One to One with David Holden

A few days before David Holden flew to South Africa with Liz in late September, Nigel Ring was able to catch up with him and persuade him to look back and look forward.

NR: Dave, tell me about your childhood.
DH: I was brought up in a Christian home in a lively Baptist Church and had two sisters. From a young age, I decided never to become a Christian. I managed to stand out until I was seventeen!

NR: How did you realise that you wanted to change your ways?
DH: When I got into the sixth form I suddenly found that I actually didn’t have anything in my life that was an anchor. It made me think about God. I met Christians I admired, people I could identify with. I had to discern between what was real and what was just religious. Some friends of mine became Christians and I could see a tremendous transformation in their lives. Then I read The Cross and the Switchblade, which was extremely popular, and it just hooked me in to the reality of what Jesus had done.

NR: So what were the circumstances of your salvation?
DH: It was at the end of a baptismal service. I walked home and gave my life to the Lord on a cold Sunday night in February. My change was immediate. I did a 180° turn. If I was going to go for God, I was going to go for God! I became extremely zealous overnight. I look back and realise that, despite my rebellious attitude, it was fantastic being raised in a Christian home and a great privilege because of the amount that had already been put in my life.

NR: Were you baptised in the Spirit soon after being saved?
DH: Our pastor started to preach the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which gave us all a tremendous hunger. Our church was against such things so he was quite brave in preaching it. There was a wonderful move of the Spirit. I recognised that I lacked power and the reality of God’s presence. On a young people’s weekend I was baptised in the Holy Spirit, as were many others. It was life-transforming.

Then there was Come Together. Lots of choirs and bands came together and we were one of them. We performed all over the South East of England. It was a great event and many people got saved and baptised in the Spirit as a result.

NR: When did you sense any call towards full-time ministry?
DH: From the moment I became a Christian I did have this sense of calling to leadership which was parallel to a sense of burden to see the church change. If my friends were going to come to the Lord, the church would have to change. The church was putting them off. The more I read Acts I yearned for the dynamic church that was there. I felt I wanted to study theology and went to the London Bible College (now London School of Theology).

NR: With what end in view?
DH: My thinking was that I’d end up in the Baptist ministry. However, lots of things were changing. New churches were being born and I identified with new church life. A church that came out of the Baptist Church because of freedom in the Spirit and wanted to move on in the baptism in the Spirit asked me if I would go and be their pastor. I said, ‘No.’

NR: So how did you become a church leader?
DH: I said ‘No’ because I realised that I still wasn’t qualified to lead. I was 22, single and I felt that I hadn’t received enough. I began to pray that God would give me a spiritual father. I went away to a church weekend. The visiting speaker was a guy called Terry Virgo. We just clicked. I went back to college and wrote to him and asked him to be my spiritual father, something I have never done before or since: ‘Could you please look after me if I was going to go into the ministry?’ I posted the letter and the next day a letter arrived from him. He wrote that he felt God had called him to be a spiritual father to me and would I be prepared to be discipled by him? Our letters had crossed; I knew that this was a miracle! I lived with his family for six months. Then I said to this little embryonic church of about 100 people, ‘Yes, I will now come and lead you because I have got someone who can mentor and disciple me.’ Terry laid hands on me. We were one of the very early churches that he began to bring apostolic ministry to.

NR: Would this be your introduction to discipleship?
DH: However good your qualification is theologically, you still need somebody to look after you. I was so privileged to have the practical help and assistance, and to have someone to talk to on the phone. I have encouraged so many people going into ministry to make sure they have someone who can mentor them. As I have got older I have had the joy of being able to do that with lots of other people as well.

NR: Paul said, ‘Be imitators of me.’ What are the things that you hope others would imitate you in?
DH: Paul also said to Timothy, ‘Don’t let people look down on your youth but lead by example.’ I hope to set an example in following Jesus. Paul goes on to say that in love, in speech, in purity, in life itself, to be an example. I hope that people would look at my life, character and fruit and that those would be the things that would rub off on to them. Liz and I hope that our marriage would be an example as well. Through the ups and downs of leadership, we have learnt things that we can share. The church went through rough times and I think you actually learn a lot through that. I want to be known as a man of the Spirit. I am hoping that that model has been something that people could imitate.

NR: Can you also share any keys to your devotional life that you feel would be helpful to others?
DH: People think that ‘full-time’ people just sit around praying or reading the Bible. That is not the case! There are so many distractions and important things to do that your devotional life can get pushed out. Yet, in John 15, Jesus says if we want to bear fruit it comes out of abiding in Him. Again and again I have found that to be the priority. I have endeavoured to make sure that if anything is going to be neglected that won’t be. I have endeavoured to be a worshipper. I have endeavoured to be someone who is consistent in terms of reading the Word of God and in prayer. A few moments in the morning is not enough. Over the years I have had days away to read and seek God. I have found that’s fantastic in terms of hearing God for direction, what He wants me to preach on, what he wants me to minister. I can’t live without that as a big part of my life.

NR: Are there particular books that have helpfully fed you?
DH: Books about the character of God have been the things that I come back to again and again. I have loved books like Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. Just to read books like that, which talk about who God is, have helped me. I keep going back to many devotional books. I have been very inspired by heroes of the faith. I have read them since the early days of being a Christian and still read them because they are a tremendous inspiration in my life.

