Movement

Summary: We began as a spreading movement upon which God’s blessing rested. Later, after World War II, our impetus to serve the family of God meant that we loaned some of our most gifted reproducers to other works, which in turn began to dilute the impact of our vision. So, we pulled back in order to demonstrate how our vision could be effective.

Our administrative structures grew as we advanced into the diversity of the nations. During the 1970s, the quest for effectiveness led us to adopt managerial processes and to prioritize the development of sending countries. However, the 1970s in the US were also a time of wrestling with the desired shape of our emerging community ministries, which drew us back to the significance of movement. Small or local movements arose within our partnership.

Movement came to the fore again as we expressed our vision in The Core.

Contents

Beginnings: Movement without Formal Organization
US Shift to Increased Organization
The Laity: Equipping “Civilian” Navigators
Who Leads a Movement?
Movement, the Gospel, and the Navigator Vision

Beginnings: Movement without Formal Organization

Dawson Trotman, gripped by God’s promises, birthed a discipling movement. He did so without a formal organization. His Spirit-led insight was to galvanize his friends and to ignite their relational circles with a shared vision for multiplying disciples.

In the US context of the 1930s, the Bible-believing churches were in a defensive posture but, in the context of the 1940s, the Spirit caused new and energetic streams of evangelism to emerge. Thousands of young people, especially, committed their lives to Christ. Daws saw that this was not enough. Ordinary believers—new or old—needed stimulus and training to reach others for Christ and thus to extend the spread of the Gospel.

Clearly, this was a movement. Daws was a man who took God at His Word. By gifting and by commitment, he was an apostolic pioneer. Through the late 1940s, he resisted establishing an organization.1 Instead, he guided the men he had trained into other organizations, both to serve them (Philippians 2:3-4) and so that his vision might spread.

Toward the end of his life, in the early 1950s, he came to realize that Navigators loaned to other agencies tended to “go native,” so that their single-minded vision for making disciples was gradually diffused and diluted. Therefore, to preserve our calling, we began to place our small number of staff in assignments that we had chosen. This gave them more freedom to work with what God had laid on our hearts. We had become a coherent community, intense and focused, yet still lacking much of “the machinery of government.”2 Daws himself made most decisions.

US Shift to Increased Organization

When Lorne Sanny succeeded Daws in 1956, he began a long process of clarifying, stabilizing, and strengthening our organization. He would have said, I believe, that this phase was necessary for the continued spread of our movement.

We were transitioning from an organic movement that merely observed minimal arrangements required by the US government, such as a board of directors (basically, our senior leaders), to an organization that focused on the continued spread of a movement. In other words, we shifted from a movement avoiding organization into an organization pursuing movement.

Sanny knew that there were potential dangers in this transition. He described some of these for our staff3 in 1959, with these ten points.

The original revolutionary thrust of the movement tends to diminish.
There is a tendency for the ship to collect barnacles–hangers-on.
The movement is confronted with the problems of success:
The tendency to scatter strokes instead of hitting a few basics.
The tendency to scatter personnel and thus lose the strength of close fellowship.
Conversely, the tendency to rely on the fellowship and slacken the pace.
The refusal to face up to failures that inevitably accompany a movement–a reluctance to call a mistake a mistake.
Difficulty in transmitting the original vision to the second generation with the same enthusiasm the first generation displayed.
The (increasing) complexity of the organization. It takes greater maturity and greater capacity to relate as the number of staff and functions increases.
The problem of death. This rarely faces a movement in its first phase, but confronts it with increasing frequency thereafter.

David Bosch reflects on such dangers in his critique of the evolution of the early church as follows:

We perceive something of this difference between an institution and a movement if we compare the Christian community in Jerusalem with that of Antioch in the forties of the first century AD. The Antioch church’s pioneering spirit precipitated an inspection by Jerusalem. It was clear that the Jerusalem party’s concern was not mission, but consolidation; not grace, but law; not crossing frontiers, but fixing them; not life, but doctrine; not movement, but institution.

. . . every religious group that started out as a movement and managed to survive did so because it was gradually institutionalized: the Waldensians, the Moravians, the Quakers, the Pentecostals, and many more. The same was bound to happen to the early Christian movement.

