Promise Keepers Goes Quiet Prior to Weekend Event
This Spring, Promise Keepers announced it would return to the stadium events that made the group famous in the 1990s.
“We here at Promise Keepers, and the staff at AT&T, are prepared to seat 80,000 men on July 16 and 17, 2021,” says the group’s website.
But repeated efforts to get updated information about the event have generated zero responses from The K Company, the publicity firm handling Promise Keepers’ media communication.
Ministry Watch wanted to know:
- Will you reach 80,000 in attendance?
- Are there still tickets available?
- How many churches/groups have registered for simulcast?
But our four e-mails and one phone call to K Company since July 7 have received no response.
The event, which starts Friday evening and concludes Saturday afternoon, will be held at the home field of the Dallas Cowboys and will feature a special panel of prominent speakers including Pastor AR Bernard; Jonathan Evans, chaplain for Dallas Cowboys; and Nick Vujicic, founder of Life Without Limbs.
The event will also be simulcast around the globe via real-time audio translation with closed captions in Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Portuguese, Bengali, and Russian. The conference’s simulcast is expected to be available to homes, small groups, churches, military bases, and colleges.
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PK’s planned 2020 live event was canceled due to COVID-19, but PK simulcast the politics-heavy event speakers, reaching over 1 million men from 84 countries and all 50 states.
The 2021 conference speaker list includes both white and Black presenters, reflecting the ministry’s long-term commitment to ending racism, a commitment highlighted in a recent Christianity Today article entitled, “Promise Keepers Tried to End Racism 25 Years Ago. It Almost Worked.”
Promise Keepers was, after all, the largest movement in modern America pushing white people to reckon with racism and the most significant since the civil rights marches resulted in legislation, assassination, and riots. Yet even as Promise Keepers gathered tens of thousands of men, in city after city after city, to repent and reconcile, the ministry ran into its own limits. In retrospect, it felt like it just ran out of gas.
The article says PK’s leaders were sincere, but unable to turn stadium-based “mountain top” experiences into a blueprint to reverse racism. “Men had an emotional experience, listened to a Black preacher, and hugged a minority brother. That seemed to be that,” wrote CT’s news editor, Daniel Silliman.
Promise Keepers President Ken Harrison says, “If you’ve been struggling with isolation, confusion and a lost sense of purpose, the 2021 Men’s Conference will be your place of community, clarity, and restoration.”
