by Bill Perkins
published in 2009 by Tyndale
Summary: Bill is a pastor, speaker and now founder and CEO of the Million Mighty Men. He has degrees from both The University of Texas in Austin and the Dallas Theological Seminary. Writing from his pastoral experience as a counselor he has tackled a difficult subject for many of us, anger. The title captures the crux of the issue, what do we do with our anger as Christian men? We are striving to be good husbands, fathers, friends, Christians and yet we get angry and sometimes even blow a gasket or two particularly at those we love. Bill starts the book with an overall look at anger to help us all be on the same page as to how we understand anger, its cause and whether we consider it healthy or unhealthy. He then introduces the Christian matrix through which his book is going to be presented, as that is the purpose of this book, to use our relationship with Christ to mold us into a pattern of expressing our anger in a healthy and edifying way rather than using it to tear down and destroy. The rest of the book is devoted to presenting different ways to deal with different sources of anger, from our spouse and children to those we work with and go to church with. He uses stories to help us connect to the situation in a personal way while still enabling us to apply the principles in our own life. The book concludes with a section for the reader to begin to address his own anger and to start to tell his story and begin to craft a new ending.
Review: I picked up this book in the context of counseling. I have had a number of situations where I have been counseling couples or men where anger is a definite contributing problem and I hoped to uncover some insights into how I can be of help as a pastoral counselor. The book provided that and more, not only did it provide me some concrete examples and tools that I can use in a counseling environment, but it also helped me look at my own anger and the ways I choose to express it. Perkins does a great job of presenting Biblical solutions that are practical and easily implemented in our lives. There is no "pie in the sky" here where he is saying, "just let Jesus take your anger and everything will be okay." He acknowledges that we do get angry, that we are going to get angry through out our lives, that Jesus even got angry; but we must learn how to express it appropriately. Anyone can benefit from reading this book; for pastors it gives good insight into those we counsel and ourselves and it is a tool that we can send home with men who are struggling with this issue; for the lay person this is a book that will give you a mirror to look at the ways you express your anger and an instruction manual to help you express it in a more edifying manner. It is well written, the flow and pacing makes it a quick read and having finished it I find myself wanting to read some of his other books.
Recommendation: YES
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