

Yates said Robison's money pitch had the effect of "throwing a little ice water on the afternoon." But the rally reached deep into the spiritual needs of Christian men, who often feel "alone in their faith," said Yates, whose church rented a parking garage downtown for the more than 400 men from The Falls Church who attended the rally. Traveling with them were more than 100 out-of-towners who stayed in the homes of church members.

For Yates, one of the most rewarding parts of the weekend was "linking our families with people around the country we don't know." Then on the Mall, he said, there was "an unusual sense of oneness and unity among total strangers. It was a feeling of trust and openness that is very unusual in Washington, D.C."

The Rev. Charles Worthy, pastor of Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church in Southeast Washington and president of the D.C. Baptist Convention, had a different view about what happened Saturday. "People don't realize it, but they were going through mass psychotherapy," he said. Men are "deeply wounded. There's a great deal of hurt and pain that males have they don't know they have, layers and layers of anger."

The Rev. Robert Norris, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, said that Promise Keepers' greatest achievement perhaps has been "to heighten awareness for spiritual renewal" throughout the country and possibly the world. But no organization, Promise Keepers included, can produce such a renewal, he said. Only God can do that.

"Ultimately, the results of the movement will become the test, as prophets in the Bible were tested by the authenticity of their prophecy," said Norris, who was unable to attend the rally but followed its coverage closely.

Norris said that the Promise Keepers' Seven Promises -- including commitments to God, to purity, to friendship, to racial reconciliation -- are part of the "ongoing ministry of every Christian church, a universal expression of what God wants us to do."

That "us," he said, is not restricted to men. It includes women, too.

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