Passage Event Challenges Thousands of Boys to Become Men of Integrity, Nov. 1-2

DENVER, Colo., Nov. 5, 2002 — Promise Keepers' Passage extreme-teen youth event finished off the organization's 2002 17-city conference season with a bang Nov. 1-2 in Anaheim, Calif. The two-day conference reached the next generation of youth with high-octane music, wild bicycling exhibitions, and challenging talks for teenage guys ages 13-18.

“When my dad first told me about Passage, I thought it was awesome,” said Mitchell, who attended the Nov. event with his father.

Promise Keepers created Passage, part of the men’s organization’s 17-city 2002 nationwide conference season, after recognizing the tremendous opportunity to positively impact teenage boys at an impressionable age. The event encouraged participants to live out faith and virtue in their homes, schools, and churches. It also featured high-energy music from bands Delirious and Salvador and a six-week follow-up curriculum study led by local mentors in area churches.

“In 12 years, we have held 140 stadium and arena events, reaching 4.9 million men,” said Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney, “but the Passage events have the potential to be the most important project Promise Keepers has ever launched. This is our window of opportunity to help shape the decisions of young men as they transition to adulthood.”

BACKGROUNDPassage continues Promise Keepers’ long history of innovation and famous firsts. Promise Keepers packed tens of thousands of men into sports stadiums in the mid 90s and gathered a reported one million men to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for 1997’s Stand in the Gap, the largest religious event in U.S. history.

A Passage webcast archive is available at www.promisekeepers.org.

By Albert H. Lee