cover image Sold Out

Sold Out

Bill McCartney, David Halbrook. Thomas Nelson Publishers, $19.99 (400pp) ISBN 978-0-8499-1515-4

As PromiseKeepers founder Bill McCartney tells it in this spiritual autobiography, he has been sold out all his life. He opens with a harrowing account of a drunk-driving episode in which, drunk from celebrating a football victory, he drove his car full of passengers into a police car. Sold out to alcohol through much of his college and early married life, McCartney was also sold out to athletics. Early in his football coaching career at the University of Michigan, McCartney described the game as his God. He tells us that he neglected his family and, when he did pay them attention, was a rigid disciplinarian who would not get close to his children. But, in 1974, McCartney experienced what he calls an ""adult conversion,"" which led him to try to understand what God might truly require of a man who wished to be a devoted husband and father. In the latter half of the book, McCartney recounts his struggles to be a good Christian, his resignation from the head coaching position at the University of Colorado and his founding of PromiseKeepers as an organization that would encourage Christian men to seek holiness. McCartney's wife, Lyndi, writes chapters in which she offer her insights into McCartney's life--as well as a woman's positive view of PromiseKeepers. An epilogue contains testimonials from McCartney's children about the positive changes in their father's life. On the whole, McCartney's book offers important insights into his own reasons for founding PromiseKeepers as well as his vision for the organization. (Dec.)