Strong Disciple Ministry

STRONG DISCIPLE

Building strong, effective, godly husbands, fathers, and men who fervently love their wives and children, and can effectively lead, guide, and win their children to be lifelong disciples and followers of Jesus Christ. And helping Christians understand and live God’s Word.

A TIME FOR CHANGE

After almost 32 years of planting and leading churches, God has led me to begin a new full-time ministry called Strong Disciple. Much of my ministry focus over the last 32 years of pastoring has been to help build healthy, effective husbands, fathers, families, and marriages. I have interacted with thousands of young people and witnessed firsthand the negative impact that emotionally distant, spiritually lazy, and absent fathers have had on their lives. It has been devastating.

I have had the privilege of mentoring and teaching many, many young men how to become more effective, loving, spiritually engaged husbands and fathers and many are seeing tremendous fruit from their efforts. I have had the chance to help these young men and their wives develop godly, biblical habits that have transformed their marriages and their family life.

I have given them the wisdom needed to help them devise a plan of action to effectively shape and guide their children’s character, to nurture their children’s hearts and souls to follow Jesus Christ and embrace God’s truth for their lives.

Using Dad’s Workshops, I have had the chance to help fathers and husbands in very practical ways understand and know how to go home and build healthy relationships with their kids and how to shape their spiritual lives and lead their families

God is leading me to make this the primary focus of the rest of my life.

THE NEED

I believe the single greatest need we face today is the need for strong, godly, effective husbands, fathers and men who are emotionally and spiritually engaged, who will rise to the challenge before us to save their children’s very lives.

We need men once again to save their wives and children from the terrifying forces of evil being waged against us. Men no longer see nor grasp the vital, crucial, God given role they are to play in their wife and children’s lives. This culture has done all it can to destroy the vital role that men and fathers are to play in their families lives.

The world, the media, and the culture are decimating our children’s moral and spiritual lives and destroying marriages. Study after study reveals this tragic, catastrophic reality: we are losing the vast majority of our children—born into Christian families—to the culture’s immoral values and practices. They grow up immersed in this godless culture and turn away from Jesus Christ!

Instead of raising children who have witnessed first hand the passionate, Christ-like love of their fathers for their mothers, who have experienced the daily demonstration of the Gospel lived out before them by a father who is in love with Jesus Christ and in love with his wife, a father that inspires in his child a desire to have their parent’s love story when they grow up, they have witnessed a father who is distant, who often does not passionately and emotionally love their mother, and is not emotionally engaged with his kids. Instead, they have witnessed a dad who is emotionally engaged and passionate about his favorite sports team, his hunting, his fishing, his tech toys, smartphone or his work.

They see a father who is complacent and leaves all the spiritual matters to his wife.

I sincerely believe and have observed from experience that most Christian men have never had the chance to witness first hand a father who passionately, emotionally and spiritually loved their mother, who showed them by their example how to be a Christian man, a godly father and a Christ-like husband.

THE GOAL

I want to show these men there is hope. God can change you. God can help you. God can use you to save your family. God can make your marriage something wonderful: a love story your kids will want for their own someday. God can help you win, inspire and train your children to love and follow Jesus Christ.

I will strive to accomplish this by personally mentoring men through emails, phone calls, and personal meetings for coffee. I will be writing weekly articles, just for them, that pass on the great wisdom and insights God has given to me over the last 46 years, to help men in their faith, in their family life and in their fathering.  These articles will provide tremendous insights and very practical ways to impact your family for Jesus Christ. My objective will be to help mentor and train fathers, husbands and young men, to help them strengthen and build their marriages.

I will also seek to help men who are in recovery from substance abuse. Men who grew up in broken homes. Men who never had the love, care and encouragement of a father in their lives. My desire is to come alongside them, and be a godly encouragement and mentor in their lives, to help them become the men God created them to be.

I will help to personally pastor you, encourage you, pray for you and help you create a custom made plan for your spiritual growth and progress and for your families spiritual progress and success.

I will help you use some of the thousands of messages on Strong Disciple to encourage you, inspire you, teach you, and impart God’s wisdom to you for winning and building your marriage and family for Jesus Christ. I will help you understand things you have never realized before.

I will help you develop godly, life sustaining habits in your personal life.

You can be a strong, effective, godly man, husband and father.

I am committed to helping you succeed.

THE REQUEST

To those of you who know me personally, or have become familiar with this ministry, I would like to ask you for your help. I need your monthly financial support to sustain me in this new ministry. Would you prayerfully consider supporting me?

Any amount you could give would be a great help. If you scroll down below you will see a place where you can sign up to be a financial partner to support me in this new ministry.

My goal is to raise all the support needed through electronic, recurring giving, rather than receiving checks in the mail. This will help streamline the ministry and keep administration to a bare minimum.

Finally to you pastors out there, having been a church planter, pastor and coaching pastors for the last 31 years, any help or encouragement I can ever offer to any of you, please feel free to write or call and ask.

Thank you very much for your help and your prayers.

Pastor Mark Darling