c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Lyndi McCartney won’t reveal the grade she gave her husband, Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney, before he realized he had put his family at the bottom of his priority list.

Now, she proudly gives Bill McCartney a”10.” The long road they traveled from a bad to a better marriage is recounted in the new book”Sold Out: Becoming Man Enough to Make a Difference (Word),”which tells their story from the time the former University of Colorado head football coach neglected his family through his gradual return to the fold.

It’s a road they’ve walked as the evangelical Christian men’s ministry he founded makes plans to expand around the world.

Together, they’ve coped with Bill McCartney’s former battles with alcohol and anger and with his marital unfaithfulness _ an”indiscretion”that occurred more than 20 years ago and was left out of the new book.

At one point, a depressed Lyndi McCartney _ a homemaker who raised the couple’s four children largely on her own _ lost 80 pounds and considered suicide.

The couple’s book, designed, they say, to be an encouragement to others, highlights both Bill McCartney’s idolization of his football coaching career and his wife’s commitment to their marriage vow, no matter what.”My dad taught me that all you really have is your word,”Lyndi McCartney, 54, said in a joint interview here with her husband.”When I make a vow, that’s my responsibility. It isn’t dependent on somebody else. … That was my vow before the Lord.” Bill McCartney, 57, said he knew the first of the Ten Commandments was to”love the Lord your God with all your heart,”but that he wasn’t following it. Instead, he put his football career first.”There was a time when everything took a back seat to coaching,”he said.”It’s one thing to mouth the right priorities. It’s another thing to live them.” Bill McCartney admits that it was only after he retired from coaching at the University of Colorado in 1994 that he truly saw the paradox he had been living _ leading a ministry committed to faith and family while not living up to those commitments in his personal life.”I couldn’t gain a perspective,”he said.”It was very difficult to see things as they truly were.” With the 16-hour workdays of coaching behind him, the couple now has a more”normal”life, said Lyndi McCartney. Though her husband still travels with Promise Keepers, she said,”Nine out of 10 days he’s home at 4:30 or 5, sometimes even 3 _ time for a bike ride, a nice long chat, time to talk to family members together, eat dinner together.” They hope their tale of transition will prove to be a demonstration of God’s forgiveness.”He’ll forgive you,”Bill McCartney said.”Look, he forgave me. You can’t be this bad.” Part of the healing of their 35-year marriage began after Bill McCartney admitted to his wife that he had been unfaithful.”On January the 1st, 1993, I got up early in the morning,”he recalled.”I was in a hotel room in Phoenix, Ariz., getting ready to play in the Fiesta Bowl against Syracuse that day. I had been up early before the Lord for an extended period of time and I felt led to tell Lyndi about an indiscretion that I had had over 20 years before. It wasn’t an affair but I was unfaithful.” For his wife, he said, the disclosure might as well have been that he had been unfaithful the previous night. They wrote a chapter about his unfaithfulness, but because”it’s still raw,”chose not to include it in the book, he said.

But their pastor, the Rev. James Ryle of Boulder Valley Vineyard Church in Longmont, Colo., mistakenly told a New York Times reporter about the disclosure.”He had forgotten that we had elected to take it out because of the pain involved, so unwittingly he mentioned it in an interview,”Bill McCartney said.

The couple said they haven’t held the slip-up against their pastor and are still members of his church. Ryle could not be reached for comment.

The McCartneys see the disclosure as an act of God.”I have no idea how the Lord’s going to use it, but I trust his judgment,”Lyndi McCartney said.

Added her husband:”If he didn’t want it out, it wouldn’t be out.” Although most of the book focuses on his coaching, her loneliness and the slow healing of their marriage, it also spells out the hopes of the Promise Keepers ministry that were expressed at its massive Stand in the Gap rally held Oct. 4 in Washington.

In the book, which was written with David Halbrook, Bill McCartney admitted that for many men, the intense emotions of a Promise Keepers conference fades pretty quickly.”… After the white-knuckle excitement and adrenaline wore off, many who sported PK T-shirts, made vows of purity and lifted hands in worship returned home to resume their carnal, less-than-promise-keeping lifestyles,”Bill McCartney wrote.

Bill McCartney said his organization is facing that challenge by encouraging men _ as he did at Stand in the Gap _ not to try to keep their commitments to God and family by themselves, but rather, with the guidance of their pastors and the help of small groups of other Christian men.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS.)”My sense is that there’s not a community in the United States that wasn’t impacted by Stand in the Gap and the nation is reverberating,”said Bill McCartney.”Some churches are just ignited and others are certainly stirred and challenged. It’s brought out a certain change, but you can’t put your finger on it yet. You can’t tell where this thing’s going.” The book also reiterates Bill McCartney’s challenge to pastors to gather on Jan. 1, 2000, in their state capitals to proclaim that they have a”vital men’s ministry”and have worked with other churches across racial, cultural and denominational lines.

Writes Bill McCartney:”Those who decline will be making their own statement.” Asked if that was a condemnation of potential non-participants, he responded:”How could you say you’re doing a good job and not have your men standing up and being counted for the gospel of Jesus Christ? That’s an indictment. It’s not a condemnation.”

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