Promise Keepers Auckland
I think I’d imagined Promise Keepers as some kind of big overgrown, slightly cringey, Christian men’s support group; a thing you might go to if you were having trouble with your marriage or something. I’d also lumped it into the whole American style mega church phenomena; partly rightly, partly wrongly as it turns out. Anyway, it was not something I saw myself getting involved with, but a friend twisted my arm far enough up my back to get me along to the Promise Keepers Auckland event. There were some things that didn’t gel with me but the quality of speakers made the day worthwhile. Mostly good, sound, biblical ministry to men, on a number of Christian life and practical family related topics.
For instance, I really enjoyed the ministry by Benny Tan, who spoke about his upbringing in Malaysia where he was "purchased as an insurance policy" against hardship in old age by a barren couple, who later did have their own child and relegated him to the role of unwanted nuisance . The process of God healing the many deep wounds of childhood and giving him the love, assurance, ability to forgive and inner strength needed to be active in the ministry was a touching story with lots of valuable lessons for anyone who doesn't always feel 10ft tall.
For me, perhaps the most insightful ministry of the day was that of David Murrow, author of the book “Why Men Hate Going To Church”. Here were some figures from the US he mentioned:
- Average church only 39% male
- Young men aged 18-25 account for only 3% of attendees
- 25% of married woman in church there without their husbands
This is particularly interesting when you realize that the same imbalance is NOT the case in any of the other major world religions. So what’s going on? Well, he started out by describing the kinds of movies men and woman like. He pointed out that the theme in men’s favorite movies is usually to do with a man saving the world against impossible odds, while woman’s favorite movies are usually focus on them finding a relationship with a man who loves them. He then noted that the focus of a lot of preaching today is to "come and have a personal relationship with Jesus, who loves you". While quite valid at a certain level, it’s essentially tuned to the feminine. By contrast much of the focus in the early church was, "We need to save the world against impossible odds, and will face almost certain danger and hardship in doing so". This is a much more active, masculine message. He then went on to describe how so many aspects of church are essentially quite feminine and just don’t appeal to guys. He felt that the whole polarity needs to move from feminine to masculine, arguing that if you get the men you get everyone, men woman and children. Part of that argument was that woman are comfortable with the masculine but men are uncomfortable with the feminine. A photo of a woman wearing a tool belt and using a skill saw, as opposed to him holding his wife’s handbag in a store, was enough to demonstrate the truth of that. Essentially I felt he was onto something here, though the direction it took in his speech and in the Promise Keepers Auckland event itself seemed rather cosmetic and worldly. I got the idea after a while that making church masculine quickly became about changing the decor, changing the music, allowing blokishness in church, playing clips of war movies, etc. All of this just seemed to be inviting worldly, and often stupid, expressions of masculinity into the church. Surely this whole issue is not about having a barbeque with only meat, or men playing Laser Strike, but about reviving the big dangerous masculine challenge of stepping up to the "radical Christian life". Perhaps he missed a related issue here; that church is often simply too artificial. Whether orientated to the feminine or masculine, sitting in comfy seats in an air conditioned building isn’t a living, vital or powerful place to connect with God. The gender balance might swing back pretty quickly and naturally if we were suddenly a persecuted church meeting in a forest.
Now of course, Promise Keepers wouldn’t be Promise Keepers if it didn’t include stuff about sex. To be fair, I think most men could benefit from the kind of wise biblical counsel that came out around sex, marriage, children and family dynamics. It reminded me that a lot of Christians are really struggling in their relationship with their children, especially teenagers, and often in their relationship with their wives too. Woman often take a great deal of interest in all these issues, and it’s of practical benefit for men to take some interest too, even if it’s not the kind of focus we’re primarily wired with. The issue of addiction to pornography was a big one, which is not hard to understand. We live in a culture awash with sexual imagery that connects with very deep and basic drives in men, and that is coupled now with easy and anonymous access to Internet pornography. It was estimated that at least 50% of Christian men were struggling with some level of pornography addiction. Someone described it as an underground weed that is destroying the strength of men in the church (and destroying marriages and children too). I absolutely believe this assessment is correct. While there were a number of suggestions made, personally I’m a great believer in Internet access that is filtered at the source (at the ISP). Accountability programs and filtering software on a PC can be gotten around, but if you hook up to a filtered Internet service you are removing yourself from the source of temptation. In NZ, Maxnet and Watchdog are two providers that offer this. Also, even if you aren’t tempted in this area, you should be aware that porn is so prevalent online sometimes it can be stumbled on unintentionally. If you have children and don’t have filtered Internet, I'm going to be so bold as to rebuke your lack of wisdom in this area - please, just get it.1
OK, now so far I've held back from mentioning the one thing I found absolutely appalling about the 2008 Promise Keepers; which was the implementation of their theme. Actually the theme and what they did with it was a powerful statement of the almost ubiquitous misunderstanding that exists in the modern Church regarding the role of Christianity in the world. I knew that the slogan for the event was “leave no man behind”, borrowed from the US army rangers motto, but I didn’t realize how far the military theme would be taken. The presenters were wearing military uniforms and dog tags, and military equipment and camouflage was strewn all around the stage area. Even worse, they played a number of clips from worldly war videos that espoused schmaltzy Hollywood heroic values that, while relating in a way to Christian values, were actually a perversion of them. The early church refused to have anything to do with fighting wars. They were “wise as serpents but harmless as doves”. (Matthew 10:16). How is it that most of the Christian church has utterly lost sight of the fact that we are under a new covenant? (Hebrews 8:13). The shift in thinking about war from the old to the new covenant is expressed in Jesus preaching when he says:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the sons of your father in heaven… (Matthew 5:43-45)
Under the old covenant God was dealing with men according to the flesh, but in the new he is dealing with the new man according to the spirit. We are not meant to fight for territory in this world, or even for our own peace, but we are called to account ourselves as sheep for the slaughter (Romans 8:36) because we seek not an earthly city, but a heavenly one (Hebrews 13:14). We are to try and reach the world with the gospel through the display of this kind of selfless love and faith, not to try and reach it the crusader way, through the sword or the barrel of a gun. And what is nationalism to those whose home is in heaven, who to count themselves as pilgrims and strangers on this earth?
By all means, Jesus is the LION as well as the LAMB, and as I talked about in my previous blog post, we need to ‘put on the lion of the tribe of Judah’. As Christian men we need to put a certain masculine strength and courage, but this is not the courage to kill, but the courage to save and to endure affliction along the way. I fear that war now seems to many like the only true masculine adventure left and they are seeking to revive masculinity in a church that compromised with the world on this issue of war many centuries ago, and so now end up promoting something that the early church writers said was stirred up by demons (war). One of the video clips shown had a very inappropriate quip saying something like ‘And Lord, please disregard our enemies heathen prayers and help us blow them to hell’. Unbelievably inappropriate! Promise Keepers even had army recruiters on hand so that we could actually join the army, go to somewhere like Afghanistan, and literally blow our heathen enemies to hell. But it’s all so weird. I just can’t see Paul the apostle, or Peter or John, running round with machine guns and hand grenades. They would have wanted to love and serve the heathen. To get right in among them at peril to themselves and speak to them about how they could be saved from the pit of hell. This deception is a terrible one and I foresee a day when Christian’s will mistakenly go and fight wars that will bring the final fullness of the beast of Revelation 13 into power. They will kill to establish an evil empire and die for the glory of Satan. They will stand before God with blood on their hands wearing only the filthy rags of a Christianity of deception. What a terrible thing this will be to witness; I just pray that many will see the truth and be led out of this area of darkness that has infiltrated the Christian community.