Around the Ministry - The Navigators

One of the priorities of The Navigators is to create “spiritual generations” of laborers—to enable believers to reach and disciple others so that the Kingdom of God is increased exponentially. God alone knows how many people are influenced as the result of one person’s faithfulness, but He recently gave Navigators Rod and Connie Beidler a glimpse of their spiritual family tree.

“When I was in the Navy I led a man named Ron to Christ,” says Rod, who heads the U.S. International Missions Group. “He later attended Northwestern University in Chicago, where Connie and I had our first assignment with The Navigators in the mid ’70s. Ron invited a student named Mary to our activities and eventually led her to Christ.” Mary, in turn, began reaching out to those around her.

One friend Mary influenced was a Jewish student named Sandy, who gave her life to Jesus and faced intense opposition from her family. In fact, her father, believing Sandy had been brainwashed by a cult, sent her away for “deprogramming.”

“Sandy’s love for Jesus overcame the mental and emotional trauma she’d experienced in the ‘deprogramming,’ ” Rod says. “Sandy moved to Israel and married an Israeli believer. It was then we lost track of her, nearly 30 years ago.”

In January of this year, Rod consulted with an organization that was contemplating an expansion of its work among high school students in Israel. Rod was able to meet two Israeli students who were in the States for a discipleship program.

Over lunch, as they shared their testimonies, one of them mentioned a woman named Sandy who had been instrumental in leading her to faith in the Messiah Jesus.

“As I probed about Sandy, it became evident that her Sandy and our Sandy were one in the same!” Rod says. “I was sitting across from our spiritual great-great-granddaughter!”

Marvin Smith, 70, who served the Lord with The Navigators for 29 years, died on January 11 after a two-year battle with kidney cancer. Marvin was instrumental in developing The Navigators’ missions ministry, now called the U.S. International Missions Group.

Marvin joined The Navigators in 1964. Two years later he married Georgette, who also worked with the ministry. They served 14 years in New Zealand, Australia, Kenya, and Ghana. Their three children were all born on the mission field. In the ‘70s, Marvin also provided leadership for the Pacific region and Africa region.

Marvin became The Navigators’ U.S. director of missions in 1983. “Marv mentored me as I began the Navigator ministry in Nigeria,” says International President Mike Treneer. “His thoughtful leadership was extremely important in shaping my own convictions.”

In 1993, Marvin become the missions pastor of Wayside Chapel in San Antonio, Texas. He retired in 2005.

“In this, our nation’s birthplace, we want to start a movement that will help us reach the state and then the nation,” says Navigator John Mosley, who works in Philadelphia. To that end, John started the Great Commission Institute for Evangelism and Discipleship.

In its first year, the Institute trained more than 100 ministers in basic discipleship through The Navigators’ Church Discipleship Ministry’s Intentional Disciplemaking Church Process. One pastor commented, “This training is needed by both clergy and laity of every church that is serious about winning and discipling souls for Christ.”

John has three major goals for 2007. “The first is to identify, recruit, and train 12 denominational church pastors in intentional discipleship,” he says.

“The second is to have at least 50 percent of their leaders—women’s group leaders, youth leaders, children’s leaders—trained and deployed in their communities.

“The third major goal is to have their church leaders train and deploy their own members in evangelism and follow-up discipleship.

“Jesus told us to go and make disciples, and He said He would build the church,” John adds. “So our priority needs to be disciplemaking and to let God do the building.”

Learn more about intentional discipleship at www.navigators.org/idc.

by Alan Andrews, U.S. Navigator President

Our calling is to advance the Gospel of Jesus and His Kingdom into the nations through spiritual generations of laborers living and discipling among the lost. While most people come to know The Navigators on a college campus, military base, or in one of the metro areas of our country, the nations are just as important to our calling and history.

Ours is truly an international organization, with staff from all over the world serving in the nations of the world. We are next door to everywhere! And it is not just our international staff serving overseas. Many U.S. staff and resources are directed to world missions, especially the 10/40 Window that extends from West Africa to East Asia.

Our ministry among the nations has been vital in understanding God’s calling to us as an organization and to our understanding of the power and depth of the Gospel. As our staff labor among those for whom the Gospel is being heard for the first time, the focus upon Jesus is central. His name, the name above all names, is being brought by Navigators into regions where His name has no meaning, and this challenges us to be clear on the meaning of the Gospel.

I’m convinced that American Navigators must serve alongside nationals in countries on every inhabited continent. Today, 15 percent of our U.S. staff and resources are committed to advancing the Gospel in the nations, but we feel that God is calling us to send between 25 to 30 percent.

Please pray with us for new individuals and for our existing staff who are asking if the Lord Jesus might be sending them into the nations.

Read more articles from our flagship publication One-to-One Ministry Review.