Sam Rohrer: Well, one of the saddest developments of the last 50 years, in our country at least, is the exodus of men from the home and the forsaking by men of their wives and their children, as well as the forsaking of other duties that men were created to fill.
The breakdown of current society as we see all around us as evidenced by such things as, I would say, the wandering pursuit of some fantasized version of manhood or womanhood as glamorized by the media, or the fact that the culture has reached the point of vilifying the masculine man and calling it toxic masculinity.
All of these plus other things, we know, have helped to set our culture into a nosedive. Now the question is, is there a solution to this devastating decline from the perspective of the secular gatekeepers, as I would call them, who seem not even to care about a breakdown of society?
Most people I still think long for a return to civility and to true chivalry, and for kind men and feminine and wholesome women. Fortunately, I’m going to put it out here, we’re not going to talk today about all of the bad things, because we know these things are happening. But we’re going to talk about the fact that there is a solution, and it’s time to reintroduce ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, to the understanding of God’s design for the man, the husband, and if God so blesses, the father.
So today on this program, our general theme is going to be this, God, men and the promise keepers. We’re going to discuss men and God’s expectations for men. We’ll identify the greatest, I’m going to call it the men silencers, those things that make the real man disappear. And then we’re going to conclude with what we can do to restore these men, these true biblical men, these men promise keepers.
Our special guest is a former Los Angeles Police Department officer. He’s the author of the book Rise of the Servant Kings, and he’s also current chairman of the board of Promise Keepers. His name is Mr. Ken Harrison, and with that I want to welcome you to the program today.
I am Sam Rohrer and we are so glad to have you on board this program today. And because of the nature of the program, I would encourage all of you are listening if you can, text a friend, a husband or wife, man or woman will benefit, I believe, from the program today. Vitally important subject matter, and we’re going to get right into that right now.
So let me, with that, welcome Ken Harrison to the program. Ken, thanks for being with me today.
Ken Harrison: Thanks Sam. I appreciate it.
Sam Rohrer: Ken, there’s a lot of places that we could go, I know you do a lot of interviewing all across the country and a lot of it, not all of it I know, but a lot of it on this theme of manhood.
Now you, sometime ago, wrote a book. You’re the author of the book entitled Rise of the Servant King. Now, you’re also chairman of the board of the ministry to men called Promise Keepers, which I would assume, but probably most of our listeners would at least recognize, some of them no doubt have attended prior sessions.
But out of curiosity, I have a question for you here. You desire for men as I desire for men, in that they would actually be men fulfilling the purpose that God gave and so forth. My curiosity here with you, did you choose to pursue the involvement with Promise Keepers first and then you saw a need to write the book, or did you perhaps write the book based on what you saw in your life as a police officer maybe and then have an opportunity to align with Promise Keepers? Just kind of curious which direction it went for you.
Ken Harrison: That’s a great question. There’s a really great story that goes with it actually. I actually was leading men’s discipleship groups all over Denver, which is where I live, and they had taken off and we actually had some churches take the discipleship, we had the Virginia State Police take the discipleship study, and really felt the Lord convict me to turn it into a book.
And I said to the Lord “Well, if You’ll bring me a real book agent, then I will,” and three weeks later I met a major book agent who said “No one reads men’s books and I don’t know if we can even get it published. But you’ve got all these great cop stories, I’ll see what we can do.” And I said “Well, if we were able to get a deal idea, what would be the best, the home run, the greatest deal we could ever get?”
He gave me an advanced number of structures of a deal and then Promise Keepers came right in the middle of that whole thing. And I only got involved with Promise Keepers to help out the CEO, Raleigh Washington because Promise Keepers was a dead organization. I wanted nothing to do with it. And during the process of going to a board meeting to help Raleigh, and I really saw all the problems that were going on with the board, they voted me as chairman and I asked most of the board to leave and saw that we really needed to relaunch Promise Keepers in the way that we’re going to get into, you and I, in a bit.
In the meantime my wife and I prayed about it, decided to give away, if we got a book deal, we would give away all the money and Promise keepers comes along. There ends up being a bidding war over the book and we ended up getting three times the amount that the agent said would be the greatest amount you could ever get for the book and that all that money was the exact amount of money we needed to pay off all the debt for Promise Keepers. It was really-
Sam Rohrer: Wow.
