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Aren’t you the discipleship people?

For nearly 70 years Navigators in the UK have been getting alongside people, helping them know Jesus personally and do the same with someone else. God has grown generations of disciple makers through these ordinary people 

Our Vision

Our Story

Our Calling

Our Values

Leadership

Navs & Church

Our Vision

Our vision is you! 

We believe that you are uniquely placed in this world for profound spiritual impact. We believe that the future of the church in the UK depends on a movement of communities of ordinary people, who know that God has made no mistake in where he has placed them (in families, friendships, communities, workplaces, local churches) and that he wants to use them.   

We believe that central to this movement will be a profound recovery of faith in God’s promises for our lives – that each of us, because the promises are ‘yes and amen’ in Jesus, will see our lives swept up into these promises (2 Corinthians 1:20). Because of the promises of God these alongsiders realise that they are fully a part of God’s purposes right where they are and that they are empowered by him to bring grace, justice and love to all around. They are ‘oaks of righteousness for the display of his splendour’ (Isaiah 61:3).   

The Navigators UK is a part of the global disciple-making movement of the Navigators. Watch our Vision video to see some of our dreams for this international movement… 

Our Story

1933
1933

California

Dawson Trotman, a truck driver, decides to get alongside a sailor called Lester Spencer. Daws spends many hours with Les, developing him as a disciple, showing him how to pray, study and memorise the Bible.

1933
1933

USS West Virginia

God transforms Les’ life. A shipmate wants to know how. Les asks Daws to teach his friend all that he has taught him, but Daws replies, ‘You teach him!’ Soon both sailors are training others. Eventually 125 men on their ship are learning to go deeper with God.

1945
1945

Across the USA

By the end of WWII, Navigators are teaching thousands of people on ships and military bases around the world. This includes someone from each state in America.

1951
1951

UK

Billy Graham pleads with Daws to pioneer a way of supporting the (sometimes tens of thousands of) brand new Christians at each of his crusade meetings. Daws trains up ‘counsellors’ in a fresh idea: follow-up.

1955
1955

The UK Navigators

London. The UK Navigators is established. Daws invites Joyce Turner from San Francisco to run the UK Navigator office. Some women start meeting at Joyce’s home to study the Bible. Soon there are 60. This grows to 300. Ed and Ruth Reis join Joyce from Kenya.

Manchester. Gordy and Margaret Nordstrom move from Paris. Robb and Meg Powrie-Smith begin discipling young people from their church. Some leave for university.

Loughborough. Robb and Meg move house to help these undergrads reach out to their friends. The students graduate and move into jobs near to other universities.

1973
1973

Across the UK

By this point the Navigators work in 19 universities, developing group leaders and skilled alongsiders.

Today
Today

Today

Now there are Navigator movements in more than 100 countries, forming a Worldwide Partnership.

God wants to change the world through your relationships too. He has carefully placed you where you are, with the people you’re among. Do you believe God can use ordinary people to make an extraordinary impact? Are you ready to see what he can do through you?

Elaine’s

Story

“There was a Bible study in every room – even the bathroom and on the stairs. I was new to all this. I’d only just decided I believed what Jesus said, at a Billy Graham campaign in London. Suddenly, in this house on Clapham Common, I saw people transformed by God’s words; someone even overcame drug addiction. 

One of these Navigators met with me one-to-one and invited me to live with her in a ‘Nav house’. She trained me in quiet times and Bible study, all on the understanding that I would pass it on.”

And Elaine has, even into her 80s! God has used Elaine as a nanny, a nurse and a carer to train others to trust what Jesus says, even in the darkest of times. 

Our Calling

The Navigators is a global movement of everyday people who are dedicated to a single calling:

“To advance the gospel of Jesus and his kingdom into the nations through spiritual generations of labourers (alongsiders) living and discipling together among the lost.”

Our Values

Inner-Life Core Values:

1. The passion to know, love and become like Jesus Christ

2. The truth and sufficiency of the Scriptures for the whole of life

3. The transforming power of the Gospel

4. The leading and empowering of the Holy Spirit

5. Expectant faith and persevering prayer rooted in the promises of God

Community Core Values:

6. The dignity and value of every person

7. Love and grace expressed among us in community

8. Families and relational networks in discipling the nations

9. Interdependent relationships in the Body of Christ in advancing the Gospel

Our Leadership

Our Board

How is the Navigators connected to the Church?

One of the most helpful ways of understanding us is to recognise that there have been at least two broad structures of how the church has functioned in its history: the local parish, where churches focused exclusively on particular locations, and what are called ‘orders’.   

Orders (and later, mission societies) were networks of disciples who were dedicated to a specific calling (in the broader calling of the church). These orders often connected people over vast geographical distances. Some orders were about being separated from the world like the monastic orders, others were known as apostolic orders and were made up of everyday people who lived normal lives in the world and yet sought to partner together to live out a specific calling in the world.  

Put simply, orders and parishes have marked a significant part of how the church has operated for well over a thousand years. We as Navigators see ourselves in this broad historical tradition of an apostolic order with our vision, values and calling marking the specific centre that defines our shared journey.   

Orders are fascinating! They were both international in reach and yet also locally rooted. They were just as much ‘church’ as the local parish church and they worked both in dynamic partnership with local churches and were also creative in producing new forms and expressions of the church. We see that across the global work of the Navs today, as people work together in and with local churches, to serve the purposes of God’s kingdom.  

As Navigators we love the church and, like an order, we want to be both creative and faithful to our calling in the midst of the wider church so that, by the grace of God, we glorify Jesus to whom the whole church belongs.  

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