In the Spirit of Faith, Camaraderie

The three men gathered at the window table blend in with the morning Starbucks crowd--the harried moms fresh from carpool duty, the busy execs with cell phones glued to their ears, the college students balancing backpacks and cappuccinos.

The tall man wears a suit, carries a briefcase, strides in with the air of a man in a hurry. He is greeted by a handshake from a small man with glasses and thinning hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Across the table sits a younger man with a sunburned face, wearing jeans, work boots and a gold cross gleaming against his black T-shirt.

They talk in low tones that I cannot hear. Before long, the man in the suit opens his briefcase and reaches inside. Out comes a worn, gilt-edged Bible. And the men bow their heads.

*

They are not friends exactly, at least not in the way my friends and I would define it. They don’t talk on the phone. They don’t celebrate each other’s birthdays or meet for margaritas when one needs cheering up.

But one morning twice a month, they meet for coffee and provide for each other something they never realized they were missing--and now can’t imagine living without.

They are--in Promise Keeper vernacular--an “accountability group.” And men like them, in meetings like these, form the little-known cornerstone of a Christian men’s movement better known for its stadium rallies than the quiet, coffee shop sessions it promotes.

Another of those rallies is gearing up in Los Angeles--40,000 men are expected to visit the Memorial Coliseum tonight and Saturday to affirm their commitment to God, church, family and fellow man.

But the real promise of Promise Keepers is happening away from the rallies and revivals, among the clusters of men who meet each week in homes, churches, cafeterias and coffee shops.

There are 16,000 small groups meeting regularly across the country, the leaders of the Promise Keepers’ movement say. Most are organized through local churches; they grow and dissolve as men come and go.

Part Bible study, part self-help group, they’re liable to be as much about camaraderie and companionship as spiritual guidance, says Promise Keeper public relations director Steve Ruppe.

“It’s a chance for men to open their hearts to relationships with other men that are deeper, fuller than the casual kind of relationships men tend to have,” he says.

“Men tend to be very independent, very competitive with one another. That makes it difficult to form the kind of close relationship that . . . can strengthen your faith and help you through the kinds of struggles that all men face.”

So promise No. 2 among the Promise Keepers’ seven--just after “honoring the word of Jesus Christ” and ahead of “practicing spiritual, moral, ethical and sexual purity”--is a commitment to “pursue vital relationships with a few other men . . . brothers to help him keep his promises.”

*

Call him Ted, the sunburned guy from Starbucks in the dirty blue jeans. He runs his own landscaping firm, and scrambling for business in this El Nin~o year has left him with little time for socializing.

But he’ll delay a job if it interferes with his Promise Keeper sessions, he says. “I don’t know how to explain it really. It’s just something I need to do. . . . These guys, they keep me on track, so I don’t get stuck on the little things.”

He’s never been to a Promise Keeper rally; doesn’t make it to church each week. He agreed to join an “accountability group” after his wife confided to her brother--who heads the men’s fellowship at their Baptist church--that their marriage was falling apart.

They’ve got three daughters. His wife had a miscarriage in the fall--it would have been a son, he’s sure--and he found himself withdrawing from his family and friends, racked by sorrow he couldn’t express.

It took him weeks of listening and praying with the men in his group “. . . before I realized how angry I was, how guilty I felt because I’d failed” as a husband and father.

What helped him most, he says now, was not the praying or Bible reading. But the “confession” of a group member over coffee one morning. “He’d had a baby stillborn . . . maybe 20 years ago. And when he talked about it, his eyes got red and he started to cry. And I reached over and hugged him . . . right there in Starbucks. And I didn’t care.

“And when I went home that night, I hugged my wife. And I told her how sorry I was. And that, after all these years, I was still trying to learn how to be a man.”

I thought for a moment that Ted might cry.

But he didn’t. He climbed into his truck and headed off to meet his crew at the day’s landscaping job.

I thought of the poem I’d learned as a child . . . about having promises to keep. “And miles to go before I sleep.”

* Sandy Banks’ column is published Mondays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.