Ken Harrison: That’s the way this whole story has gone. The Lord answering prayers in this unbelievable way. He answers the prayers before we even know that we have them.
Sam Rohrer: Wow, that’s a great story and we’re going to get into more of that Ken and ladies and gentlemen, as we’re listening. Let me go right into this. We have just a minute or so left, but you wrote the book that you’re referring to, you called it Rise of the Servant King. A natural question that I think most people would have is why did you choose the specific words of servant and King as images for what a true man ought to be, and how we as men ought to view ourselves?
Ken Harrison: Identity is incredibly important. How we see ourselves, and we’ve got to get back to seeing ourselves the way the Bible says that we are as Christian men, not who the world says that we are. And we are Kings, each of us in our own sphere. If we’re single men, we’re responsible for those people with whom are in our care to stand up for justice, to stand up for the bully, to stand up for truth.
If we’re married, we are accountable to our wives and our kids to teach them scripture for the health of our family. And we do that as servants, not as rulers, but as people in Ephesians 5:25 says that we should love our wives like Christ loved the church and how did Christ love the church? He was tortured to death for her. And that is our attitude. We are the leaders of our wife. As someone who would lay down our rights to ourselves for her to present her as spotless and blameless to our Father in heaven.
Sam Rohrer: That’s a thought that as believers, we know that comparison, but as compared to this culture, that is certainly a contrary thought to modern culture, isn’t it, Ken?
Ken Harrison: That sure is. And our generation, we were taught to be macho. We don’t need anybody. I’m the man and I wear the pants and I’m the big guy. And of course now society has gone the other way and boys are being feminized. Let’s stop chasing the world and getting a perception from what the world says, and let’s start knowing what God’s word says and what He says we are.
Sam Rohrer: Well, welcome back to Stand in the Gap. Our general theme for today is this: God, men, the Promise Keepers, and we’re going to talk about today, if you got the idea, it’s about men. Our special guest is Ken Harrison. He’s chairman of the board of Promise Keepers, and he’s also author of the book from some years ago, entitled Rise of the Servant Kings, and, Ken, when we get back into this now, we’re going to talk about men and God’s expectations. We talked about a little bit at the beginning of the program as far as why you chose to call your book Servant Kings and the Rise of That, and you made reference multiple times right off that God has a plan, and we want to talk about that next.
Sam Rohrer: Every person alive since the creation of man by God in the garden of Eden there has had to make a choice, ladies and gentlemen. We all have to make a choice as to who has the right to determine our purpose, our direction, and our goals in life. Now, we generally tend to think of that just all up to us, but where’s God factor into this? We call that ability that God gave us as our free choice, or you could say moral choice, and each of us have that right, and we exercise it every day, many times a day, whether we realize it or not.
Sam Rohrer: Well, God’s design for life and living, for self and society, for faith and freedom is all made perfectly clear in God’s manual for life that we call the Bible. We call that perspective on this program a biblical worldview. Now, the opposing view to a biblical worldview is, well, lack of a better word, it’s an unbiblical worldview, but it operates under many different names. Could be atheism, could be communism, could be Islam, could be secularism, could be globalism or a host of many more if you were to track it back through history, but as Ken Harrison, as our guest for today, said, “God, the creator, under the biblical worldview perspective, created all that we see, and we’re going to talk about it. He created man as male, woman as female, and established the roles and the duties for each, and that is God’s expectations.
Sam Rohrer: So let’s find out what, Ken, you say about that, because, in your book, you do lay that out, and you go right to the heart, Rise of the Servant King. You go right to the basis of what God says. So from that perspective, I think you and I and all men who are listening and probably women who are listening, too, know that men tend to be driven. I think that there’s something within us that makes us pursue some kind of objective in life and we’re not fulfilled unless we find that. I think a lot of people are pursuing things and perhaps never do find it, but can you speak to the issues of duty, mission and purpose and how God built them into men and how perhaps maybe this even fits into the first command, Genesis 1:26, where God said for man to take dominion over His creation. Put all those together because that seems to be essential for any man being a true man. Doesn’t it?
Ken Harrison: By the way, the book just came out in May. It’s not-
Sam Rohrer: Oh, okay.
