Changing lives through discipleship

Feasts, mentoring, and spiritual disciplines—how do they connect? For Des Deehan in Lancaster, they’re powerful tools for fostering true discipleship.

On the Sunday that Michael first visited Father’s House Church, senior minister Des Deehan was teaching about discipleship.

“If anyone wants to be discipled, and if you’re not sure what that means, come and talk to me,” he said.

Michael, a student at Lancaster University, asked Des about his offer. Des explained it would involve spending time learning about Jesus in order to become one of his disciples.

The pair began to meet.

“We spent time studying, but I also told Michael he could talk about anything he liked, whether he thought it was spiritual or not,” says Des. “He told me he was from Portugal and was a pastor’s son but that he’d fallen away, got into substance abuse and wasn’t living a great life. He wasn’t happy, then friends had invited him to church.

“As we met to talk and study the Bible, he grew and grew.

“What’s more, around 20 other students came to our church and pretty much all of them can be pinpointed to this one lad becoming a disciple who shared the gospel.

“To me, this is discipleship and it’s our heart as a church.”

Spiritual disciplines

Father’s Heart Church is actively involved in various forms of discipleship. Des and his wife Fen regularly invite couples and students to their home to discuss life and faith, as they once did with Michael. They also help Darren and Jackie Johnson run their Seedbed discipleship course from King’s Church in Warrington.

In this vein, one topic that has been of particular interest to Des over the past year has been spiritual disciplines.

“What’s really on my heart is this continuing journey of seeing people become disciples who make disciples,” he says. “People can be Christians for a long time, yet struggle with so many issues. We want to help them get to a place where they can fully experience the help the Holy Spirit can bring.

“Spiritual disciples are useful here – basics like prayer, fasting, Bible study, meditation, generosity, a servant heart, time out and silence while we wait to hear from God.

“These were common disciplines for the early church that have had a massive impact over the years, but they’ve somewhat fallen away and we’re the poorer for that.

“I’ve been trying to rediscover them and see how we can gently bring them back,” he says.

Community steps up

A number of years ago, Father’s House Church was broken into. The building was trashed, food set out for the next day’s café was dumped on the floor and doors and windows were damaged. But when police asked the church to post pictures of the mess on social media they were heartened by the unexpected love shown by their community.

“Our post generated more than 50,000 views, 2,500 personal responses and offers from tradesman to do repairs for free,” says Des. “We had no idea we were that well-known or how the community felt about us.”

A message from a football team caught Des’s eye in particular: “We’re going to organise a charity five-a-side and get all the teams around Lancaster to raise money for our Father’s House,” it read.

“The guy who wrote it had never darkened the door of the church. I said to him, ‘You’ve put our Father’s House.’ He said, ‘Well, it’s our community church isn’t it? Everybody knows you because of what you do for the community and we wanted to give something back.’

“To me,” says Des, “it was like where Joseph says that what was meant for harm God meant for good.

“It’s a snapshot of how you beaver away doing what God has called you to do – in our case loving people and building relationships with the goal of seeing people becoming disciples.

“We’ve seen people come to faith and get baptised through the café, but it shocked us how many people in the wider community know what we do and what we stand for.”

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.