You don't hear much about Promise Keepers today, but it continues to host conferences and to promote ecumenical unity toward the building of the one-world "church." PK hosted six events in 2013. The one in Daytona Beach, Florida, last month drew 3,000 men and boys and featured "a rocking worship concert," which has always been a hallmark of PK events. Promise Keepers was founded in 1990 by Bill McCartney, a college football coach, and it grew rapidly in the early 1990s, hosting massive events, such as the Clergy Conference for Men in 1996 that drew over 39,000 "clergy" to the Atlanta Georgia Dome. Ecumenism has been a major objective since its inception. At the Atlanta conference McCartney said, "It is exciting to see the denominational barriers come down as we have Protestants and Roman Catholics here together. The purpose of this meeting is to have the unity of the church." Catholic priests have spoken at PK events, and PK has hosted events at Catholic universities. In 1997, a Roman Catholic named Mike Timmis was appointed a member of the PK board of directors. In an interview with attorney Michael Thomas, Timmis said that he was dedicated himself to bringing Catholics and evangelicals together, but he does not compromise his Catholic beliefs in order to do that. Timmis was one of the speakers at the Promise Keepers Stand in the Gap rally in Washington, D.C. in 1997. His message was entitled "Sectarianism as a Sin," stressing that while "we cannot agree on dogma, but must agree in Christ" ("Promise Keepers Catholic Director," Dec. 18, 1997, Way of Life Literature). Whatever good Promise Keepers has done to encourage men be morally pure and to be the spiritual leaders of their homes has been corrupted by its flagrant rebellion to God's commands to obey and to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints and to mark and avoid those who teach error. PK employs all of the devil's tools toward ecumenical unity, including Christian rock, charismaticism, the philosophy of "unity in diversity" and "non-essentials," and Christian psychology. It was in the early 1990s that I observed the beginning of the collapse of biblical separatism among independent Baptists when some independent Baptists supported Promise Keepers and criticized me for warning about this compromise. See The Collapse of Separatism, a free eBook available from www.wayoflife.org. (Friday Church News Notes, November 8, 2013, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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