VANCOUVER, BC—Promise Keepers (PK) Canada is blaming a “miscommunication”—and not a lack of interest—for a decision to shelve a men’s conference planned for Greater Vancouver in early May.

But others suspect that men today may need something different than what a typical Promise Keepers rally has to offer.

PK Canada president Ron Hannah says they pulled the plug after only 207 men had signed up by the close of early-bird registration, far short of the minimum needed to cover their $40,000 investment in the event.

But it would not have been approved in the first place, he says, had they not “read the wrong way” information given to them about the degree of commitment of churches to the conference.

“What we found out a little too late was that we only had 15 committed churches out of the list,” Hannah says.

“It was a miscommunication—not intentional. It appeared to us to be a list of 40 to 50 committed churches, but it wasn’t.”

Vancouver regional PK coordinator Clive Stanley concedes they were just not ready to hold a worthwhile conference.

“We never did enough plowing for God to allow the seed to grow and God to allow the harvest to be taken,” says Stanley, who was involved in PK South Africa before coming to Canada a year ago.

“A lack of foresight or oversight, or whatever you want to call it, was pretty evident.”

But John G. Stackhouse, Jr., a professor of religion and culture at Vancouver’s Regent College, wonders if many Christian men will see any value in attending a Promise Keepers rally, when most have already taken up the PK challenge to be godly husbands and fathers.

“That’s gone on now for ten to 15 years,” he says. “Evangelical churches generally have bought into that and their leadership has affirmed that.”

Practical needs
Stackhouse believes what most men need now are practical ways to meet that challenge.

“The day-to-day negotiation of conflict—which is where the joy leaks out and the rally seems far, far away—that’s where I think our churches and our Christian organizations need to continue to help us,” he says.

Rick Kingham, one of the original founders of PK in the United States in 1991, agrees.

“Promise Keepers was very good at telling men the ‘what’—‘What do we need men to become?’—but was never very strong at telling them ‘how,’” says Kingham, who now pastors near Seattle, Washington.

And that cannot be communicated at a single 18-hour event. “We have to find the ‘how’ that allows pastors, who are the most closely connected to those men, to help them 52 weeks of the year,” he says.

Stanley also believes that PK needs to begin featuring “celebrity” Christian speakers at its conferences, especially if it hopes to attract non-Christians. “We need to get current people of impact, who are known in our society as successful, influential people,” he says.

Hannah does not deny that Canada is unlikely to see again the conferences of 10 years ago that drew upwards of 16,000 to 25,000 men.

On the rebound
But he insists that compared to three years ago, their numbers are on the rebound. Last year, PK conferences in Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary were all sold-out.

“We realized,” he says, “that we got to put Him first and not Promise Keepers—‘PK’ becomes the small letters and ‘Jesus Christ’ becomes the big letters. And when we do that, we see that men respond to it.”

As for Vancouver, Hannah vows that when enough pastors and leaders commit to promoting a PK rally in their churches, “we’ll be there.”

Stanley says the new target date is May 2006—which gives them a full year to do it right this time.

“We have an expectancy of longevity,” he says. “We want to now develop a long-term relationship with the men’s ministries and the pastors. We understand we’re back to grassroots.”