Through a Glass Brightly
Pat Morley, the Man in the Mirror
By Rob Swanson

      Pat Morley is like a reflection in a funhouse mirror, but rather than getting more and more distorted, this reflection becomes closer to the ideal with each generation.

      Pat is the author of Man in the Mirror, a bestselling call to masculine hope. He comes by his topic honestly; his personal lineage suffered from broken male leadership that, by the grace of God, he managed to escape. Man in the Mirror graduated from book to ministry when the response to his message displayed the universal needs of the Christian male. Now Pat heads up a gigantic organization that is as much business as it is ministry, reaching men from the boardroom to the pulpit.

      I spoke with him over the phone rather than in person. I was concerned that the interview would suffer from the lack of presence, but I needn’t have worried. Pat is a warm, humble man who practices the transparency he writes of in his books. When he was informed he was the cover story for December, he said, “Wow, your standards are low!”

      He may think so, but as leader of a ministry courting revival in America, we can’t agree. What kind of man makes it his mission to reach the souls of men? One who has seen the difference authentic Christianity can make where it impacts most; his own family.

      “My father, in 1929, was deserted by his father when he was two,” Pat begins. “My story starts in Pine Hills when my parents moved to Florida. I was the oldest of four boys, and as we grew up, Mom and Dad realized they needed to get some moral and religious instruction for these tykes. So they joined a church.”

      Pat filled me in on his father – he held two jobs at the age of six, one on a bread truck and the other delivering newspapers. He had an incredible work ethic, and he was determined not to abandon his children as his father had abandoned him. “But he was unexampled in how to be a godly father or husband, so he joined a church. The church they chose had a vision to put my father to work, but no vision for discipleship. So he responded to the work of the church, becoming the top layman there. Then something happened in the church and Mom and Dad just burned out. There was no foundation in Christ, just work, work, work. After that, they left the church and never went back.”

      Up until then, Pat’s family had moved along all right, but after, he says, “the wheels came off the wagon. I dropped out of high school my senior year, my next brother followed me and eventually died of a heroin overdose…” he related some other family tragedies making me wonder how he found his way to Christ.

      “I know it sounds like a terrible story so far, but then I met Patsy. At the age of 24, God in His grace grafted the Gospel back into my family lineage through my wife’s family line. Patsy, my wife, led me to Christ.” Pat wound up at Orangewood Presbyterian Church, where Pastor Chuck Green had a vision for discipleship.

      Pat boiled down his approach to ministry in a few sentences. “My father and I have the same DNA, right? He wanted the same thing that I want and we both went to church to find it. The only difference I can see is that he was in a church that didn’t have a vision to disciple, and I was in a church that did.”

      Pat was hitting his stride then, getting fired up for the home stretch. “The reason I’m so passionate about discipleship is that there are men in churches just like my Dad and Granddad. Some of those men are going to pull the plug on the whole thing, and walk away from their family like my Grandfather. Then there are men just like my Dad, in church for the right reasons, they have good hearts trying to succeed, but if we only have a vision for the work, they’re going to burn out just like my Dad.”

      Pat continues, “The Bible has something to say about that: ‘Go and make disciples of men.’ It doesn’t say ‘go make work,’ it says, ‘pray about the work.’ I’m afraid that we’re getting it wrong. We’re making work and praying about disciples. That’s totally backwards.”

      That’s a serious charge, and a sobering one. From the outside, they look alike; the worker appears to be serving God even as the disciple does. How do you tell the difference?

      The worker, Pat tells me, feels a little bit of resentment; a building bitterness that begins with the fear that the church is using him, and therefore using him up. He performs out of a sense of duty.

      The disciple, however, is so filled to the overflow with his own personal relationship with Christ that he cannot be happy unless he does something to serve Christ. He is compelled to service out of gratitude.

      Twenty years ago, out of his own discipleship, Pat and his wife were a “host couple” of Campus Crusade’s Executive Ministries. They hosted dinner parties for business executives and their wives that featured evangelistic speakers. From that, Pat hit on the idea of starting a Bible study for those who came to Christ.

      Ironically, not one of the executives attending the dinner party ever came, but others did, eventually by the hundreds. The teachings were grace-based, application oriented Bible studies. “I figured we needed a Bible study that would contextualize the Bible for men trying to live out the Christian life here in Orlando today. The men attending were already trying to figure out how to do it right, so let’s not beat ‘em up, let’s love ‘em. I was trying to connect the dots for these men between what’s going on in the Bible and today’s hectic lifestyle, so how do these things relate to each other?”

      If you’ve read Man in the Mirror, you no doubt see the parallels between Pat’s Bible study philosophy and his book. “That’s right, I sensed God telling me to capture all this in a manuscript. Let me digress for a minute,” Pat said. “I was into my thirties before I realized that I was not the only one facing the temptations and challenges of life. I thought I was alone with all these secret thoughts. Once I became a Christian it dawned on me that everyone has the same things in their head. So I started teaching out of that and it resonated with the men.” Even serving out of the overflow of gratitude, Pat still had his Real Estate job and family, so he kept pushing writing off. After six months, though, he believed himself to be disobedient. “I never thought anything but that God wanted me to write it down to clarify my teachings in my own head.” A publisher convinced him otherwise, though, so he wrote it, the publisher published it, and the book died on the vine. With little movement on the book, a promotional scheme was created. 7000 free copies were given away to pastors who were invited to pick it up. They did, they liked it, and word-of-mouth made it a 3-million-copy bestseller.

      Man in the Mirror Ministry took off from there. Or should I say, floundered from there for several years. While Men’s Ministry seemed a natural in hindsight, at the time Pat spread his focus to racial reconciliation, family counseling, and all kinds of things. “I didn’t want to miss God, you know? Then the Lord narrowed our focus to exclusively men. Our mission is to train leaders to disciple men. We work with churches all over America and the world.” To that end, Pat has a new book out called No Man Left Behind. From that come seminars of the same name.

      With partnerships and affiliate programs, and a website replete with resources and media, Man in the Mirror appears to be as much business as ministry. As always, Pat has a practical view of that. “Really, business and ministry; what’s the difference? They have much more in common than they have difference. Ministry is the objective, but if it’s not run effectively, then you’re wasting God’s resources. All effective business practices are found in the Bible anyway.”

      It is clear from his comments and his writings that Pat Morley is a keen observer. I asked him what he saw in Orlando and received an uplifting answer. “I think Orlando is a robust Christian community with a tradition of men with vision. We have people who truly are trying to live out their faith for the betterment of the community.”

      As for the problems facing men today? “If I had to say just one, it’s that men are tired. Not just physically, but morally, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, financially, everything... We’ve created a culture that requires more energy than we have to give. The result is a lot of brokenness. There are 72 million children in America. Thirty-three percent of them do not live with their biological father. There has to be something systemically wrong with a society where a third of the children have been abandoned by their father. Therefore, I think that helping men to retreat a little, to do more self-examination, to think deeply about what it is to be Christian man. The hope – and there is hope – is in discipleship.”
      So, how’s the man in your mirror”

Pat Morley’s Bible study continues today every Friday morning at 6:50 in the Winter Park Civic Center. It lets out at 8:00 a.m. sharp and it includes a short message from Pat followed by table discussions. All men are welcome, so check it out. For more information, check www.maninthemirror.org.