The Navigators

Overview

The Navigators is an interdenominational mission organization with its international headquarters in the United States. As an interdenominational body, it belongs to no particular denomination and operates outside the structures of the church. The name refers to those who navigate at sea and comes from a comparison of the Christian life to a ship sailing across the sea. The organization is well known for discipleship training centered on one-to-one mentoring and Scripture memorization.

Founding and History

Dawson Trotman (1906–1956) began the ministry in California by teaching the Bible to U.S. Navy sailors. The sailors he taught went on to teach their shipmates, and this pattern of one person building up another became the foundation of the organization. Trotman died in 1956 while trying to save a girl from drowning.

In Korea, an American worker based in Daegu opened a Bible correspondence course in the 1950s, and beginning in 1954 discipleship materials were translated into Korean. Ministry to U.S. military personnel stationed in Korea followed. The official ministry of the Korea Navigators is reported to have begun in 1966. In the 1970s the movement spread throughout South Korea through university campuses and workplaces, and in the 1980s and 1990s it sent missionaries from Korea overseas. As of 2009, the Korea Navigators was reported to have 37 chapters nationwide and some 5,000 members.

Principal Activities

• One-to-one mentoring: One person meets regularly with another to study the Bible together and to support that person's Christian life. The Korea Navigators identifies evangelizing, establishing, equipping, and sending as its ministry principles.
• Scripture memorization: A core discipline emphasized since the time of the founder, Dawson Trotman.
• Publishing study materials: Bible study materials published by the Navigators are regarded as having influenced the Bible study and discipleship materials of Korean churches and other mission organizations.
• Campus, workplace, and military ministries and overseas missions: These aim at fulfilling the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19–20).

Organization

Because it is not a denomination, the organization has no member churches or member denominations. University students and working professionals participate through chapters organized by campus and region. In the 1960s the international leadership of the Navigators issued a document setting out the organization's relationship to the church. The document described how the organization had kept its distance from the institutional church in its early years but had gradually moved toward cooperation.

Controversy and Assessment

Beginning around 2007, former members of the Korea Navigators raised criticisms through online communities and other channels. Their main allegations were that leaders chose marriage partners for members, that leaders demanded unconditional obedience, and that the organization drew young adults away from the church and from society.

The Navigators regarded these claims as the spread of false information and filed criminal defamation complaints against several former members. It also cited statements from church leaders to argue that it was a healthy organization, maintaining that the allegations of arranged marriages and withdrawal from social life were distortions of the facts. Those accused countered that the complaints were an attempt to silence criticism. Prosecutors declined to indict, stating that the criticisms could not readily be determined to be false, and the Navigators' appeal of that decision is reported to have been dismissed.