. . . Our main point of censure should therefore not be that the movement became an institution4 but that, when this happened, it also lost much of its verve. Its white-hot convictions, poured into the hearts of the first adherents, cooled down and became crystallized codes, solidified institutions, and petrified dogmas. The prophet became a priest of the establishment, charisma became office, and love became routine. The horizon was no longer the world but the boundaries of the local parish . . .5

By and large, we have been alert to hazards such as loss of vision and a hardening of our positions. Yet, we have seen how policies can shape us in ways that place form above function. Organizationally, we are not immune.6

God in His mercy has not allowed us to institutionalize to the point at which our chief concern is our own preservation. We have experienced ongoing renewal from within. What has protected us?

Persistent searching of the Scriptures to refresh our calling
Ministry among many diverse cultures and contexts
Apostolic voices challenging the status quo
Pliable structures that we have often adjusted

In the 1960s, our leaders questioned whether The Navigators should pursue a narrow or a broad path. Should we focus on producing reproducers or seek laborers of many kinds? Perhaps this sounds esoteric, but on these two questions hung the future of The Navigators.7 Sanny kept us on the broad track; therefore, we progressed into the pleasing question of how we should relate to or guide or lead laborers of many kinds who had moved out of our direct influence into the mainstreams of America.

Meanwhile, two embryonic movements were emerging:

By far, our strongest ministry among professionals was among the brokers and underwriters at Lloyds of London. By 1966, American Navigator staff Ed Reis had seen forty to fifty young men make decisions for Christ. Using the Tuesday lunch meetings where Rev. Dick Lucas taught at St Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate in the city (up to three hundred attending), Ed discipled many influential young executives.8 Excitement as to the claims of Christ continued to spread, even after Ed had departed.
Jim Petersen, who had been reached by Ed in Minnesota, pioneered a ministry to students in Brazil from 1963 onward and, strong in cultural relationships, followed the new disciples into their adult careers. “Staff” was not a category that we used in Brazil, except among the American missionaries. A lay movement spread naturally from city to city:9 Counting was anathema. The Latin American ministry was well shielded from US managerialism and organizational accoutrements.

In a 1966 paper,10 Sanny adopted a realistic tone: “While it is true that God raises up and uses movements like ours, it is equally true that movements come and go.” Encouragingly, later that year, our overseas directors described us as “a hard-hitting organization that stimulates a movement.”

The Laity: Equipping “Civilian” Navigators

Participants at our world regional directors conference in November 1968 struggled with the likelihood that “about 80 percent of those who have received training by The Navigators in the past are currently not producing.” The summary of the proceedings detailed the questions that we should ask in visiting our alumni, in order to determine why this seepage continued to occur. The summary also referred to those who formed our emerging community ministries as “civilians.” It read:

We need to develop a plan of ministry among ‘civilians’ into which the graduated college student and discharged service man can fit. . . . We have given (the civilian disciple) the basic training applicable to all disciples, but we have given him advanced training for conventional Navigator warfare and then sent him out into the guerrilla warfare of the working family man environment.

We may find that another entire dimension needs to be added—maybe a weaning period where the men learn to operate with little else than their Bibles.

. . . We will then be in a position to offer know-how in discipleship to churches and denominations. It is at this point that we will really begin to exploit our greatest strength, as it relates to the Great Commission.

. . . We should not, then, sift out the potential Navigator staff and disregard the balance.

. . . For a number of years, we have lost such men. They have been lost to The Navigators and largely lost to the Great Commission. Although a few have gone into other works, most have melted into a semi-productive life of Christian activity. However, either the vision of multiplication has blurred or the cutting edge of effectiveness in reaching and training men has dulled. They no longer multiply laborers.

. . . We must enlarge and strengthen our framework for absorbing and developing these men. This is our greatest current need.11

Nevertheless, we were producing laborers as our contribution to the family of God. Yet, such laborers were often isolated and not equipped to function beyond our organizational influence. They might well continue with such basic disciplines as prayer and scripture memory, but their continuing impact was often limited.

Laity and Our Primary Aim

In 1969, a further evolution of our objective was agreed by our divisional directors. For the first time, both disciples and disciple-makers appear in our Primary Aim:12 “To help fulfill Christ’s Great Commission by making disciples and developing disciple-makers in every nation.”

