Important update: Due to the impact of COVID-19, the Promise Keepers 2020 Conference has been moved to a virtual event. The contents included in this post may be out of date. Read the details here.
God designed men to lead our families. To cherish our wives. To be true brothers to other men. To protect the defenseless. To guard our communities and nation from harm.
But somehow, our God-given role has been forgotten. It’s been lost in a murky sea of gender fluidity, changing values, and distractions such as pornography, video games, and binge TV.
Promise Keepers is here to take it back. We’re here to rally our brothers as servant kings, leaders who will take a stand as men and change our nation for Christ.
That’s why we’re calling men to come together July 31 – August 1, 2020, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex.
We’re trusting God for 80,000+ men to fill the stadium. We will also simulcast the event to a projected 5 million men, spreading the impact far across the nation and the world.
Speakers will preach the Word of God with power. We’ll worship together as brothers and shake the stadium’s foundations. We’ll fall on our faces in repentance. And we’ll return home changed men.
But the impact won’t stop with the event. We’re asking men to join small, local teams for accountability and changemaking in their communities. We’ll stay connected and focused through a Promise Keepers app. Together we’re building a movement, not an events ministry.
You need to be part of this! Talk to your pastor. Get a group of guys together. Mark your calendar for July 31–August 1, 2020. Plan to come to Dallas-Ft. Worth or host a simulcast in your community.
The men of America have been asleep. It’s time for us to wake up. Our families, our churches, our communities, and our nation need us. Don’t miss this.
Get tickets now and join us for Promise Keepers 2020.
Important update: Due to the impact of COVID-19, the Promise Keepers 2020 Conference has been moved to a virtual event. The contents included in this post may be out of date. Read the details here.
You are an important part of the Promise Keepers family. That’s why I want you to be among the first to know we’ve just announced the location of our next national conference:
On July 31-August 1, 2020, a projected 80,000+ men will join together to raise the roof at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys! We will also simulcast the event to a projected 5 million men, spreading the impact far across our nation and the world.
Mark your calendar now. Starting June 1, you and your friends can register for the event at promisekeepers.org for the ability to order tickets before they are released to the public. I’ll share more details in the weeks ahead.
Why Promise Keepers’ next national conference in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area is so important:
Can you imagine what would happen if the men of America stepped forward and truly lived out their responsibilities before God?
Can you imagine the sea change we would witness across our nation?
For too long, society has pushed men to be passive and effeminized. We’re told we’re “toxic.” Men are taught to sit by and do nothing while our families crumble around us. But the Bible has something else to say. “Act like men,” the Apostle Paul said, “be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13 NASB). (Continue reading below)
Ken Harrison shares some exciting news about what’s in the near future for Promise Keepers on FamilyTalk.
That’s why our next event will feature speakers who will preach from the Word of God with power and inspire men to take up their responsibilities as servant kings. Our worship will shake the stadium’s foundations. And we’re planning for our impact to continue long after the event as teams of men rise up to change their communities for Christ.
We need you to be part of this.
First, please join me in praying. Let’s get on our knees and ask God to make this event a catalyst that raises up an army of warriors for Christ who will be leaders in their homes, their churches, and their communities.
Second, join us in Dallas! We need men of all ages, all races, and from all walks of life to be part of this. Because we are stronger together.
Third, get your church to show the simulcast of the event live. You might not be able to make it to Dallas, but you can gather men together to sing the same songs, listen to the same speakers and pray the same prayers with us. Bring your sons, your father, your neighbor and let’s have the men of our nation filling out voices in unison to praise our Lord.
The event is projected to draw 80,000 men from across the country and around the world, with another 5 million participating via simulcast.
Ken Harrison, CEO and Chairman of Promise Keepers, revealed what was new and different about the new era of Promise Keepers:
“It’s the difference between analog and digital. Today, our goal is to get men digitally integrated — something that simply wasn’t possible before. Assembling men in the 1990s by the tens and hundreds of thousands had never been done before — but what about after? What about when men leave the stadium and go home? Many things were tried, but it just wasn’t possible to effectively network, encourage and strengthen men at home.”
“Today, we can not only do stadium events, digital integration allows us to provide the full spectrum of men’s ministry: a catalytic event that sparks fellowship, discipleship, and the formation and nurturing of change making teams of men in communities everywhere, working together to impact the core of our culture.”
Ken Harrison went on to discuss the critical need for clarity about what it means to be a good man in a culture increasingly toxic to masculinity:
“Psychologists claim masculinity is toxic. Governments and public schools mandate and proselytize that everyone must select our own gender identity, which can correlate with assigned sex at birth or can differ from it. That there are no right answers when it comes to being a man or a woman. Pop culture icons are lionized for their decision to raise their children gender neutral so they can decide what gender they want to be. And of course, there’s the infamous Gillette commercial, which hit bottom and kept digging. The result, men are fearful, passive and distracted, focusing on sports, Fortnite and porn instead of rising up and leading their families. In this swirling time of confusion, Promise Keepers is raising high the standard of biblical masculinity without apology and rallying men everywhere to join them.”
One of the most timely aspects of the new era of Promise Keepers is the prospect of drawing multiple generations to the AT&T Stadium event. Judge Vance Day, COO and general counsel of Promise Keepers said:
“One of the most powerful benefits of Promise Keepers is the ability for sons, fathers, and grandfathers to experience the event together. While Baby Boomers remember this with fondness, today’s millennials, who are coming into their own as husbands, fathers and in their careers, long to have the same experience with their own fathers. That’s why tickets for the AT&T Stadium event will reflect a significant discount for intergenerational groups.”
