THE Church of England aspires to seeing all believers “envisioned, resourced and released to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in the whole of life” (Vision and Strategy). Most dioceses similarly highlight the fostering of discipleship among their key priorities.
But, at congregational level, the forming of engaged whole-life disciples can feel daunting. How do we help new believers to begin the journey of following Jesus? or help long-time believers better live out their faith in the real world? Guy Donegan-Cross is Director of Learning for Discipleship and Mission in the diocese of Birmingham. His two new books seek to provide a resource for congregations to do just that.
Both are designed for individual or group use. The first and significantly shorter of the two, Start This Way, introduces the whole idea of discipleship: its roots, definitions, and characteristics. The style is accessible, and its emphases are well judged: our discipleship is a response to divine love, not a list of things to do; my story is part of God’s big story; to be a disciple is to be more fully myself; faith is not adding a bit of spirituality to life, but, rather, opening my eyes to a world alive with the presence of God.
One helpfully contemporary chapter addresses the quest for identity in our day, and explores the ways in which discipleship might reframe the issues. There is a recurrent focus on the believer’s own feelings — what it “feels like” to live as a disciple of Jesus. This is clearly deliberate, and marks a shift from an earlier generation of devotional paperbacks, which tended to view feelings as irrelevant distractions.
The second book, Walk This Way, is essentially an inventory of everyday discipleship. It begins with the biblical image of a disciple as an apprentice, and goes on to unpack the value of particular spiritual disciplines. There follows a series of chapters on growing in Christian character. The book ends with chapters on being a “missionary disciple” who heeds God’s call to participate in mission and social justice.
Occasionally the author’s analogies are less than helpful. In the first book, he describes an Elvis superfan, whose entire life is Elvis-themed, and “Miley Cyrus Guy”, whose whole body is tattooed with images of the pop star. Both, he says, illustrate the principle that we all base our lives on something or someone. Really? To me, these characters just sounded unhinged and a little creepy.
Each of the two books can be read in isolation, or used sequentially in an extended study of discipleship — for example, after a Christian-basics or enquirers’ course. If I were leading a small group, I would be tempted to dive straight in with the second book, Walk This Way. It starts in the right place, with Jesus’s rabbinic model of discipleship, it is usefully earthed in everyday life, and its inventory of discipleship issues covers all the essentials.
The Revd Mike Starkey is a London-based writer, and former Head of Church Growth for the diocese of Manchester.
Discipleship: Start This Way: Beginning to live as an everyday Christian disciple
Guy Donegan-Cross
BRF £9.99
(978-1-80039-375-2)
Church Times Bookshop £8.99
Discipleship: Walk This Way: Living the life of an everyday Christian disciple
Guy Donegan-Cross
BRF £14.99
(978-1-80039-373-8)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49