On the eve of launching the Alongsider Course, Phil Boydell reflects on a vision that has shaped Navigators UK for more than 70 years and invites us to play our part in it today.

In 1954, Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators, was invited to speak at Westminster Abbey. At the heart of Dawson’s ministry was a passion not for buildings –however glorious – but for people: living stones, built up and made ready to display God’s splendour. Dawson was visiting London working with Billy Graham in what would become the most significant evangelistic campaigns the UK had seen for generations.  

Dawson’s main aim wasn’t to preach at a significant landmark. He was equipping local churches for the thousands of people who would respond during these campaigns. Billy Graham understood that a decision to follow Jesus was only the beginning. These new Christians desperately needed others to come alongside them, helping them know Christ and grow in him.  

That is why he invited the Navigators to train ordinary Christians for the work of disciple-making.  

The vision that started it all 

This week, we go back to where it all began for Navigators in the UK.  

Over 70 years later, we continue to serve the Church with the same conviction that brought Dawson to London: disciple-making is not the work of a select few, but a calling entrusted to every believer. We long to help local churches raise up thousands of alongsiders, seeing disciple-making become an everyday, life-to-life reality. 

We do lots of things in our churches to make disciples – we teach, we baptise, we put on discipleship programmes. But what would the first disciples have heard when Jesus commissioned them to ‘make disciples’ (Matthew 28:19)? They would have understood that command in light of the deeply relational way Jesus had invested in them.  

In Mark 3:14-15, Jesus called these disciples to ‘be with him’. Jesus lived with these men, talked with them, loved them, listened to them, shared meals with them ... and even washed dishes alongside them.  

Making disciples the way Jesus did is a profoundly relational task that involves the whole person and the whole of life. It happens around tables, in workplaces, in homes, on walks and in everyday conversations wherever God has placed us. 

A significant moment for the UK church 

We believe this is a moment in which God wants all of us to ‘step up’ and ‘step out’ into his purposes.  

The Alongsider Course is being launched tomorrow (Thursday) in the Houses of Parliament. Now let me be clear, this isn’t primarily about a course (although we are proud of it); it’s not even about the Navigators. It is about what God is wanting to do across the UK – about how he wants the whole Church, his Bride, to fulfil our calling to make disciples wherever he has placed us (workplace, family, local church, community). He wants his Church equipped and mobilised to bear lasting fruit, which is our destiny in Jesus, the fruitful one.  

This week we invite you to pray with us into what we believe is a significant opportunity for the UK church.  

Pray with us for a disciple-making revolution in the UK, for a move of the Spirit which nothing would stop, and for thousands upon thousands of people to embrace this profound, relational vision which, when Jesus fulfils it, will change the whole UK Church.