I wrote yesterday about our need for an outward focus, and no one expresses it better than a former International President of The Navigators, Mike Treneer. Mike was supposed to speak at the staff conference we just attended, but his wife slipped on ice and broke her hip and femur. His short talk, aimed at Navigators but applicable to everyone, was entitled “Our Call to the Nations.” You can read it in its entirety, but here are some snippets:

He talks about a conference he attended in his native England back in 1967:

I heard veteran Navigator missionary Doug Sparks speak on Matthew 28:18-20—Jesus saying to his first followers: ” . . . All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,…”

Doug, himself, had dropped out of college to go to Formosa (which we now call Taiwan) after hearing Dawson Trotman [founder of The Navigators] speak. Dawson challenged him to go and help lay the foundations of a gospel movement in Formosa in which thousands came to Christ. Then, a few years later in 1956, Doug had gone on to lead the team that pioneered the Navigator ministry in Kenya…

Doug spoke with passion, challenging us as young people to give our lives to the greatest of all life adventures—to multiply disciples of Jesus in every nation of the world. He cast a vision based on his own life experience of seeing lives transformed and spiritual generations birthed. He imagined for us what it would be like to grow old, never having dared to give our lives to something truly significant—to be waiting sadly for death, knowing we had wasted our lives. 

Then Doug pointed out to us in Isaiah 6 the prophet Isaiah’s experience of seeing a vision of God in the temple and overhearing God (within the Trinity) ask, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” (NIV). Doug made the observation that God’s question still stands for every generation to answer, and he invited us there, in that meeting room in Swanwick, Derbyshire, to pray Isaiah’s prayer: “Here am I. Send me.”

Mike found himself discipling students from Nigeria and Kenya (while he was still a student). He continues:

These were the first few baby steps in my eventual calling to pioneer the Navigator work in Nigeria, and out from there into many nations in Africa and the world.

He talks about Navigator history:

Of the first six Navigators on the USS West Virginia, only Jim Downing stayed in the Navy to perpetuate what became the sending base of our movement. The other five all went out into the nations—Lester Spencer into rural North America, Gurney Harris to Africa, John Dedrick to Mexico, Ed Goodrick into academia (he ended up co-creating the concordance for the NIV Bible translation), Virgil Hook went to Tibet, and Jim, even though at that point he had only himself been a believer a few weeks, stayed to become the “inside man” on the West Virginia.

The Navigators are experiencing a bit of division among ourselves with respect to the roles of women in the ministry. Mike addresses this problem, putting it into perspective:

The Navigator movement to which Chris and I have given our lives, and within which God has called us to serve, has never been about arguing doctrinal differences…We are never all going to agree, and our movement has always been outward-looking, driven by the absolute imperative of going to the nations and of multiplying disciples among every people.

And the history of this movement does not begin with Dawson and those first few sailors. It begins way, way back with Abraham and Sarah. It begins with them receiving a promise from God that He would bless them and make them a blessing and that He would bless all nations through them….

How tragic, then, that several hundred years later, when Jesus stood in the temple courts in Jerusalem, among those who in that generation should have been the heirs of those promises to Abraham, Jesus had to say of them: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17 ESV).

The Jews of Jesus’ day had completely lost any sense of the responsibility to be a blessing to the nations in the way that God had promised in Genesis 12:1-3. They had become so preoccupied with their own petty, self-focused concerns that they were not just passively neglecting their calling to the nations—they were actively opposing it...

When I heard Doug Sparks speak at that conference, I was not worried whether he was a Methodist, a Baptist, or a Presbyterian, whether he was reformed or dispensational in his eschatology, or whether he was a complementarian or an egalitarian [with respect to the roles of women]. As I look back on my later relationship with Doug, I cannot recall ever discussing these things. I did discover, as I worked under his leadership in the years that followed, that he was passionate, not only about the nations, but also about the lordship of Christ and the authority of Scripture over every aspect of life. I also discovered that he was an early champion of women in the Navigator movement, that he encouraged and protected Joyce Turner in her ministry in London (through which my wife Chris was discipled), and I know that he encouraged and championed Esther Waruiru in her ministry in Kenya when others were questioning her contribution.

Mike closes with:

So, I appeal to you, my brothers and sisters, that we stay united and passionate about our Calling to the nations. That we make sure that everyone knows that as Navigators, we are about the gospel to the nations, about disciplemaking among the nations, about seeing workers for the Kingdom next door to everywhere.

It is easy, even for an organization completely dedicated to world missions, to get distracted. And it’s easy for us to focus only on our little corner of the world, as important as that is. But let’s remember that God’s focus is on the whole world, on ALL the nations.

The second International President of The Navigators said this to us at the National Staff Gathering, 2003:

Luke 24.46, 47 says, “He told them, ‘This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.’” Why did he say, “…beginning at Jerusalem”? Because that’s where they were! You certainly cannot reach the world starting from where you are not! -Lorne Sanney, to the quadrennial gathering of Navigator staff, via video, November 2003

I want to reach the world…starting from Monument, Colorado. Will you join me?