Teaching males “how to be a man”

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

A southern-based evangelical group, known to fill hockey stadiums for mass spiritual gatherings across the continent, converged on Arviat last week to teach Inuit men about how to be better fathers and husbands.

Two ministers from Promise Keepers Canada joined Rankin Inlet North MLA Tagak Curley, and long-time preacher David Aglukark, for a weekend conference mainly devoted to teaching males “how to be a man,” organizers said.

The organization defines a man, in part, as someone who puts his family’s needs before his own. During meetings and on their web site, they also preach against gambling, non-marital sex, masturbation and homosexuality.

The Arviat meeting, which promotional material described as being about “men of sexual purity and holiness,” marked the first time the increasingly popular organization has ventured into Nunavut, where evangelical Christian conferences are growing in size and number.

Promise Keepers, a Christian men’s ministry started by a football coach in Colorado, gained national and international attention after it formed in 1990. In the United States, thousands of men meet in sports arenas every year to hear preachers tell them how they should live.

Over 200 Inuit men, women and children from around the Kivalliq region came to the Aug. 27-29 conference at the Glad Tidings church in Arviat. People from communities including Baker Lake, Rankin Inlet, Coral Harbour, and Whale Cove attended seminars on Biblical teachings about sex, sexuality and marriage.

During the evening sermons, where women and children were allowed to join the men, several people stood in front of the crowd and told stories about how their fathers abandoned them, or how they had failed as fathers.

Ian Nairn, a staff minister for Promise Keepers Canada, said in a phone interview from Winnipeg that the conference is aimed to inspire local men to re-commit themselves to their families.

Nairn said men were encouraged to publicly announce their devotion to their wives and children, in order to heal what he described as “deep, deep wounds.”

According to Nairn, one man in his late 30s told the crowd about how he used to be an alcoholic and a drug dealer. His addictions ruled his life, and he ignored his family.

Then, when the man’s wife was dying of cancer, she made him promise to take care of their five kids.

On Sunday night, he brought his daughter, around six years old, to the front of the church, and said “You are the joy of my heart,” Nairn recalls.

“That’s pretty powerful stuff,” Nairn said. “When we’re self-centered and self-focused, it just leads to destruction and brokenness.

“That’s the bottom line.”

Nairn noted that he and other preachers came at the request of long-time Arviat preacher David Algukark, and did not invite themselves.

Hattie Alagalak, a 58-year-old minister for Glad Tidings church, said she supports bringing in southern missionaries to Nunavut because she finds it has more impact than local preachers.

“It’s always good to have other speakers, to stir up the people,” she said. “In a community, people know you so much, it’s a little harder to be believed.”

Alagalak said it was important to have a bible meeting in Nunavut that focused specifically on men, but also found the speakers appealed to women and children.

She said many troubled Nunavummiut are addicted to drugs and alcohol, gambling and suffer suicidal thoughts because they lacked a strong male role model.

“Those who grow up without a father tend to have an emptiness they’re trying to fill with other things,” she said.

Promise Keepers Canada is already planning a return visit to Nunavut, though no date has been set.

Roger Armbruster, a missionary from Manitoba, said in a report about the meeting that Nunavummiut now need to work on supporting MLA Tagak Curley’s work to exempt Nunavut from any future Supreme Court decision supporting same-sex marriages.

“Tagak needs our covering in prayer at this time,” Armbruster wrote in an e-mail. “In [Inuit] culture, God is healing the wounds that sexual promiscuity and unfaithfulness has caused.”