Only six exegetical notes were appended to this Aim. The most significant was a definition of The Navigators: “We refer both to the formal organization of staff members and to the larger movement of non-staff persons whom the organization seeks to stimulate and serve.” The phrase “to help fulfill” was also reassuring: “It means that we recognize Christ’s Great Commission as being given to the entire Body of Christ of which we are a part and to which we must relate ourselves as harmoniously and usefully as possible.”13

During 1969, Sanny had been listening to business leaders who were pursuing our vision. Indeed, he had invited some of them to our staff conference and collected their comments.14

In the 1970s, we thought long and hard about the futures of our “fruit.” On the one hand, research revealed that many who had graduated from our campus ministries were no longer laboring15 unless closely tied to our organization. On the other hand, we debated how to guide the emerging laymen’s or community ministries.16

By now, Jim Petersen had amassed years of experience with the fluid and unusual approach that he pursued in Brazil. In April 1971, he wrote in his journal:

The Navigators are a multi-million dollar factory that is producing a product (disciples) and then discarding them—except for the amount which the factory itself can use to enlarge its facilities—to produce more who will in turn be relegated to disuse, except for the amount for the factory itself. . . . We have not applied the necessary creative thinking to the problem of making a Nav product a lifetime laborer. Such people need gifted leaders schooling them in guerilla Christianity. We also need to sort out the relationship between Christian movements and institutional Christianity . . .

Perhaps this concern was stimulated by a comment17 that Sanny had recently made to our staff:

The immediate need in our work is to use our area Reps to raise up more area Reps, and this is done through contact points. Since the servicemen’s ministries overseas does not lend itself to contact points, we are cutting back slightly in this work for the present. It will probably be expanded again in the future as we have more reps available.

A year later, Sanny added the thought that “the success of the Navs as a movement will be in direct proportion to our vision and skill in increasing the spiritual efficiency of others.”18

By the time the divisional directors met in June 1971, they recognized that lay leaders don’t want to be used; rather, they want to be involved. They want to know how to make an effective impact in their spheres of influence. It was clear that we should minister to such men instead of recruiting them for ministry, meeting them at their points of need and caring for them. Basically, our task would be to equip men to do what they think God wants them to do. Nine principles emerged, ending with, “Train, yes; organize, no; structure, no.”19

In March 1972, we took a further step in response to the recommendations from a laymen’s committee.20 They concluded that we must eliminate the “second-class citizen” attitude toward them, the end product being Christian maturity for all (Colossians 1:28-29). The task was to provide Nav help but not Nav control. The committee suggested we concentrate on the responsive, regardless of age (Psalm 92:14); that we include couples; and that we focus on the basics. Not only should we do our utmost to conserve the fruits of the collegiate and military ministries as regards those who would serve Christ in a lay capacity, but we should help sustain a “movement” that expresses the Nav vision.

Walt Henrichsen, whom this Committee had nominated as our first laymen’s coordinator, had earlier put forward his thoughts on the marks of a movement. This was one of our earliest attempts to bring precision to our concept of “movement.” He identified six characteristics:

Created by the Holy Spirit
A spontaneity—not promoted—has the sweep and spread of a prairie fire
United around the Nav objective
Various degrees of participation—from the hard core to those actively involved with us as fellow travelers (those who help forward the aims of the organized group without total participation in all its activities)
Bigger than an organization so that: God gets all the glory; it includes a diversity of gifts and personalities; purpose of our organization is to stimulate, influence and guide its direction

Walt Henrichsen ended by asserting that what God was doing among laymen was a movement created by the Holy Spirit. We were called by the Spirit to influence the direction of this movement in which other organizations are also involved.21

Strategies for Involving the Laity

In his “Strategy for the 70s,” presented to the divisional directors in December 1972, Waldron Scott commented that:

We have fifteen staff members working full-time with laymen and laywomen. Eight are serving overseas. Seven are in the US. There is a general but no overall strategy and no uniform methodology. A uniform method is probably undesirable, but an overall strategy should be developed as soon as possible.

Several problems are outstanding. The most critical is the difficulty many—perhaps most—“alumni” find in transferring from the college and military ministries to normal community life. Associated with this is the difficulty Reps in our mainline college and military work have in following up and training the alumni.

Organizationally there is some tension and reserve between various regional directors (and divisional directors)22 and International HQ at the thought of area Reps looking to someone at HQ for leadership.23 Regional directors tend to feel the laymen’s ministry should be part of stage 1.24 Some of the top businessmen, on the other hand, are desirous of tying in with the Navs but unwilling to do so at the regional director level if this means being part of the tightly controlled stage 1 operation.