Ken Harrison: It’s a new book.
Sam Rohrer: Good.
Ken Harrison: Just for people who are listening, the publisher did say they felt like, they said it tongue in cheek, that there should be a warning label on the book because Christian books aren’t written that way. There’s some pretty, pretty blatant LAPD stories in it, which want to get to the point really quickly, I wanted to write a book that men would read. So the chapters are short, and it gets to the point real quickly.
Ken Harrison: Genesis 1-3 is really the creation story, and it lays out the fact that male and female were created in God’s image, and God tells the creation story twice so that we totally understand that a fully masculine man and a fully feminine woman together are the image of God. That’s why we see this huge attack on masculinity today and why we see the world want to divide up genders and say there’s 42 of them, because gender is one of those things that we can use to be our own God. In rebellion of God, we shake our fist at him, and we say, “I will be my own God, and I will do my own thing.”
Ken Harrison: That’s one of the reasons why suicide is such a wicked and evil thing because we say, “God, you won’t determine when I die. I’ll determine when I die,” and gender is equally just like that. “You, God, you don’t … Just because you created me as a man, I decide I’m a woman,” which is, of course, ridiculous, the idea that anyone can declare himself to be a woman. There’s some very unique things about being a woman, the ability to give birth. The consequences of sex for a woman are vastly different than for a man. For intimacy with a woman, you can end up with a child. Anytime there’s intimacy, you could end up with a child for the rest of your life, whereas a man in the natural has zero consequences.
Ken Harrison: So there’s ways that we have perceived the world through the way our bodies are constructed that you couldn’t simply couldn’t have if you didn’t, if that makes sense. So we can see then that males are created a very specific way, given very specific ways of behaving, and females are given very specific ways of behaving.
Ken Harrison: You could say, “This segment of the show is all about men,” but it really isn’t. You didn’t say that, but, I mean, a listener could say that because you say, “Well, it’s about men. What’s it got to do with women?” Well, it has everything to do with women because when men are checking out of society, it’s women and children who suffer because women don’t get to leave their kids, and we see men leaving their kids all over the place. We see men acting in utter self-gratification in the moment, and it’s destroying society. Women are having to be vastly stronger than they should have to be because they’re giving birth to children alone. They’re raising children alone, but it’s not a helpless situation.
Ken Harrison: You know that in 1739 and the colonies of the United States, the out of wedlock birth rate was 39%. That was 1739. In 1740 came the great awakening, and Jonathan Edwards preached in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and it completely changed this country. We can do it again if men will rise up as servant kings, know what’s in God’s word and start behaving in the way that God created us to be.
Sam Rohrer: All right. You’ve got the expectation laid out. Again, I’m making it very clear. The Bible has a way. God has a design and a plan. Now, biblical worldview starts with there is God and then there was a creation, an act of God, what you’re saying. That’s the first three chapters where we’re told about that in Genesis, but then, right after that, in a biblical worldview, Ken, came the fall where sin entered the world and changed things significantly. Speak to the impact of the fall and sin of depravity and how that has so subverted God’s design for male, female, mankind.
Ken Harrison: Well, you can see that when each one of us wants to be around God, you start to see society become more and more what it is. What I say is true is true, not what you say, and then we have what’s your truth. I remember hearing Cory Booker say that during the Kavanaugh hearing. “So tell us your truth.” Well, there’s not your truth. Gravity is gravity. If I go up to the top of the building that I’m in right now and jump off, I will fall off and I will die despite whatever I think is my truth. Truth is a black and white constant. By the way, truth always says, “Shine a light on me. Shout me from the rooftops.” Lies always say, “Give me tolerance. You need to tolerate me,” and they want to shut down other voices. Truth says, “Hey, talk about whatever you want because I’ll be evident to those who are wise.” That’s why Proverbs says, “Deep seek wisdom with everything in you so that you can discern the truth, especially as men, as we’re accountable for our families.”
