Miguel A. Betancourt II
Brian Kautz
Barry L. Widder
Jeff Johansen

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Date: 04 Aug 95 22:00:32 EDT
From: "Miguel A. Betancourt II" <73561.2044@compuserve.com>
To: "David W. Cloud" 
Subject: Re: PK

Greetings! Hope today was a good day for you.

We have three men in our church (avg. Sun. AM attendance is 200-250) who have been "hoodwinked by PK." One man is responsible for getting the other two involved and has been pushing PK amongst others in the congregation. [Even though he has angered several laymen for his persistence in promoting PK when the church and its leadership will not officially support it, I am the one accused of being divisive and stirring up trouble!] In addition to conversations that I have had with him, our pastor has also spoken to him about PK (its ecumenism, etc.). I don't believe the talking has done any good, much less any of the info. that has been presented to him. He travels from church to church promoting the PK program (by invitation of course) and has very close ties with PK staff members in Atlanta. Presently he is in Florida on official PK business. As far as helping you to understand the rationale behind all this, the observation you mentioned in a pevious note (8/2) to me may very well be true:

"I don't believe the fidelity to pastoral authority runs very deep in men influenced by PK, though. Consider this scenario: A group of men in a supposedly Bible-believing church get involved in PK and come to their pastor and tell him that they are going to support him in every way possible. I'm just guessing, but I have a strong feeling based on experience in this type of thing that if that same pastor were to speak plainly to his men about the apostasy and deep compromise of the PK leaders and if he were to plainly instruct them in biblical separation and warn them to avoid such men and movements, those same men would oppose him. I believe that when PK philosophy would run counter to the pastor's philosophy, the men would tend to support PK."

Although this man vocalizes his total support and submission to our pastor, and is faithful (when able) to attend church services and Sunday 8:30 am men's prayer meeting, yet by his activity and heavy involvement in the planning of PK rallies and conferences, he shows his unwillingness to give any serious consideration to what his shepherd has been saying. Perhaps your "strong feeling" is a correct assessment as to the reason why loyalty to PK ultimately seems to supersede loyalty to the scriptural admonitions given to him.

I know of other fundamental churches who have been informed and warned about PK yet some of their men have participated in it. One rather large, influential fundamental Baptist church in the upstate had around thirty men travel to the PK conference in Atlanta. In Michigan, a couple of pastors have informed me that in spite of the warnings given, they had a few men attend the PK rally in the Silverdome

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Date: Sat, 5 Aug 1995 10:24:02 -0400
To: dcloud@wayoflife.org (David W. Cloud)
From: bkautz@postoffice.ptd.net (brian kautz)

Subject: Re: Promise Keepers

>1. Have men in your church or in other separtistic churches in your area become involved with PK in spite of the pastor's position against PK?

No one that I am aware of. It is big in the pentacostal churches in the area though.

>2. How do these men respond when their pastor speaks to them about the error of PK?

N/A

>3. Do PK supporters really strengthen Fundamental New Testament churches?

Can't happen. Their philosophy of compromise has to weaken the true Fundamentalist position. Wish I could help you with actual experiences, but on the other hand, am thankful that I can not.

Keep up the good work.

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Date: Sat, 5 Aug 1995 08:09:19 -0400
From: BLWidder@aol.com
To: dcloud@wayoflife.org

Subject: Re: Promise Keepers

Dear Pastor Cloud:

I will pass the info that you sent along to the author of the recent Visitor article, The Seven False Premises of Promise Keepers.

I read your letter from Pastor Nixdorf. It is sad that a movement that proposes to be doing right in essence is leading men away from the clear teaching of Scripture. PK is teaching men to base doctrinal integrity on experience. These men will never come to an understanding of II Corinthians 6:11 - 7:1 or any other passage teaching separation or any other doctrine if they base it upon the standard of their experience at a PK rally or otherwise. Dr. Bob's famous quote, "It is never right to do something wrong to get a chance to do something right." The Lord gave us the doctrine of separation for the purity of life and for the purity of the Gospel and His church. It never ceases to amaze me how many people are blind to the long term effect of things. What seems like a great blessing today could be the downfall of the church tomorrow. A church will not remain pure if its men are involved with PKs. I wonder how long the men will remain pure?

In regard to your question about men attending PK rallies. I do not believe that anyone from our church has attended one of these rallies.

Over the last year I have come across a few people who have attended these rallies. They were very encouraged by them. At that time I did not have much info about them, but from what I had read I could not understand how a fundamentalist could be blessed by these rallies. So I encouraged our editor, Pastor John Ashbrook, to see that an article about PK would be printed in the Visitor not to encourage our men to go to PK rallies but to warn them of the dangers.

If I come across any other info, I will pass it along.

For His Glory,

Barry L. Widder

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Date: Sat, 5 Aug 1995 15:15:12 -0700
To: dcloud@wayoflife.org (David W. Cloud)
From: iowajeff@netins.net (Jeff Johansen)

Subject: Re: Promise Keepers

>As most of your know, we have run several articles in O Timothy magazine exposing the danger of the Promise Keepers movement. We have also placed 10 articles on Promise Keepers at the Way of Life Web site--http://www.wayoflife.org/

OK.. I'll check this out! While our pastor does not support it, many from my Baptist church go and I have been tempted myself. After sun eve service last week I discussed this with some that went. There position is, yes while there are charasmatics there, the messages are fundamentally sound and this is what they go to hear. With a crowd that large open to the public, you will get lots of diff groups of believers and unbleievers there. Also they said the ones who are critical have not themselves been. Anyway.. this is what they said. I may print this off for them to read, as well as some Way of Life Web articles and try and get thier responses for you.

Again thx!!

Jeff

PS. Our Pastor, while not supporting PK did say he has seen nothing but good come out of it in the lives of the men who went from our church.

PSS. I have heard many churches in Illinois having near splits over this matter.