It’s not often a book written for men can be described as a page-turner, but that’s exactly what Rise of the Servant Kings: What the Bible Says about Being a Man by Ken Harrison, the Chairman of the Board of Promise Keepers and a onetime police officer with the LAPD, is.
Like most Christian books written for men, Rise is full of exhortations to godly living drawn from the Word of God. In fact, it is one of the most comprehensive books on male Christian life around. But what sets it apart from others is the generous serving of gripping illustrations drawn from Ken’s personal experience as a cop in one of the most violent communities in America, LA’s 77th Precinct.
For example, when Ken discusses every man’s fight with Satan, he begins by describing his first encounter with a serial murderer: (WARNING: very graphic violence ahead)
“(The deputy) nodded toward a cell across the room. ‘Go say hi to the Night Stalker.'”
“He grinned proudly like a zoo-keeper pointing out a prized baby panda. I looked toward a metal door with a tiny window. The door was set in a steel frame embedded in concrete. I boldly walked to the window and looked inside. When I saw the man inside, my bones turned to jelly.”
“I was looking into the face of pure evil.”
He stood just back from the door and looked deeply into my eyes. He stared at me as if I were an insect, and in his presence I felt like one. He was like a younger, better-looking version of Anthony Hopkins in the film The Silence of the Lambs, but Hopkins couldn’t begin to capture the sheer evil in Richard Ramirez.”
“I jumped back from the door, and the deputies laughed….”
“Ramirez was in the middle of the trial in which he’d be convicted of thirteen murders. They were the only ones we knew about. He’d broken into houses and slaughtered many men while they slept and then tortured and raped their wives next to their husbands’ bodies….”
“When my partner and I left the jail, strapping on our gun belts felt much less assuring than usual. Suddenly all the training, weight lifting, and practicing gun skills felt like nothing after seeing Ramirez. How in the world would we fight an enemy like that?”
However, one weakness of Rise of the Servant Kings is the same one I see in almost all books for Christian men: there’s is no mention of the importance of good works in a Christian man’s life. And yet, the Bible says that good works are what we men (as well as women) have been saved to do (Ephesians 2:8-10; Titus 1:16). For example, here’s Titus 2:7:
“Encourage the young men to be self controlled. Set them an example by doing good works.”
Other than this one weakness, I highly recommend Rise of the Servant Kings as an excellent resource for any men’s bible study group.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents 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
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