Ken Harrison: So in the fall, when we all decided we were going to be our own gods, wickedness prevailed. That’s why the absolute foundation to really understanding the joy and the power of Jesus Christ is to die to your rights to yourself, die to the idea that you know, and one of the things we say at Promise Keepers that I put out there is that, “We change our worldview to meet God’s word. We don’t change God’s word to meet our worldview.” There’s too many churches and there’s too many Christians today that read things in the Bible and go, “Well, that doesn’t fit with what I believe. So let me just twist this around until it makes sense for me,” and we need to come to scripture with open minds and hearts and say, “Lord, teach me. Teach me what you’re saying and show me where I’m wrong,” because we all have prejudices that are built in, and sometimes we go, “Wait a minute, that, what I just read, doesn’t fit with my little theology, and if it doesn’t fit my with my theology, then guess which one is wrong?”
Sam Rohrer: Well, Ken, I think what you said there was a great, great point, and I want to emphasize it again. You made the statement that “Truth welcomes …” You may not have said exactly, but, “Truth welcomes evaluation.” Lies say, “Don’t because it won’t stand up.”
Sam Rohrer: So men and women, ladies and gentlemen, as you’re listening to the program, when we talk about on this program truth pillars are truth standards or God’s word as the absolute truth, what we’re talking about now, truth will always prevail. We know that. Truth sets one free. Truth is found in God’s word, and truth can always sustain evaluation of it because it is bedrock fundamental.
Sam Rohrer: Now, Ken, you’re talking about in the garden. We’re talking about the fall. Actually, we should learn from history, but we don’t, but Satan’s very tactic to Eve was the first thing, is, “Hath God said?” It goes to the heart of what you’re talking about, questioning truth. Doesn’t it?
Ken Harrison: That’s right. Remember, the basis of the fall, this is what I went into in my book, and I think you’re referring to it. We were given a choice. We could have eaten from the tree of life or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and we chose knowledge over life. See, the idea of the creation was that we would live in paradise. Unfolding for eternity, we would get to know God more and more as we sought Him, and there would be relationship. We said, “No, I don’t choose that. What I want to know is I want to know everything now,” and we didn’t have the capacity to understand all that there was at that point. That’s when wickedness came in. We still do that to this day. We see people who have religion. We see people who read the Bible to win arguments rather than to know God. We see we want to control each other. I know more than you know, and we make up our own truth. This is what we’re all in a mess today because we value truth, or excuse me, we value knowledge over life. We have got to get to the point where we say, “I don’t know. If it’s not in God’s work, then I don’t know that it’s true. My opinions don’t matter. God’s word is what matters.”
Sam Rohrer: Reminds me of Deuteronomy chapter 30 where God told the people of Israel, “Follow my commands, my statutes. Do what I say and choose life. Choose to do something else, and you choose death.” It is that simple, ladies and gentlemen.
Sam Rohrer: All right. In this segment here, we’re going to continue our discussion with Ken Harrison. He is the chairman of the board of Promise Keepers. He’s the author of a new book that is … They’re now available. A lot of very, very good comments on that. And it’s called, Rise Of The Servant Kings. It’s focused on helping the precipitous decline in this nation of men being men as ordered and designed by God, to retain or to achieve or return to that design that God has laid out. And there is hope here, and I want to put that out. Since the days of creation when God made man in his image and breathed into him the breath of life. And I believe along with that the sense of duty and mission, male and female were created to work together. A team. Incomplete, one without the other. That’s God’s design.
And while functioning within God’s design of marriage, which was detailed right there at the beginning, they could model the perfect picture of redemption of God’s love for mankind, as manifested through the death of God’s son, Jesus Christ. It’s an amazing picture. And of course it’s a picture of Christ in the church, which was revealed later on. But just as from the beginning when the devil sought to interrupt God’s plan and tempt Adam and Eve to reject God. And as we heard from Ken in the last segment, to pursue knowledge and to desire knowledge more than life. And with that to make themselves little gods, they developed and embarked on a path that all of us have been placed upon, where we’re bombarded regularly by sin and evil and real life devil who temps, and a culture that ultimately works directly against all and who God is.
And we’re seeing that. So Ken, I want to go to you right now in the segment that I’m calling, The Men Silencers. You are a police officer for years. You saw the impacts of sin, ungodly choices, and a host of other things, like culture that literally promotes a deadly attack against men. I think some of these things are actually in your book, Rise Of The Servant King. But for this segment, I’d like if you identify just a top one or two of the cultural influences or temptations or whatever you may find that you have found are some of the greatest silencers, and those things that take men, fathers, if they’re fathers or husbands, remove them from what God designed them to do into something totally different. I’m very curious what you would identify as like one, two, or three. So take the top one first and identify it.
