1996-1999
In 1996 I was hired full-time by Promise Keepers—a national men’s ministry—to be a field representative for Orange County, helping build attendance at yearly Promise Keeper stadium events and supporting churches in the development of men’s ministries. The vision for Promise Keepers had started in 1989 during a University of Colorado home football game. According to Colorado Head Coach Bill McCartney, who I heard say this at a national Promise Keepers staff meeting, he was standing on the sidelines during the game, looking at the sellout crowd of 55,000 fans, when a thought went through his mind: “Why can’t this be men worshiping God?” From that thought, Coach Mac (as we Promise Keepers staff affectionately called him) gathered Christian leaders from Colorado and shared the vision to fill that football stadium with men worshiping God. The first Promise Keepers event, in 1991, was attended by 4,200 men in the university’s basketball arena. A year later, at the second Promise Keepers event, 22,000 men worshiped together in the football stadium. In 1993 Coach Mac’s vision was fulfilled when 55,000 men worshiped together in the sold-out football stadium. In 1994 Promise Keepers expanded to 6 stadium events around the country. I attended my first Promise Keepers stadium event that year, with one of my sons, in Boulder, Colorado. In 1995 both my sons accompanied me to the event at the Oakland Coliseum, home of the Oakland Raiders. I also joined 75,000 men in attending the 1995 Promise Keepers event at the Los Angeles Coliseum. In 1996, Promise Keepers expanded to 22 stadium events which were attended by 1.2 million men. I was hired in February that year. My first day of work started with my flight to Atlanta, for an event at the Atlanta Falcon’s indoor football stadium, attended by 42,000 pastors. The climactic Promise Keepers’ event was in 1998 when 1.3 million men worshiped together on the Mall in Washington, D.C. This event was televised live, nationally. Promise Keepers was told by the U.S. government that this rally was the largest event ever held on the Washington Mall. The decade of the 1990’s was a special time of God motivating Christian men in America. I was privileged and honored to be part of it as a Promise Keepsers staff member from 1996 through 1999.
Immediately after I accepted the Promise Keepers’ job offer in February of 1996, my Pomise Keepers supervisor said, “I’m sorry, but we need to ask you to start by doing a different job for the next five months. We need you to be the Volunteer Coordinator for the July event we are doing in San Diego at the Chargers’ stadium.” Surprised, since this had not been discussed before I was hired, I took the risk of saying OK. My task was to recruit 4,000 volunteers for about 100 jobs that were needed at the mid-July event, and to supervise them during the event. My boss said we were behind a schedule for getting it started. Initially, I felt intimidated about the challenge of recruiting so many volunteers in such a short time, never having done such a thing before. After accepting the challenge, I spent time in heartfelt prayer about it, asking God for help. One month later, a thought crossed my mind as I prayed: “Send a bulletin insert to all churches in San Diego, recruiting volunteers.” I communicated this idea to the Promise Keepers headquarters in Denver, asking permission to spend the money required to get a mailing list of area churches and to do a mass mailing to every church that would include a bulletin insert I would create. I was told by that no one had ever done this before, and it might not be approved. But it was. So we bought the mailing list, discovering that there were about 1,200 churches in San Diego and its suburbs. With phones in our temporary San Diego office already staffed with volunteers for incoming calls, the mailing went out. Sure enough, phone calls starting coming in and kept coming in, such that by the end of June—two weeks before the event– we had all 4,000 volunteers that were needed. God made himself yet more real to me through that experience. Despite feeling intimidated by the challenge, I had taken the risk of trusting God to guide me—and he not only guided–he provided!
Supervising the volunteers went well at the event in mid-July, which was attended by 51,000 men. A week later, Promise Keepers hosted a thank you event for the volunteers. People were invited to share stories of what they had experienced during the event. One man told this remarkable story: He was a volunteer trained to go down on the field after the keynote speaker on Friday night–the first session of the two-day event. At such Promise Keepers stadium events, the Friday night speaker always gave an evangelistic message, followed by an invitation for men to “go forward” onto the field as at a Billy Graham rally, in order to make commitments to Christ.
This volunteer said he was assisting a man in his new commitment, with a crush of people surrounding them, when he overheard a name spoken nearby that he recognized—the name of his daughter from whom he and his wife were estranged because of her use of drugs. They hadn’t heard from this daughter in several years, and didn’t know where she was. After completing his own counseling conversation, this volunteer turned in the direction from which he had heard his daughter’s name. A few feet away, young man was being assisted by another volunteer to make a commitment to Christ. When that was finished, this male volunteer engaged the young man in conversation, and discovered that he was talking to a son-in-law he didn’t know he had, and had never met before! A week after the event, this volunteer reported to our assembled volunteers that he and his wife had already been reconciled with their daughter, who, responding to her husband’s commitment to Christ, made her own commitment to Christ. That amazing story reinforced for me that God is real!