Day revealed that Promise Keepers is also introducing a new format:
“Instead of having multiple regional events, the new era of Promise Keepers will feature one massive event for the entire country each year that will be simulcast to locations around the world. And because men will be drawn from the entire country, the event will now consist of a session Friday night and Saturday, a concert Saturday night, and an optional day of service Sunday.”
Preregistration for the AT&T Stadium event begins June 1, 2019. Speakers and musicians will be announced in fall 2019. Stay tuned for more information as it is released via emails (like this one) and our Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/PromiseKeepers.
I just got done giving a presentation to a large audience when the usual line of people formed to ask questions or give their input to the talk. Then I noticed the desperate face of a desperate man. “I need to talk to you,” he said. I shook more hands and answered more questions and then as the crowd died down, he and I were able to move to a private corner to grab a few minutes uninterrupted. “My wife doesn’t respect me!” he said. “My kids don’t listen to me!” His face was shrouded in anger, the kind of anger that comes from pain. We settled down for a long conversation.
He was a retired Marine, and he looked like one. He was lean and muscular and stared through me as we talked. We went through the usual symptoms of the problem until we got to the root. He just didn’t listen to his family. “Man,” I told him, “if there’s one thing you can offer your wife and kids, it’s to listen. You can’t imagine how important it is to them that you just hear them out. Don’t have a solution to the problem, don’t offer to help, just listen and try to empathize.”
“I try!” he said, “but it’s all just so boring. My daughter goes on and on about who’s dating who. She talks about all her stupid friends. It drives me crazy. I just don’t care. I sit at the dinner table and wait for it all just to be over so I can turn on the TV and unwind.”
“You know,” I said to him, “when I was a newlywed, my wife was traumatized because her jewelry store had been burglarized. She went on and on about it. In those days I was a cop in a brutal area of Los Angeles. I averaged over one gun arrest and two felony arrests every day. I had to buy six watches in one year because they kept getting shattered while fighting with some bad guy in a gutter or tackling some gangster in a parking lot. A jewelry store getting burglarized was nothing in my world.”
“But as I watched her face while she told her story, I realized that she felt violated by the fact that some bad person had broken into her store and taken some of her inventory. I listened intently to her because it was important to her. I don’t know why I had the wisdom to do that, but God gave it to me.”
“Who’s dating who may not matter to you, but it matters a lot to your daughter, and for that reason, you should give her your full attention. She’s developing her expectations of the man she’ll marry based on how her dad treats her — you. Are you teaching her that she’s important and deservesto be listened to? If you’re bored by what matters to her, she’s picking up on it—and she’ll carry that with her for the rest of her life.” “You need to teach her that what is important to her is important to you—simply because it’s important to her.”Everything I just said to you ain’t bad marriage advice either,” I said. “You’re a Marine. I doubt that your wife doesn’t respect you — but I’m betting she doesn’t feel cherished by you. She doesn’t feel cherished because you don’t listen to her.”
I spoke again in that city about six months later, and that same Marine came up to me afterward, he had the same desperate look in his eyes. “How’s it going with your family?” I asked him.
“Well you know,” he said, “I tried to take your advice, but it just doesn’t work. I try to listen but my mind just drifts away.” He settled in for another long conversation where I’d give him advice that he’d ignore. Instead, I stood up and clapped him on the shoulder. “If you want to take up my time again, make sure you know the names of your daughter’s friends next time and her boyfriend if she has one. Tell me all about them.”
I spoke again in that city again about a year later. He wasn’t there. We men understand that our responsibilities are to protect and provide for our families. Often, the most important thing we can provide is to make them feel loved. All too often, men listen for an assignment: we listen for something to do or for a problem to solve. Sometimes, just listening and caring is all they really need. To be a true disciple of Jesus, a person must die to themselves. Part of dying to self is taking a genuine interest in the cares of others. Things that wouldn’t normally interest us become interesting — simply because they matter to someone we love. As you examine your life in Christ, don’t look at the outside — whether you’re following some set of rules. Look on the inside. Do you take a genuine interest in what’s important to others? Do you pray daily for them? Do you authentically wish the best for them? If not, take a deep look into your heart and ask God to help you to see others through the eyes with which He sees them. He will answer that prayer, and the world will begin to look vastly different and more interesting.
Promise Keepers is not political. Politics won’t bring peace and joy to the world. Only the grace and love of Jesus will do that.
Abortion is not politics. It’s murder. What the state of New York did by passing a law that would allow the killing of a baby that could easily live outside the womb is an evil that is unfathomable. A man of God has the responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Here is what we stand for:
1. Promise Keepers don’t cause unwanted pregnancies because we understand that sex is confined to marriage only.
2. If we sin and cause an unplanned pregnancy outside of marriage, we commit to helping raise that child. We support with our time, our money and our love. There would be substantially fewer women choosing to have abortions if the men who fathered the baby lived up to their responsibilities.
3. We never condemn a woman who is considering an abortion. She needs our support and our help. Perhaps through love and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, she will understand that she carries the greatest gift a person can give another: life.
4. We commit to fighting against any politician who promotes abortion and to supporting leaders who stand for life.
This is not politics. It’s life. We are the men of God and will will defend the defenseless. Are you with us?!?