Ken Harrison: Yeah. The top one by far is pornography. And it’s interesting to know that in pornography nobody removes us from being who we should be. We remove ourselves. When we fill our minds with lust, we no longer have the ability and the moral forthrightness or clarity to teach our daughters self-respect, that what they have for their future husbands is precious. We no longer have the moral clarity to teach our sons self-restraint and respect for women. We no longer have the ability to make our wives feel cherished. So we lay down everything that we have because there’s a sense of shame and foreboding in us, and our minds are filled with lust. That’s why Jesus said, “If your eye causes you to lust, tear it out of your head.” And I have heard many Christian men give me lectures. Well, your guys need counseling and they need this.
And we wouldn’t want to be too harsh. Men may need counseling and they may need … May be pain and things in their lives that cause them to do that. I don’t know about that. What I know is that Jesus said, if your eye causes you to lust, stop now. Stop immediately. So if you need counseling, get it. But society is not the number one problem for us. It’s ourselves. That men today have their minds filled with temporary gratification. And this is what’s causing us to act like little children. Because a little child has zero empathy for the people around him. He just wants immediate gratification. A one-year old boy or girl, when that child is uncomfortable starts to scream and says, “Mom, I want assistance now.” And that child has no idea that mom worked all day, came home, made dinner, finally got to bed, and is tired. The kid just wants gratification. And we have too many men in big hairy bodies, or too many children have big hairy bodies looking for self-gratification. And it’s women who are suffering,
Sam Rohrer: Ken, when you identify that and you didn’t even hesitate to say by far and away. To what extent by far and away, and how long has this been such an identified problem? Can you speak to that?
Ken Harrison: Well, all you have to do is track the decline on masculinity. I mean, Satan has been attacking us for a long time and I often say Satan attacked femininity before he did masculinity. We in our society don’t … We do not value strong women for being strong women. We don’t value the beauty and strength that it takes to be a strong mother. We value some sort of fake man. When we hold up the epitome of a strong woman, it’s a five foot four, 120 pound woman in a fireman’s outfit surrounded by a bunch of big men. And we say, isn’t that great? Instead of valuing a woman for being a woman. So we could see the decline. And it started in the 70s. And what else started in the 70s? Real pornography.
When Larry Flynt won the lawsuit against the city of Cincinnati. And, you can see the massive accelerant of the decline of masculinity with the accelerated pornography. You used to at least have to schlep into a liquor store and buy a magazine. Now, of course it’s accessible to everybody, and now it’s completely accessible to young boys. And one of the things that we see is the erectile dysfunction problem in young men. It used to be 2% in guys in their 20s forever, in all the studies. They just redid that study in 2016 and it’s 28%. Because of pornography.
Sam Rohrer: Well, so it’s not only debilitating, could be in a physical sense. But you started out by saying pornography is debilitating in that it removes the … I think you didn’t say quite these words, but the moral strength for a man to do the basic mission and function that God created him to be. That’d be defender, the lover of his wife, the defender of his children. All of those things. How does that actually happen? Build that out a little bit. How does pornography actually happen in that it restrains or caps or limits or robs that moral authority for the man to do anything relative to what God would lay out for him?
Ken Harrison: Yes, Sam, that’s a really good question. I would say two fold. The first thing is we’re filled with unrepentant sin and when we have unrepentant sin our prayers are powerless. And so we have lots of prayer meetings at churches. I love the fact that we’re seeing more prayer, but if you’re in a rebellious and unrepentant sin, God’s not listening to you. Because, scripture is clear about that. It says it over and over again. In Isaiah, “I cover my ears from your prayers because of your sins.” He says. And so we do not have the ability to hear from the Holy Spirit because we’ve hurt the Holy Spirit that there’s not … We don’t have the ability to hear his voice. Physically though, when our minds are filled with lust all the time, we do not see women as our equals.
