wfn.org | Troubled Promise Keepers Want U.S. Churches to Donate $1,000 Each

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

10-March-1998 
98083 
 
    Troubled Promise Keepers Want U.S. Churches 
    to Donate $1,000 Each 
 
    by Patricia Lefevere 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
NEW YORK-Promise Keepers, the fast-growing male spirituality movement in 
the United States, is facing deep financial trouble.  The 345 employees of 
the evangelical men's organization learned on Feb.18 that their salaries 
would not be paid after March 31 due to falling revenues. 
 
    But Bill McCartney, the former football coach who set up the 
organization that attracted 1.1 million men to 22 stadium events in 1996 
and more than 700,000 to events last year - including a mass rally in 
Washington - hopes to save Promise Keepers with a plan formulated at a 
recent meeting with 3,000 pastors and laymen from U.S. churches. 
 
    He told a clergy conference at St. Petersburg, Fla., on Feb.19 that 
"every church that names the name of Jesus" should give Promise Keepers 
$1,000. 
 
    If successful, the proposal would raise up to $300 million and spare 
the jobs of staff at the organization's headquarters in Denver, Colorado, 
and at its seven regional offices. 
 
    Promise Keepers pledged to put its operations in the hands of its 
20,000 volunteers and to reemploy workers when the organization's financial 
health returned. But if U.S. churches and private donors raised enough 
money in the immediate future, the organization would be fully operational 
very soon, said McCartney, who founded Promise Keepers in Boulder, Colo., 
eight years ago. 
 
    Promise Keepers has had huge media coverage in the past two years, 
being billed as a highly successful, unique Christian movement for men. 
Members of Promise Keepers make seven promises - to be good Christians, 
friends, husbands, fathers, churchmen and citizens, and to spread Christian 
unity. 
 
    But despite the publicity, the massive layoffs did not surprise Promise 
Keepers staff, who saw their numbers fall by more than 100 last June and 
their budget cut by $30 million due to lower revenues.  In November 1997, 
after assessing the $8 million cost of a mass rally in  Washington, 
McCartney gathered his team in a suburban Boulder church and told them: "If 
we don't make it, if we have to go, then we all go together." 
 
    Officials blamed the economic downturn on the board of directors' 
unanimous decision in 1997 to stop charging a $60 entrance fee to stadium 
events, arguing that for many the fee was a barrier to attendance. "Open 
the gates in '98" became Promise Keepers' rally cry if not sound fiscal 
policy. 
 
    Speaking to ENI from Denver, Promise Keepers public affairs spokesman, 
Stephen Ruppe, said the public was "very surprised" by the layoffs.  "They 
[the public] could multiply $60 times 60,000 men [typical attendance at a 
major rally] and felt the ministry was flush with cash," he said. 
 
    The $60 fee provided 72 percent of the group's income - a further 21 
percent came from the sale of Promise Keepers paraphernalia and the rest 
from donations, which ran to $3 million in January, he said. 
 
    McCartney, who resigned his $350,000-a-year coaching job at the 
University of Colorado football team - the Buffalos - in 1994, receives no 
salary from the group.  He also works as a motivational speaker for Big Sur 
Waterbeds, for which he earned $41,000 in 1996. 
 
    Ruppe predicted that all 19 conferences planned for 1998 would take 
place, but he said that funds would have to be found for rental deposits on 
the arenas and stadiums already reserved.   However, McCartney had earlier 
acknowledged that some events might have to be canceled unless churches 
large and small "want to facilitate what God is doing." 
 
    The months ahead are critical for Promise Keepers, Ruppe said. 
"There's a lot of hope and confidence in the ministry," he said. "Those who 
were laid off are not angry. We are all relying on the will of God." 
 
    Just how substantially American churches will support the ministry 
remains to be seen.   "Some churches will not be inclined to give.  Some 
disagree with our stand and some are less than enthusiastic about their men 
going to Promise Keepers events," Ruppe said. 
 
    But pastors should recognize that "they are the ultimate beneficiaries 
of our evangelical work," Ruppe said. 
 
    Part of the Promise Keepers mission statement describes the group as a 
"Christ-centered ministry dedicated to uniting men through vital 
relationships to become godly influences in their world."  But some 
Protestants and Roman Catholics, along with women's groups, have criticized 
the movement, suspecting it of holding a political agenda similar to that 
of the religious right, of lacking authority to interpret and preach 
scripture, and of wanting to subjugate women.  A call for repentance from 
the "sin of denominationalism," made at a Promise Keepers clergy conference 
in Atlanta in 1996 has also drawn strong reaction. 
 
    But the movement has received support from many clergymen, including 
Denver's Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput, who praised Promise Keepers 
last month in the "Denver Catholic Register."   He found it to be "an 
extraordinary catalyst" for men to refocus themselves on Jesus Christ. 
Promise Keepers had made many men more committed to their families and more 
involved in their church, the archbishop wrote. 
 
    However, he also mentioned Catholic unease with the group's evangelical 
roots, personality and its revivalist flavor. 
 
    Ruppe told ENI that while the movement had gained broad backing from 
evangelical churches, it had also won support from the mainstream United 
Methodist Church, which did a mailing to all its UMC pastors nationwide on 
behalf of a Promise Keepers clergy conference. 
 
    While the group has received no contributions from the Episcopal 
Church, Ruppe said, the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, an Episcopalian men's 
group, "has supported us very heavily."  A survey based on information from 
its Promise Keepers Web site reveals that an estimated 
25 percent of constituents are Baptists, 21 percent are from 
independent/nondenominational churches, 8 percent are Methodists, 7 percent 
Assemblies of God, 4 percent are Lutheran and 4 percent Roman Catholic. 
 
    The average Promise Keeper is 40.3 years old and has an average income 
of $48,000 a year, according to a survey of those at a 1997 conference. 
The marital status of those attending was: married, 68 percent; divorced, 5 
percent; remarried, 15 percent; and never married, 12 percent. 
 
    While 84 percent of those attending were white, the movement tried to 
take a radical stand toward racial reconciliation. It has urged its 
middle-class followers to relocate and reinvest in the inner cities they 
have left. If Promise Keepers survives its economic ills, it has pledged to 
assemble large gatherings of Christian men on the steps of every U.S. state 
capitol on Jan.1, 2000, to testify that "the giant of racism is dead in the 
church of Jesus Christ." 
 
    Another sign of hope for its future lies in its six newest 
international affiliates -  in Canada, South Africa, Australia, New 
Zealand, Great  Britain and Germany.  A dozen other nations in Europe, 
Africa and Asia were engaged in a two-year process to become affiliated, 
Ruppe said.  Discussions were under way with would-be Promise Keepers in 
Latin America, he added. 

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