More like a pipe wrench

Sometimes God goes beyond the box of finely machined tools | Joel Belz

To go more than 50 years thinking the initials "PK" meant "preacher's kid," which I was, and then to discover it has a vastly new meaning in the late 1990s, calls for some severe mental gear-shifting. But then, the whole Promise Keepers phenomenon is calling for serious gear-shifting by a lot of people on a lot of different fronts.

No one is asking me right now to make a quick choice between being totally pro-Promise Keepers or totally anti-Promise Keepers. But if someone did, the old saw that you can size somebody up pretty well by looking at his enemies would be wonderfully helpful: Promise Keepers has the right list of detractors.

If Promise Keepers hadn't done anything else right in its brief seven-year history, it would still get enormous credit for this: The more PK has grown in size and influence, the more modest and humble its leaders have sounded. That goes distinctly against the evangelical grain.