We do not see them as our sisters. We don’t see them as souls, as people with dreams and ambitions of their own. Instead we see them as objects of our gratification. It changes how we perceive women. And you see that, and I have never seen … Now, when I was a cop, it was in South Central LA, Watts, Compton. For people who know that stuff. All the rap songs are about Watts, Compton. That’s where I was a police officer, and I saw what happens with that sort of thing. And I’ve never seen a promiscuous man who didn’t go one of two ways. Either violence and objectification of all people, or real affinity and cowardice. You show me a strong, humble man who cherishes his wife. And I’ll show you a man whose mind is not filled with garbage from pornography and lust.
Sam Rohrer: We only have about a minute left. But to me, I’m making an image in my mind here of saying that pornography destroys the relationship that leads to life and fulfillment of life in exchange for temporary knowledge or other things. Which takes us all the way back to that action in the garden of Eden, doesn’t it?
Ken Harrison: That’s right. Let me see if I can develop this in 30 seconds, because it’s all we have for the segment. But the Trinity is God the father loving the son and the son responding to the love of the father. This is why Islam is a lie. Because, Islam says that Allah is love, just like the bible says God is love. But Allah could not have been loved by himself, because there was no one to love. You try to tell me that for all of eternity there was Allah, with no one to love. Suddenly he made creation. There was no one to love. So how could he be love? And also that makes him dependent on his creation for someone to love. Instead of we understand that the truth says, God has always existed. The father always loving the son, so that’s why he is love. He doesn’t need his creation, but creation is the outlet of love for us. This is a reflection of husbands loving their wives. Husbands love, wives respond. Just like the father to the son.
Sam Rohrer: Well, welcome back to our program. We’re going to now go into our final segment, often, if you listen to the program regularly, we refer to this sometimes as the solution segment because we deal with issues that are normally on front page news, or perhaps should be.
The one we’re talking about today, talking about really the state of manhood in the country. And we didn’t call it by that title, but we are talking about that, and how men have been led out of their role, silenced in their role to be the lover of their wives, the defender of their children, to be the leader in society with integrity, with character, with that kind of confidence in what they do so as to help bring order to an otherwise chaotic society.
And I think all of us listening to the program right now, we know, you know, as you’re listening. You may be a part of a household, or certainly within your family, probably extended family, or neighbors, whatever, you would be aware of men who have left their families, left their children, and the harm that it causes.
The question is, is there a solution for that? And we’re talking, yeah, it’s a reacquaintance with God’s design and what God lays out. Many folks, I think as we’re talking to our special guest today, Ken Harrison, who’s the chairman of the board of Promise Keepers and author of a new book, Rise of the Servant Kings, is talking about right now, this issue is so critical.
And I’ll just summarize right now, the biggest problem, when I asked him, if you just joined us, the biggest problem, the biggest silencer of the moral voice, the audible voice of men in our society is pornography. Getting themselves caught up in watching and being a part of things that are a total twisting to God’s design. And with it is a destroying of a relationship with their wives, with their children. Removes them, silences their moral voice, and destroys ultimately life that comes from the kind of relationship that God has designed.
So, Ken, that brings us right now, and that will take us to your role as chairman of Promise Keepers. You said earlier in the program that when you took over Promise Keepers, it had become a defunct entity. But that name is a really good name, Promise Keepers, and there may be a lot of people listening who maybe are familiar with seeing those large groups of men gathered and making promises.
All right, I want to talk to you about that, because you have a vision, for going into next year in particular, of what Promise Keepers’ focus on men in America can do. Tell us about it.
Ken Harrison: So Promise Keepers was NFL stadiums full of men in the ’90s. Seven million men went to Promise Keepers, and by the way, 40% of the tickets bought were by women to send their husbands and their sons.
Sam Rohrer: Say that again, how many?
Ken Harrison: 40%.
Sam Rohrer: Wow.
Ken Harrison: And you should see the letters we get now. I would say half the letters we get to Promise Keepers now are from women, “Thank God someone is doing something. Thank God someone is standing up.”
We’re going to be coming back to the way we were, AT&T stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, next July 31st and August 1st. Tickets have just gone on sale. We’ve picked our speakers, but we have not announced them yet. We’re going to do that in a very specific way.
And it is a time when men talk about, and I mean hundreds of men in tears have come to me and said, “The feeling of hearing 70,000 guys singing Amazing Grace together is something I’ve never been able to repeat in my life.” And the reason, I think, number one, there’s the feeling of, “I’m not alone.” I think a lot of us men feel like the world’s going crazy and what can I do? And suddenly you see all these brothers.