Scotty then outlined three possible strategies for the laymen’s ministry worldwide and, after analysis, settled on option 3 in his strategy. This option was that laymen’s representatives would not concentrate on recruiting and developing potential area Reps, but would stimulate a movement along the lines common to any ministry we call “Navigator.” What did this imply? Again, from the strategy:

This option does not seek to tightly structure or rigidly control the laymen as much as it seeks to motivate and influence them along the lines of the Wheel and the Hand. This approach will produce some Reps but not as many as the other approaches…it assumes a large constituency but one that is loosely organized.”25

A judgment on the degree to which our US ministries in the 1970s were structured, indeed regimented, depends upon one’s yardstick. Compared to Campus Crusade or the Graham Association—both visibly “successful”—we were relatively loose. However, compared to our ministries in Brazil, we were certainly structured. Strengthening our structure would boost efficiency and impersonal control, but it would replace creativity with conformity. So, caution was needed.

Indeed, hindsight suggests that our wrestling with a community ministry was a rehearsal for the less-responsive spiritual environment that emerged a decade later. What was at stake in those years—and to a degree still is—was the quest for developing lifetime laborers outside the support of our organization.

Sanny’s Short-Range Objectives

The debate among our leaders continued, as we guided the emergence of our community ministries.26 We find Sanny noting his thoughts again early in 1974. As he looked toward 1980, he drafted four short-range objectives and eight points for action on this topic, to be accomplished during the next three years. For him, crucial questions included organization or movement, controlled or uncontrolled, staff-led or not, “sell the farm” or minister in one’s sphere of influence. How would we train27 people and what authority, if any, would we continue to have? Would the community ministries become a church or a substitute for a church?

His conclusion? We do not want to “control” in the sense of either determining or enforcing, but we do want to “control” in the sense of influencing.28

A fruitful discussion of how we should “relate our staff and the fruit of our ministry to the Body of Christ” may be found in edition 2 of the Fundamentals of the Navigator Ministry, pages 39-46.

Jim Petersen’s Relational Organization in Brazil

At the end of the 1970s, Jim Petersen drew from his experience in Brazil to demonstrate how a local movement could be established.29 Though he was addressing the necessary transition in individual cities, his analysis can be applied to a national transition. After describing the way in which a mobile team raises up a group of new believers, characterized by a common identity and activities, he explained how some groups evolve into cells. “This is critical as the cell is the basic unit of a local movement: it exists to grow and reproduce.” As local cell leaders work together, the transfer of responsibilities from mobile to local leaders can follow naturally. It may take place when:

There are one or two men who can assume the orchestration of the whole
There is a mature team to support these men
There are enough cells to model the concept

Often, the formation of local cells (or congregations) is assumed to be enough, but Jim stressed the need for the local teams to identify nationals from their own ranks new mobile leaders. In this way, the movement could continue to spread, characterized by local autonomy and fraternal relationships.

In February 1980, half a dozen of our most experienced missionaries met in Colorado to map a way forward in what were then called third world nations.30 They probed how best to contextualize and to equip our laborers for lasting fruitfulness. One can discern in the record of those days a transitional moment. For example:

We must avoid a preoccupation with raising up staff in the third world. Our emphasis is primarily not organization but movement. This includes the placing and maintaining of many disciple-makers, some of whom the Lord will call to organizational staff. This breadth of ministry (serving the whole Body of Christ rather than the ethnocentric concern for staff and organization) is important so that the staff men we raise up have the same kind of vision. In this way, we have the possibility of influencing the large numbers that exist in the third world.

Here, we see that though the sentiment is strongly toward movement, a sense of responsibility for “placing and maintaining” laborers lingers.

Who Leads a Movement?

It seems clear that our organization—in countries where we had a formal staff-led presence —should serve the movement or movements that emerge from our influence.

We can speak of a disciple-making movement, in a comprehensive sense, as does our international Vision. Equally, however, we may speak of a family of lesser movements.

It is also evident that there are circles of influence that our organization accumulates which, in themselves, are not movements. For example, our financial supporters and those who purchase our publications.

Such circles may harbor the genesis of movements, but they hardly merit the name movement.

