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A Man-Sized Gospel
 The organ swells, the choir swoons, and the fire-and-brimstone preacher pleads, “Won’t you come? The ground is level at the foot of the cross. Jesus is knocking at the door of your heart…”
It is a very sincere moment, and the stakes of one’s decision whether to follow Jesus Christ are life and death. But why are so many men missed by so many efforts at so-called mass evangelism? Promise Keepers, by God’s grace, seems to be doing something differently. Conservatively, hundreds of thousands of men have been introduced to Jesus Christ in the company of their brothers at a Promise Keepers meeting.
“Men are linear,” says Dr. Gordon England, Promise Keepers’ Director of Evangelism. “They want bottom line answers to most of life’s big questions.” Questions like: Where am I going in life? How do I get out of the trap and darkness of sin? What will it cost me to get free?
That’s why it’s so important to get the terms of the “deal” framed properly, England says.
“In modern-day evangelism, you still have to get men lost before you can get them saved. Typically, we’ll hear a litany of how we’ve fallen short as men. It becomes a list of bad behaviors. The solution to that problem is usually not explained, but assumed by the man as ‘clean up your act. Do better.’ Kind of a self-help, behavior modification, a la psychobabble. That method sustains most men about three days. And most tragically, such an approach does not fit the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
True enough, men are wired to want to fix things, including their spiritual life. But England explains the frustration men feel when they try to merely change their act. “It’s like a carpenter trying to do brain surgery. He can open the skull, but it gets messy in a hurry. What’s broken is not our behavior, that only demonstrates that we are living in a broken relationship with our heavenly Father. That alienation from God is made even worse in a sin-saturated culture and climate.”
Promise Keepers lays out the Gospel in man-friendly language. It might sound something like:
You’re a sinner.
Check.
You can’t fix it yourself.
Uh-oh. I really need help then.
Only the Person of Jesus Christ can repair the damage that has been done.
OK. Jesus, help me. I give up to you!
England is passionate about the importance of letting men know they cannot fix life’s biggest challenge by their own self-effort. “Let’s do a man the service of jarring him out of that ‘fix it myself’ mentality and prepare him to receive the finished work of Jesus Christ. That’s the Good News.” It’s transformational!
In 2007 Promise Keepers has lined up three men to present the Friday night evangelism message, called “The Challenge to Die:” Adrian DesPres (www.adriandespres.com), Mike Silva (www.mikesilva.org), and James Ryle (www.truthworks.org).
The Promise Keepers event brings together guys who know how to make sense of the famous sign seen at football games: John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
Arguably, answering this ultimate spiritual question might be one of the best reasons to bring to Promise Keepers a friend who is asking spiritual questions. A weekend with the guys pursuing spiritual truths has a way of putting it all together.
Promise 1: A Promise Keeper is committed to honoring Jesus Christ through worship, prayer, and obedience to God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.
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