NR: How did you meet Liz?
DH: I was living with the Virgo family. Liz had been raised in a Christian family but had backslidden badly and was living in Greece doing her own thing. While I was there she came back to the UK and came right back to God. It was very dramatic. I went back to Sidcup to pastor this new church and forgot all about her. Five months later I went back to see Terry. I ended up being there three weeks because I had appendicitis and I was rushed into hospital. Liz was a District Nurse and looked after me after I came out. I have a sneaky suspicion she made sure I was on her list! We just fell in love and she ended up as a pastor’s wife though she hadn’t a clue what that meant or how to behave – and still doesn’t!

NR: Tell us about your children.
DH: Emily is the oldest and is married to James. She is in a church plant in Central London. Daniel is married to Claire, has a degree in Graphics and they are part of the church in Bristol. Lucy got married a few weeks ago to Ben and they are very involved with the young people’s work in Worthing. Our youngest, Julia, has just gone to do Law at Westminster University. She will be part of ChristChurch in London. They all came to know the Lord when they were young, have been baptised in the Holy Spirit and in water, and have been fully involved in church life. We have worked very hard at parenting but it is also by God’s grace and we are very grateful that they’ve been kept safe.

NR: How did you transition from being a leader of a local church to a worldwide travelling ministry?
DH: Even in the early 80s I was not only pastoring the work at home but also involved in a number of churches on Terry’s behalf in the London and the Kent area. I also travelled to other nations like South Africa and the States. In Sidcup I had a fantastically strong team, with people like Dave Rigby, Mike Hewett and John Wilthew. I was still the visionary leader but the strength of this team meant I could travel knowing that the church was being well served. However, it came to a point where my calling was obviously in the UK, looking after churches, and travelling more internationally. I needed to look for someone who could replace me. I found Matt Hosier who was still in his early 20s doing a PhD studying bugs. I said to him, ‘Is your future studying bugs for the rest of your life?’ He said, ‘No,’ he wanted to see the church transformed. So we took a very risky decision. I took him out of his bugs and brought him to Sidcup. He had recently been married and Grace had to get a teaching job because he wasn’t going to be paid by us. He shadowed me and I discipled him. Then he led our youth and a lot of youth work in Newfrontiers, and became an elder. He has the same vision and values as I and he is a primary leader. Within a year of becoming an elder he became the lead elder in the church.

NR: Tell us about how your team ministry started in Newfrontiers.
DH: Seven of us began to gather as friends, speak into different churches, at conferences and gather leaders. Gradually our gifts became more clearly identified. Others identified my apostolic calling and ministry. I was reluctant to receive this at the beginning but gradually felt more comfortable with the concept.

NR: Can you unpack your growing understanding of Ephesians 4 ministries?
DH: Ephesians 4 was just a wonderful revelation. We began to understand that God actually had given us these gifts and we weren’t just filling in gaps. We were doing something Biblical that the Holy Spirit had inspired. We began to discover ministries that travelled amongst churches, apostles and prophets working together and so on, a team of guys on a mission together. We were a family, together to plant churches, evangelise, even to work in nations beyond our own.

NR: What were you seeking to achieve through your apostolic ministry to the UK churches?
DH: I began to work with those churches when we were growing quickly. I realised that I could not serve all these churches. We set off to raise up embryonic apostolic ministries, people who had already shown signs of a broader ministry. It was always done relationally. Now we’re at another phase with a new UK team.

NR: Tell us what you are going to be doing over the next six months.
DH: A couple of years ago I said to Liz, ‘In autumn 2005 God will call us to go somewhere else.’ Our children have left home, I’ve handed the church over, and now I’ve handed over responsibility in the UK. Then very tragically Simon Pettit died in January and Liz later had a dream that we should go to South Africa. The team of guys in South Africa jumped at that possibility. Now we go to South Africa for six months. Our aim is to look for teams who will take on the things that Simon birthed. We want to help all that he envisioned become a reality.

NR: How do Terry’s and your gifts complement each other in different scenarios?
DH: I count Terry as a leader with a real prophetic mantle in terms of going to change nations, building the church in cultures all around the world. As he paints that big picture it’s important that there are people who can come behind him and make the vision become a reality. I am an implementer of the vision that God has given to Terry and other people like Simon. I enjoy structuring and building living wineskins that will contain what God is doing.

NR: It’s 25 years since the team first met. What do you believe the state of the church across the world will look like in another 25 years?
DH: It’s interesting for us going to the Southern Hemisphere because there is a lot going on there, far more than in Europe. Places like South America and Africa are used to seeing thousands respond. The UK has also changed a lot in the last 25 years. In London we are seeing new churches bursting onto the scene, making huge impact.

NR: The media would suggest that the church is dying. It doesn’t sound as though you agree with them.
DH: Where churches are not preaching the gospel but are caught up in religious tradition they will die. But if churches are preaching the gospel, stepping out in faith, full of vision, doing things like Alpha reaching people in a contemporary way, they’re going to make great impact. The challenge we face is that thousands are saying ‘yes’ to Jesus; that’s why they are going on Alpha courses, but ‘no’ to the church. They must see a living community that reflects the fact that Jesus is alive because they can see him in the relationships with one another. When the preaching of the gospel and demonstrating it in our communities come together, we are going to see an explosion of life and a growing church!

NR: That sounds like a pretty exciting place to end! Thank you, Dave, for sharing your heart.

One to One with David Holden

A few days before David Holden flew to South Africa with Liz in late September, Nigel Ring was able to catch up with him and persuade him to look back and look forward.

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