Secondly, though, it’s the authenticity that we don’t often get. Men constantly have this face on. Partially it’s … well, there’s a lot of reasons why. But you get guys, men of God, together with powerful speakers and music, and there’s some tears flowing and repentance of sin, that’s what’s going to be … this thing is seven or eight of the greatest preachers in the world. We’re getting them from all over the world, speaking God’s word, authenticity and then follow up.
Where Promise Keepers dropped the ball in the ’90s was guys came out there ready to charge hell with a bucket of water. And Promise Keepers thought, “Well, the church will now take these guys and give them a direction.” And that didn’t happen. This time, we’re going to be working with all the other ministries, we want to be a platform, not a program. And give men a place to go once they come out of there, so they can serve.
Sam Rohrer: Ken, that’s a great thing. And you have a website, I’m looking at it right now, promisekeepers.org, promisekeepers.org. So, you have things up there right now. If people go to that site, what will they find and what would you recommend that they do when they go to that site?
Ken Harrison: Well, there’s a bunch of stuff. I know that there are men out there saying, “How can I help? How can I get involved? This is awesome.” There is an ambassador program. We’re picking ambassadors from the county levels to the congressional district level, to state, to multi-state, who are volunteers, who organize their local churches to get involved. Because not only will we be in AT&T stadium, we’re also simulcasting all across America.
We’ve already had eight inquiries from eight different countries, South Korea, Israel, Turkey, “How can we get the simulcast?” So you can get on, sign up to be an ambassador, we’ll do a background check, get an interview and everything, and make sure that you’re a godly man and what not.
We are also, many women are saying, “How can I get involved?” We definitely want to bring women in to be a part of this, and so we’re actually bringing together women ambassadors as well that will mobilize the women. Because we understand, there’s so much demand from women, they want to feel like they’re a part. Now, they won’t be at the stadium because it has to be men only, because men act differently when women are around. They tend to have that mask up. But there’s a place for women too.
Also, resources, you can get on there and see the best books that we’ve seen on different subjects. You can get on there and get videos and different things of help. Different hard subjects that there are. We link to Todd Wagner, pastor of Watermark Church in Dallas, one of our board members, has something on there called, Real Truth Real Quick. Six minute videos on really tough questions that you can get.
So lots of good stuff for you to go on to that website. We want to make sure it’s valuable. We’re a giver, not a taker. When you go on that website, we’re not trying to ask you for money, we’re trying to give you value for life, because we know how desperately people need it.
Sam Rohrer: Promisekeepers.org, ladies and gentlemen. And I would encourage you to go there, as the American Pastors Network, our goal, as you know by listening to this program, that we try to take the issues of the day, as I’ve said, bring biblical principles to them.
Now, a biblical worldview says that there is God, there was a creation, an act of God, there was a fall where sin entered the world, precipitated by the devil, but there is redemption, secured through Jesus Christ. If you believe, as we do, that the Bible holds all of the answers for all issues of life, and it does, then what we try to do here is to link those answers to the problems.
In this case, we’re talking about men being men and as God designed, and why men are not the kind of men they need to be. This effort here at the Promise Keepers, we wanted to bring it to your attention today so that you can anticipating it. Go to the site, promisekeepers.org, see how you perhaps could be involved. And help to reestablish truth, in this case, the truth pillar as it relates to manhood and the family.
How about the last 30 seconds here, Ken, any final closing words that you would like to express to our listeners?
Ken Harrison: Yeah, sure. We were created as men to be the instigators and women were meant to respond. And I don’t want to make single men feel left out, we’ve talked a lot about marriage. But I do want to say that one of the greatest signs of whether you’re a man or not, some guys are like, “How do I know?” Passivity is the sign of a lack of masculinity. Men see problems and they solve problems. And passive men, when you’re locked in sin, you go, “Well, somebody around here should do something.” A man says, “I’ll fix it.” And let’s bear that in mind. Let’s be active about knowing God’s word and fixing the problems we see around us.
Sam Rohrer: Good parting words, Ken. Ken Harrison, chairman of the board of Promise Keepers.
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