For 92 years, Navigators, a quiet, $170 million, Colorado Springs-based international ministry, has focused on discipleship: helping believers deepen their faith and become committed disciples of Christ who reproduce such faith in others.

But research conducted with nearly 5,500 people in 2020 and 2021 showed that 37% of believers — some 40 million U.S. Christians — don’t feel qualified or equipped to help others grow their faith.

“I don’t think I would do a good job,” some said. “That role is for someone else,” such as professional religious leaders, said another.

Leaders at Navigators, which first gained national prominence by providing discipleship materials to people who accepted Christ at Billy Graham evangelistic crusades in the 1940s and 1950s, decided they needed to respond.

The ministry has revised its slogan to focus on this challenge, from its old slogan, “To know Christ and make Him known,” to a new version, “To know Christ, make Him known and help others do the same.”

Employees got to work making its wealth of discipleship resources available where many Americans live their lives: on digital devices. The result is Navigators Discipleship App, a free download available in 45 countries and in the U.S. through Apple, Google, and other app stores.

Amanda Trautmann, vice president of marketing for Navigators, says the ministry wants to encourage people and give them the help they need.

“The message is go for it,” she said. “You do have what it takes, the holy Spirit is in you, and we’re here to shepherd you.”

Trautmann said a target audience for the app is “the everyday person who is busy juggling everything and said, ‘I don’t have time’” for ministry to others.

Global ministry

Navigators was founded in Southern California after a hell-raiser named Dawson Trotman became a Christian and shared his faith with a Navy man. When the Navy man asked Trotman to share Christ with another sailor, too, Trotman challenged the man to do so himself and showed him how he could.

That simple act — training another person to do the work of “spiritual reproduction” — was the genesis of a ministry that now has 6,088 people ministering in 123 countries and 2,572 U.S. staff members, including full- and part-time workers and upaid volunteers.

Local employment grows by more than 200 during summers as activities increase at the ministry’s Eagle Lake Camp west of the city.

The ministry moved to the Springs in 1953, and 564 people work at its U.S headquarters near Garden of the Gods and at Glen Eyrie, a castle constructed by city founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer that now serves as a conference and retreat center and popular tourist spot.

Eleven more people work in its International Office, including Joe Maschhoff, who was named the ministry’s sixth international president in May 2025. Maschhoff joined Navigators during college and has given it most of his career.

“God has given us a form of ministry to carry out that is incredibly transferable into multiple countries, contexts, and cultures,” he said via email.

“In many countries we have a formal organizational structure. In still more, we have no organizational structure because of security reasons. Our ministry can be helped by the existence of an organization, but it is not dependent on it.”

Local impact

In December, Navigators named Colorado Springs a Nav City, joining 17 other cities including Detroit, New York and Albuquerque, N.M.

The designation means Navigator teams will serve local college students, international students, military personnel, young adults, workers, immigrants and those experiencing poverty.

“We come alongside organizations serving the city’s most vulnerable,” a Navigators spokesman said. “From sponsoring local schoolchildren to attend a Vibes baseball game, to walking alongside people in neighborhoods and workplaces, we’re looking for every opportunity to bring the heart of disciplemaking to Colorado Springs — believing that transformed lives can transform a city.”

Making discipleship practical

Jesus told his disciples to go into all the world making additional disciples, but that can be difficult today, said a research project Navigators conducted with Barna Group.

“There are many Christians who feel anything but confident when engaging in discipleship,” noted the research, which described America as a “digital Babylon” and the 21st century as a time when “most people in our society are moving away from Christianity.”

Today’s Babylon is characterized by “phenomenal access” to information, “profound alienation” from others and institutions, “and a crisis of authority (which, like institutions and traditions, is increasingly viewed with suspicion).”

Navigators Discipleship App uses algorithms to help users assess the strength of their own faith and offers conversation starters and other resources people can use when talking to others about Jesus.

Just as pastors and priests have parishes, so do ordinary believers, Trautmann says.

“We each have a parish,” she said. “That’s a way of looking at the people in your life and the ways you can have an impact on their spiritual growth.”