How can we serve a movement? Or, are there any concrete steps we may take to hasten the growth of movements? Assuredly, persistent prayer. Certainly, training disciple-makers to be salt and light in adult contexts.31

Yet, why is it so hard to point to flourishing movements that have to some extent come from the womb of The Navigators? Movements, of course, are the prerogative of the Spirit. Thus, it seems that He can use us to fertilize and resource movements, but not to lead them.

Terry Taylor’s Views on Movement and Laboring

Terry Taylor was a passionate and visionary leader of the US Navs during 1984-1997.

In 1986, he wrote an important paper32 on maximizing the impact of laborers in the US. How could this best be accomplished? After noting that we had been raising up 1,500 new laborers per year,33 he pointed to the priority of the cities:

This is where 75 percent of the population lives.
This is where the fruit of our ministry live, work, and play.
This is where we will experience the cumulative impact of our laborers.

He continued: “At the very heart (of our calling) is an army of laborers committed to a lifetime of laboring. As this army is assembled, it must move into movement. . . . It is time . . . to lead our laborers into the nation in order to sustain and support a ministry to every nation. . . . This era could very well be characterized by the words exporting/movement. It is maintaining the demonstration of our narrow aim in era 2 combined with the proclamation of the broad vision of era 1.”34 Taylor goes on to say:

When it comes to a movement, there must be original ownership of a vision. Spiritually reproducing one’s life in the lives of others for a lifetime of laboring must be owned by ‘the many’ in the movement as well as ‘the few’ who move the movement. It puts a high premium on ensuring that freedom and direction are both brought together, assuring that the vision and message are contextualized as well as reproducible . . . otherwise the movement will lose its mobility and ultimate impact.

This enthusiastic vision again prompts a question. If a movement is the prerogative of the Spirit, what does it mean to say that we should “lead” it? Can we? Should we?

Terry continued to rally the US Navigators around the need for us to organize for a movement. In the March 1992 issue of Perspectives, for example, we find a brief article addressing this question with some responses to frequent questions.35

As Mike Treneer has emphasized: The opposite of organization is not movement, but disorganization! Furthermore, all of us prefer to be organized.

Movement, the Gospel, and the Navigator Vision

When we look beyond the US, we can discern our changing organizational climate in the late 1980s which can be linked to the ways in which Jerry White and his team put flesh on the concept of our Global Society, which we now call our Worldwide Partnership. As Mike Treneer observes,36 this climate was one of trusting, releasing, coaching. It created space for plural leadership and embraced subsidiarity. It focused on developing and “enabling,” or empowering, partnership.37

Accompanying trends were a kinder and more supportive practice of leadership,38 enriched by our attention to linkage leaders.39 All this and more was conducive to movement.

Perhaps inevitably, the freshness and dynamism that was thus stimulated led, after a few years, to some dilution of our vision. Many initiatives were launched, but not all carried our distinctive emphasis. There was some confusion. The Scriptural Roots of our Ministry was honored, but not always followed.40 The Spirit led us, therefore, to refocus from the middle of the decade, first through the Fundamentals of Navigator Missions and then eventually through the gift of The Core.

When The Core emerged in 2002, our international Vision opened with the words:

We see a vital movement of the Gospel, fueled by prevailing prayer, flowing freely through relational networks and out into the nations. Workers for the Kingdom are next door to everywhere!

What characterizes this movement? A heart for the whole person . . . climates of grace . . . compassion for the vulnerable and broken . . . sacrificial unity embracing diversity . . . cultural relevance and sensitivity . . . interdependence with others in the wider family of God . . . transformed men and women, fragrant with humility and the aroma of Christ.

Thus did the spreading reality of a movement draw us forward. Indeed, the entire description of our Vision is an unwrapping of the contours of this movement. As Mike Treneer has said:

It’s a movement of the Gospel first. Fueled by prevailing prayer. It’s a God-initiated movement . . . and we acknowledge that it’s not manmade. It’s a miracle. It’s spiritual in the sense of being God-initiated, so that our primary task is not to figure out how movements happen and try to imitate them. We birth our movement. We fuel our movement by getting on our knees before God. . . . It flows freely through relational networks. . . . It’s person-to-person, not built around programs or methods or mechanisms. It flows out into the nations. . . . It’s not parochial. . . . What would be unique about a Navigator movement? Workers for the kingdom next door to everywhere. That’s our calling; generations of laborers.

