Hi, I’m Dave. I owe a massive amount to the Firestarter community, and was thrilled when I was invited to share a little something I’ve been working on with you all.
Let’s go back. In 2018 the church where I was a leader was at a crossroads: keep on as we were (and expect the same results) or explore new things? As part of my personal exploration of that question, I was encouraged to attend a Firestarter event in Reading. I mean this very literally: thank God!
What I heard challenged, stretched and excited me. People I met have become friends, mentors and colleagues in ministry. And in very concrete ways, it changed my ministry and the way I approach it. But I likely don’t need to convince you how great Firestarters is, and that’s not why I’ve been asked to contribute this blog. No, I’ve been asked to share about a book I’ve written, released next month.
But the reason I start back in 2018 is that it’s around then that I was (in part inspired by Firestarters) really investigating discipleship and disciple-making as foundational to any hope for churches to grow in healthy ways. If you’re a church leader, you know this. We know we can’t do the work of ministry and make disciples by ourselves. No, our job is to equip the saints for works of ministry and to make disciples who go on and make more disciples that we ever could by ourselves. We all know that, especially with our Baptist priority on the priesthood of all believers.
That’s not always how it feels though, is it? The Great Commission vision of disciples who make disciples can feel worlds away from our own contexts. And, at least in my own experience, that’s often because the quality of our discipleship isn’t always up to the task Jesus gives us. The hardware can’t handle the software. If my own discipleship isn’t healthy, what hope do I have of making healthy disciples who can go and do the same?
So that’s what the book is about. It’s called ‘The DNA of Healthy Discipleship’ and it’s all about the kinds of discipleship Jesus had in mind when he gave the Great Commission. I pick up clues Jesus gives in that commission to the disciples, and build up a picture of what I call the CODE of healthy discipleship DNA. That ‘CODE’ is made up of:
- Confidence, to let Jesus truly be Lord and King over everything instead of putting our weight on things that can’t hold us.
- Obedience, to do what Jesus commands and discover the true freedom found in submission to him and pursuit of his path in our lives.
- Dependence, to draw deeply from the well of spiritual resource that Jesus makes available to us instead of acting in our own strength.
- Experience, to grow and mature with Jesus over the long haul of our lives instead of settling and standing still.
The book does a few things for each of those. It explores why each is so important and builds a biblical picture, then gives five practical tools for each to actually develop it as a stronger part of someone’s discipleship, and then it applies all of that to the Great Commission itself. It isn’t a practical ‘how to’ guide for making disciples – there are some brilliant books like that out there, but this isn’t trying to be one of them! What it is, though, is a ‘who to become’ guide for anyone who is a follower of Jesus and wants to take that seriously. My hope and prayer is that it will be a gift to Christians who wish to be formed more deeply, and a gift to leaders who wish that for those they lead.
Two of the friends I’ve made due to Firestarters are Alex Harris and Chrissy Remsberg. I’m so grateful to Alex for writing the foreword to the book, and to Chrissy for inviting this article to share a little about it. It’s not an exaggeration to say the book is a crystallisation of things sparked at that very first Firestarters event and have come to discover more and more deeply since.
The book is out on 12th September. If you’d like to see more about it and what others have said about it, you can head to www.davecriddle.com or drop me a line at dave@davecriddle.com.
Contributed by: Dave Criddle. Dave leads a church in Sheffield seeking to do discipleship and mission in creative ways, and learning lots through the process. He’s married to Natalie and they have a little boy called Jed.