This month we’ve published Discipleship: Start This Way and Discipleship: Walk This Way. Author Guy Donegan-Cross reflects on the inspiration that led him to write the books, and his hopes for his readers.
27 April 2025
What does it mean?
Discipleship: Start This Way and Discipleship: Walk This Way came out of three questions and one experience.
I was asked the first question when I was leading a church away day on discipleship. It was all going well until one person, who was sitting there looking a little perplexed, could hold it in no longer:
‘I don’t know why we use this word. It’s old and outdated and no one really understands what it means!’
She was not alone. I’ve heard this sentiment expressed numerous times about the word ‘discipleship’. Even though every denomination names it as the priority, and I am convinced that being and making disciples is the one thing – the only thing – that Jesus calls us to, confusion and disagreement reign.
Discipleship: Start This Way and Discipleship: Walk This Way are my response to this question: an attempt to offer a clear way through any confusion about discipleship, to demystify it and provide a guide to what difference it makes for an ordinary Christian to live as a disciple. I hope my books will help people and churches to put making disciples at the core of our existence.
‘I don’t know why we use this word. It’s old and outdated and no one really understands what it means!’
The answer was no!
The second question was one I asked someone else.
In my role as discipleship and mission enabler for the diocese of Birmingham I was able, during lockdown, to write a comprehensive series of resources to help grow disciples. After 18 months I had over 110 group sessions and a lot of content. I put it all together, sent it to a Christian literary agent, and asked whether it might become a book.
His answer was, ‘No.’
‘Go back to a blank sheet of paper,’ he said, ‘and write the book you want to read.’
So, drawing on that lockdown material, I did just that. I wrote the books I would want to give to ordinary Christian disciples: the kind of books you might give to people who are confused about what this amazing Christian life means, or to people who want to know how to start, or to church leaders who have done a Christian basics course with people but are asking ‘What next?’
I wrote the books I would want to give to ordinary Christian disciples.
The third question: what’s the difference?
The third question was one I kept asking myself as I wrote and reflected on my theme. It is this: most people, whether or not they call themselves Christians, live pretty much the same lives as anyone else on the planet. We all eat, sleep, work, see our friends, go shopping, seek entertainment… So how does being an ordinary Christian disciple feel any different? How do we understand what it means to be a disciple, but more importantly what does it mean in our lived experience?
A simple, two-part framework developed: the first looks at how discipleship begins – its heart, foundations and daily attitude; the second looks at how it is lived – its lifestyle, character and aim.
This was the catalyst God used to get me to write these books for publication this month, but my conviction that discipleship is the centre of human existence – the thing we are all made for – and my passion for communicating this conviction, began with an experience many years previously.
Most people, whether or not they call themselves Christians, live pretty much the same lives as anyone else on the planet.
A (disturbing) experience
I had gone on a weekend retreat with a group of friends to a beautiful, ramshackle house in the North Yorkshire countryside.
The retreat leader began by taking us outside into the garden and putting spades in our hands. As we stood there, slightly perplexed, he quietly dug a hole, about half a metre squared, before straightening up and looking at us with a worryingly mischievous expression.
‘There is a group of monks who, every morning of their lives, will dig a hole.’
We stared at this strange gardener and waited.
‘They are beginning the day by digging a part of their own grave. When they have completed a whole grave after a month or so, they will then fill a little of it in every day. Once the cycle is complete, they will repeat it, again and again, until the time comes when they will actually occupy the plot themselves.’
We shuffled nervously. This was not what had come to mind when we were thinking about a ‘weekend retreat’. And we certainly were not expecting the next instruction.
‘If you would like to, why don’t you dig your own hole?’
There is nothing like digging your own grave to get you to focus on your life’s priorities and give you fresh perspective. As I saw the earth making way between my feet, I realised that my body would one day be part of it, along with so many of the things that I clung to for meaning or which preoccupied my mind. As Teresa of Ávila wrote in her famous prayer, ‘all things are passing’.
There is nothing like digging your own grave to get you to focus on your life’s priorities and give you fresh perspective.
Crucial choices
Imagine your regrets folding into the earth with you. The job you didn’t get no longer feels so crucial to the meaning of your life. The grudge you carry because someone ignored you seems less important. The places you haven’t lived, things you haven’t owned, the money you haven’t earned, the lottery ticket you never bought, people you haven’t known, fame you haven’t attained… all things are passing.
As the spade turns and you let go of those wounds or impossible dreams, you find yourself asking, ‘What am I here for? What have I done that really matters? What do I really want for the rest of my life?’
It is a disturbing experience, but an important one: afterwards, the time that you have with your loved ones seems even more precious. The choices you have left to make are more important. The world you live in feels a greater gift than it did yesterday. Your choices about what you place at the centre of your life feel even more vital.
Digging that hole excavated my heart. It reminded me about what will last, that the worth of my life is found in what I am committed to and in whom I love. The spade said, ‘You are not the centre of the universe. Life does not revolve around you. A healthy human being lives for something other than themselves.’
We are all disciples, all following someone, all prioritising certain things in life, whether we realise it or not, whether we notice it, appreciate it, develop it, respond to it… or not. It is this conviction that has led to these books, and I hope they will inspire and help others to dig into the heart of what it means to centre our ordinary lives around Jesus, and to live confidently as the disciples he made us to be.
