Article published March 27, 2004
Promise Keepers founder to speak at BGSU
Ex-coach says real men revere God
Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney will speak at 6 p.m. Friday in the Lenhart Ballroom aon the BGSU campus.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
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BY DAVID YONKE
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR
"I'm going to tell them my story," Bill McCartney said of his upcoming talk Friday night at Bowling Green State University.
That could take awhile.
The story of the former college football coach and founder of Promise Keepers includes an extraordinary number of highs and a few agonizing lows in his 63 years.
A native of Riverview, Mich., Mr. McCartney became head football coach at the University of Colorado in 1982 and soon turned the school's losing program around, winning the national championship and coach of the year honors in 1989.
Promise Keepers began in 1990 with a meeting of 72 men. It rapidly grew into a global movement, drawing a combined total of over 5 million men to stadium-sized rallies where preachers urged them to be responsible husbands and fathers.
In an interview from his home in Colorado this week, Mr. McCartney said coaching college football was "compelling, it was intoxicating," but after 10 years away from the game, he has gotten used to not being on the sidelines."I don't miss it, not really," Mr. McCartney said.
He resigned from Promise Keepers in October, he said, because he feels he accomplished what God called him to do in that ministry. "And it was better if I stepped out of the way and they got new leadership."
He said he is about to launch a new ministry called The Road to Jerusalem, which will rally churches to support Israel and Jews.
Mr. McCartney's departure from Promise Keepers comes as the movement's numbers have waned, dropping from attendance as high as 1 million a year in the 1990s to 160,000 in 2001.
But the need to teach men about spirituality and the responsibilities of family life is as important as ever, Mr. McCartney said.
"Listen to these numbers: If mom comes to Christ, there's a 19 percent chance that the whole family will. If a teenage son comes to Christ, there's a 31 percent chance the whole family will. If dad comes to Christ, there's a 92 percent chance that the whole family will come to Christ.
"God mandated that man should be the spiritual leader in the home," he said. "That's why a teenage man in the home will have a greater impact than mom. It's ordained. It's real important that man takes the lead. I don't think it's the culture as much as it is that
men just need to stand up and be counted. That's what we saw in Promise Keepers."
He said the rallies have a strong and lasting impact on participants.
"There isn't anything quite like getting thousands of men together to worship the Lord. The power of God's spirit is amazing. It's a tremendous way to lead a man who doesn't have spiritual convictions into that special, dynamic environment," he said.
Mr. McCartney knows firsthand about how God can change lives. After battling alcohol problems, he said he became a born-again Christian in 1974 at a Campus Crusade for Christ rally in Brighton, Mich.
But even after cleaning up his life, he has said his obsession with football and ministry made him a poor role model for his wife, Lyndi, whom he wed in 1962, and their four children.
In his 1997 autobiography Sold Out: Becoming Man Enough To Make a Difference, Mr. McCartney said his family life suffered because he was consumed with career and success, working too many 16 hour-days, six or seven days a week.
"He was the same as a plumber," Mrs. McCartney told one interviewer. "A plumber never fixes anything at home. He's always out fixing everybody else's plumbing."
In 1993, just before a football bowl game, Mr. McCartney dealt his wife a shocking blow when he confessed that he had committed adultery 20 years earlier.
The news led Lyndi McCartney into a yearlong depression during which she withdrew into her home, refused visitors and phone calls, became bulimic, lost 80 pounds, and contemplated suicide, she said in Sold Out.
Four years later, Mr. McCartney's indiscretion made national headlines when the high-profile leader of Promise Keepers admitted to the brief affair in an interview on ABC-TV's 20/20.
"It happened before I invited Jesus into my heart," he said this week. "But I have to take responsibility for it and for all the sins in my life. It was a colossal mistake and it's something that I've regretted all my life.
"It was a 30-minute affair, really, but it had incredible pain attached to it. And yet I know that I'm forgiven, so I go on. I move on."
Does he believe that by acknowledging his error he may be helping others realize that God will forgive their sins?
"Well, God can use anything for his glory, but I don't even look at it that way," he said wearily. "I just regret it ever happened."
Mr. McCartney was enthusiastic about his new ministry, The Road to Jerusalem.
"I believe it's God's timing to rally the church around the Jewish people, the Christian Jew in particular," he said.
He quoted several scriptures that call for the support of Israel, including Isaiah 40:8 ("You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout") and Exodus 4:22 ("This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son").
The current Mideast volatility and the wave of suicide bombings in Israel give God's command a new urgency, Mr. McCartney said.
"With what the headlines are today, with what's going on, we must stand with the Jew and we must let him know we support him," he said.
The Road to Jerusalem will not try to "assimilate" Jews into the Christian church, he said, disagreeing with critics who say that Jews who accept Christ as the Messiah are no longer Jews but Christians.
"That's not true. That can only be perpetuated by unbelievers. Read Romans 9:1-5," he said sternly, referring to scriptures in which Paul writes, among other things, that God's promises are for the people of Israel and that the ancestry of Christ is traced to the Jewish patriarchs.
"That's Paul. He's a Messianic Jew. That's his heart, and that's the same heart I see in all these Messianic Jews," he said. "I see a sacrificial heart, a courageous heart. I believe Messianic Jews are among the most courageous people in the world."
Bill McCartney will speak at 6 p.m. Friday in the Lenhart Grand Ballroom on the BGSU campus. His talk is sponsored by BGSU Falcon Football and the Northwest Ohio chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Tickets are $25 in advance from 419-372-7086, or $35 at the door.
Contact David Yonke at:
dyonke@theblade.com
or 419-724-6154.
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