Patrick Morley, author of The Man in the Mirror: Solving the 24 problems men face, is the founder and Executive Chairman of Man in the Mirror. After building his commercial real estate business into one of Florida’s 100 largest privately owned companies, Morley started a Bible study in a bar with a small group of men in 1986 that grew into the national and international men’s ministry it is today.
The Man in the Mirror, Patrick Morley’s signature book, has been translated into numerous languages and is one of the most widely distributed men’s ministry books in the world, with over 3 million copies in print. (The book can be purchased in bulk, 48 for $79.00.)
The Man in the Mirror is nothing if not practical. One can think of it as a Christian version of a self-help book.
Patrick Morley has some excellent advice on the many issues he covers, centering around six key problem areas in men’s lives: identity problems, relationship problems, money problems, time problems, temperament problems, and integrity problems.
The book is essentially wisdom literature for modern Christian men. The discussion questions at the end of each chapter make it a good resource for stimulating discussion in men’s small groups on these important subjects.
I always appreciate seeing a clear presentation of the gospel in men’s ministry books, and we certainly see the gospel presented clearly in The Man in the Mirror (p. 301). And although I wish Patrick Morley had devoted more space to the topic, he does commit two pages to the important subject of good works (pp 226, 227).
There are moments of honesty and transparency in The Man in the Mirror, such as when Morley tells us about what he was like as a non-Christian when he married his wife, or when he describes the constant chronic migraines he had to endure at another point in his life. But the book can be excessively cerebral and sometimes reads like a to-do list from the final walkthrough on one of Patrick Morley’s former commercial building projects.
The scope of the book is very broad, covering “the 24 problems men face” in twenty-four chapters, resulting in sometimes superficial treatments of such involved topics as marriage and finances. (More on this later.)
Another problem with the book is that it comes off as elitist. The target audience for the book is obviously upper-class Christian businessmen and business owners, not hourly and blue-collar workers.
What Patrick Morley makes clear from his illustrations again and again is that he has been a successful Christian businessman who feels most comfortable with other successful businessmen.
There are many examples:
- “The business had finally started to do reasonably well. …after I started to have some success, [the] bank president acted like we were long-lost buddies.” p. 119
- “An out-of-town investment partner and I reviewed by phone the terms of a good-sized transaction I was negotiating with a third party…” p. 107
- “To improve his family’s income, Brian started a trucking company…” p. 122
- “What is your career ambition? Is it to be significant in your industry, to be an authority figure, to make a lot of money, to win prestige, to gain respect, to be important, to be “somebody”?” p. 108
- “A gift store owner arrived at his store…” p. 242
- “The owner of an insurance agency…” p. 242
- “In commerce, every man is accountable to someone. Even the self-employed owner is accountable to his customers and clients. I owned my own business…” p. 353
- “Kyle was a small building contractor known for the high quality of his work…” p. 321
- “A man became very successful in the real estate brokerage business. A hopeful protégé asked him how he was able to excel to such heights…” p. 325
- “John told Bill he would be at the open house for Bill’s new office…” p. 326
- “The investors counted on being in and out of the land deal in two or three years…” p. 328
- “At the end of World War II, three brothers (one of whom is my father-in-law) started a flying school…” p. 329
- “A friend passed along some sound advice for the man who runs his own business…” p. 367
On the other hand, in one of the few instances where Morley mentions a blue-collar worker in an illustration, he portrays him in a negative light.
“A cab driver offered me a blank receipt. “You fill it in however you want,” he said. “No, that’s okay. You see, I’m a Christian. That wouldn’t be right.” After a long, blank stare, he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Okay, buddy, whatever you say.” p. 324-325
Because of this bias, it is difficult to imagine an electrician, teacher, janitor – or cab driver — reading this book and being able to identify with it.
Furthermore, Man in the Mirror displays unconscious (or conscious) arrogance in the book’s subtitle: “solving the 24 problems men face.”
That is quite an assertion. “Men, this book is going to solve all of your problems, and there are exactly twenty-four of them!” Not twenty-three. Not twenty-five. Twenty-four.
Not only does Patrick Morley know how many problems all men have and what their solutions are, but he can solve each of them for us with just one chapter per problem. “There, solved that problem. Check. Next problem.”
A better (and humbler) subtitle might be: “Addressing 24 problems men frequently face.”
That is, this book is dealing with twenty-four of the many problems men may face, and the chapters that deal with them are starting points or suggestions for how one might go about solving them, not the ultimate answers to these problems.
Then, after acknowledging that these chapters are just starting points for dealing with their particular problem, each chapter could have references at the end to books or online links as resources for additional in-depth help.
Speaking about solving men’s problems, what about the good works men have been saved to do that solve other people’s problems? Instead of just two pages, why not devote an entire chapter (or even a book) to how we go about doing that? It’s great to learn how to bear one’s own burdens, but how do we bear the burdens of others?
Wisdom literature like Man in the Mirror is essential and helpful. But there is more to men’s ministry than the wisdom we need to meet our own felt needs. The Book of Proverbs gives us wisdom to meet our felt needs too. But if all we had in the Bible was the Book of Proverbs, we would be in deep trouble.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North America and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt widows, single moms and fatherless children in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church at newcommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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