A movement of the Gospel is a particular kind of movement. For example, an important aspect, as Don Bartel pointed out, was to reflect on what we might be tempted to do that would hinder such a movement. In what ways might we dilute energy and motivation among laborers within the wider family of God who carry our vision?41 In line with his research on movements42 of the Gospel, he observes that what we really want to see is an apostolic mindset.

Our Vision speaks of “ordinary people, in many walks of life, joyfully leading integrated lives. . . as fruitful insiders among the lost” and goes on to speak of “the leaders of this movement.” The Core firmly established that our movement stretched far beyond our formal staff. One recalls how Alan Andrews, some years earlier, had spoken at our US staff conference on the pertinent theme of “everybody gets to play.”

The birth of The Core gave us new perspectives on what it means to be a movement and to stimulate movements.43 In 2010, for example, Mike Treneer wrote one of his letters to our Nav family. After affirming that “a Navigator is anyone who is committed to our Calling and Values and is contributing to or involved in our Navigator movement in some way.” He added several helpful comments including:

. . . in some contexts, where the Navigator movement exists as a formal organization, we have made it difficult for those who are not “staff” to feel they are full partners. In places where we have no formal organization, it can be easier to see that all those caught up in our movement truly are Navigators. Where we do have formal structures . . . we need to be extra careful that those who are not formally staff (including the spouses of those who are) feel they are both Navigators and full partners. In truth, these are the ones who often make sacrifices, time commitments, and carry responsibilities as significant for the advance of the Gospel as those who have formal roles.

He ends by “rejoicing in your partnership with us in this wonderful generational movement of the Gospel in which we have been caught up together.”44

Although Mike Treneer, drawing from The Core, speaks of a Navigator movement, there are smaller and more local movements among us in various parts of the world.

A Note about Church Planting Movements

We are aware of various ways in which the word movement is used among the people of God, especially where we see evidences of the surprising and uncontrollable power of the Spirit. Movement is indeed easier to recognize than to describe.

A recent example is what is called “church planting movements.” As defined by David Garrison,45 such a movement is “a rapid multiplication of indigenous churches planting churches that sweeps through a people group or population segment.” Unlike the great revivals or spiritual awakenings that periodically occur among Christians, church planting movements are centered within unreached people groups or concentrations of lostness.

While there is much to learn from the dynamic of such movements, we bear in mind that The Navigators are not church planters in the classic sense.

By Donald McGilchrist
6137 words

See also articles on:
Overseas Policy Conference: 1961
Navigators Among the People of God
Clarifying our Calling: 1960s
Workplace Ministries
Community Ministries
Fundamentals of the Nav Ministry
Authority and Submission
Boards of Directors
Nationalizing
Internationalizing
Contextualizing
Our Enabling Global Society
Ethos and Values
Scriptural Roots of our Ministry
Six Critical Factors
Navigator Enterprises
Church Planting
Apostolic Pioneering
The Approach to The Core

