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I enjoyed this book a lot, and found it very effective at motivating us men to take our leadership roles more seriously in the home. Steve Farrar found a nice balance between advocating and supporting his opinions, and practical advice for putting them into real life situations. Too much focus on one can make a book too "theoretical" to be useful; too much on the other can make a book too trite to be taken seriously.
I've used "Point Man" in two different groups of men for leading discussions, and in both cases, the conversations turned out to be enjoyable, eye-opening, and even life-changing. Let's face it, men have a reputation for not turning their conversations to spiritual matters enough. This book can help conquer that stereotype, and encourage even the most passive among us to step out and try his hand at leading his family more intentionally.
Farrar's title comes from the military concept of the point man during the Vietnam war. The point man was the guy who led his men into battle, sacrificially taking the bullet if necessary to protect them. He was the first into the jungles when on the move, and often the first man down. His leadership, planning, and quick thinking could drastically affect the lives of the men he was responsible for.
The analogy is drawn to men as the natural leaders of their families. I particularly like the illustration of the "sixth man" in the changing of the guard in England. A tourist is said to have asked a staff officer what the job of the lone man standing off to the side was supposed to be. He just stands there at attention, doing nothing for most of the exercise. The commanding officer didn't know, and neither did the sixth man himself. Some research was done, and it turned out that the sixth man was supposed to hold the horses.
The point, and I think it's a valid one, is that men in our supposedly advanced society are the sixth man. We've collectively forgotten what our role used to be, and merely go through the motions thinking that those motions (primarily breadwinning, but not always that) constitute the whole of our job.
Guys, there is so much more to our roles than that! I don't care whether your wife is a "liberated" career minded lady or a more traditional type, she will appreciate you more and more as you try out the Biblical model of male leadership. It is not, I want to emphasize, an authoritarian sort of leadership, any more than Jesus was an authoritarian, harsh ruler of his disciples. Anyone who gets the idea that this topic is about "putting your foot down" has not read "Point Man" and has probably mis-read much of the Bible on the subject.
If Christ is our model, our form of leadership is an undying, sacrificial love that spurs us to serve our wives, protect them, and lead our kids into a closer relationship with both their earthly and heavenly fathers. Our job is to inspire our families to follow our lead, just as Christ worked to inspire his disciples to follow him. He didn't ridicule them or cajole them into following.
I should point out that there is some material in the book that deals with sex, both from the standpoint of marital fidelity and encouraging you to provide bold and godly advice in the sex education of your kids. Because of the graphic nature of these chapters, it would be wise to be careful about using the book with too young an audience.
Other than that, I highly recommend this book to men in any season of life. The material you can't apply in your life because it's too late, you can still help pass on to younger generations.
Note: Here are some discussion outlines I prepared:
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