Endnotes

Legally, we did register as The Navigators of California in February 1943. However, this was a very nominal arrangement. As Daws says in a later message, “The only reason we ever organized and incorporated was because the FBI and Naval Intelligence forced us to.” See article on “Boards of Directors.”
This popular phrase is found first in J.S. Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government, 1861.
“Dear Gang,” July 3, 1959, passed on from a message heard by Waldron Scott.
I would reserve the term institution for organizations that have turned inward and for which self-preservation has become a primary concern. This was not the case with The Navigators. See my essay on “A Biblical Framework for Organizing, Internationally,” fifteen pages, February 1994.
David Bosch, Transforming Mission, select paragraphs, p. 51-53.
Paul G. Hiebert chapter on “Missions and the Renewal of the Church” in Exploring Church Growth by Wilbert Shenk (Eerdmans, 1983) has a relevant discussion on institutionalization.
See my article on “Clarifying our Calling: 1960s.” Sanny knew that some of our leaders were impatient with the lengthy discussion, but he correctly perceived that much depended upon our choice. Such discussion was conveniently recorded in the notes of our training policy conference in September 1963.
“Dear Gang,” February 4, 1966. This work overlapped with the mission of the Stewards Trust.
See Will This Rock in Rio? by Ken Lottis. As Petersen later observed, “Movement must be exquisitely simple in its execution; the Bible, one another, and some sense of common identity is really all that is needed.”
This was an important paper entitled “The Navigators’ Relationship to the Church and Other Works,” four pages, best accessed as an attachment to “Dear Gang” 1967-1. Additional comments in my article on “Navigators Among the People of God.” Later, in August 1969, Sanny attended an AMA management course for presidents and told our staff that “The AMA . . . is a ‘movement.”
November 1968 summary of papers on non-Navigator ministry, Navigator alumni, laymen, the Church. For more information, see WRDC file in WS 4.
The accompanying definition of “world” is quite advanced, for the 1960s. It is “cultures, races, nationalities, languages.”
Primary Aim of May 30, 1969 supported by quotations of notes 1 and 2. Primary left open the possibility of other aims, such as Sanny’s persistent drive to get as many people as possible into the Scriptures.
See article on “Workplace Ministries.”
See article on “Are the Laborers Laboring?”
See article on “Community Ministries.”
“Dear Gang,” February 13, 1970.
“Dear Gang,” March 12, 1971.
Taken from summary of presentation dated June 3, 1971.
Recommendations: a dozen pages of creative thoughts and questions, dated March 11, 1972, interacting with Sanny. Source: Sanny notes from June 1972 regional director conference.
Marks of a movement: proposed by Henrichsen, June 8, 1972.
Common abbreviations are RD=Regional Director, DD=Divisional Director.
This presumably related to the above recommendation that we needed a Laymen’s Coordinator.
Stages of ministry described simply by Scott as In . . . From . . . To. See article on “Global Planning: 1966 – 1975.”
Source: Scott, “A Strategy for the 70s,” chapter 8, p. 129, 132-133.
See article on “Community Ministries.”
In preparing for the FOM, Petersen and Hicks identified several faulty assumptions. One was that “the key to movement is the thorough training of those Reps who comprise our organization.” See FOM April 1974 to December 1976, McGilchrist archive, box 9. Consider also Petersen 1974 on ten points as regards apostolic.
Source: Sanny’s notes of February 1974. He was, incidentally, not a polarizer. This could be seen in the repetitive word “or” in the above rather than the “versus” of some previous analyses. In April 1975, Sanny wrote that “we are committed to movement.”
“A Step-by-Step Development of a Local Movement,” June 1979.
This was our developing nations evaluation conference at Christ Haven, Colorado in February 1980. Present: Jim Petersen, John R., Mike Treneer, Bob V., led by Warren Myers. Quotation is from note IV F.
At our October 1974 ISC, we had asked Dr George Peters about movements. He described them as driven by ideals, not programs. Every movement needs a mover plus dynamic ideas that break through the shackles of institutionalism. Also, “conviction of sin deep within the soul.” See ISC minute 15.7.
“Impact of the Laborers,” December 9, 1986, contributing to our forum for established countries, p. 146-153.
The US Navs ceased to count this variable nationally after 1983. It probably declined during the next three years.
Taylor sees era 1 as the 1930s to the 1950s, followed by era 2 which was the 1960s and 1970s.
Written by Donald McGilchrist, hardly an expert on this topic but committed to advancing the concept of movements.
Interview of September 13, 2011.
Jerry’s team kept emphasizing the need for “enabling”…a society that would empower grass roots ministries by removing organizational blockages.
The biblical foundations for this were laid down earlier in Lorne Sanny’s series on Authority and Submission.
Linkage leaders. See article on Our Enabling Global Society, p. 13.
The International SRM was launched in January 1990. Mike Treneer, in reflecting on the early 1990s, likens our experience to a firework display which burns brightly yet also reveals embers falling back to earth.
Don instances the decline of the US movement called Promise Keepers and draws attention to the need for a fruitful balance between adapters and innovators within The Navigators. For this, see the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory.
In 2010, Don Bartel authored a “Gospel Movement Assessment Report” (forty-four pages) in which he analyzes the findings from sixty-six lengthy interviews that he conducted with Navigators, in support of our international Vision.
As the IET prepared for our international forum in November 2005, they engaged in an energizing discussion, stimulated by a discussion paper from Mike Treneer on organization and movement. During the forum, this was largely subsumed under the presenting question, “What ingredients are necessary for a healthy country ministry in which The Core is well planted and flourishing?”
“Dear Navigator Family” letter of March 12, 2010.
Garrison, Church Planting Movements, 2004, p. 21, 23.