This year Novo is celebrating 40 years of ministry. Anniversaries are generally times of celebration and gratitude, but also occasions to remember and reflect on defining moments. As we reflect on all that has occurred in the 40 years of Novo’s existence, we can see many of those defining moments—moments that shaped our ministry vision and impacted who we are and how we pursue that vision. In gratitude for those formational pieces—which have positioned us to multiply gospel movements around the world today—we wanted to pull back the curtain and take more of an inside look.
God is in the business of bringing people to himself, and inviting us to be part of it—sometimes in ways we never would have imagined. Novo’s story has all the marks of that divine authorship, as God formed us for gospel movements in ways we’ve only recently realized.
Novo’s Beginnings
In 1980, four couples set out to found a ministry they called Church Resource Ministries, now called Novo. Three of those four couples came directly out of another flourishing ministry, The Navigators. Several other former Navigators also joined the early Novo team. Novo’s ethos as a mission organization has been highly influenced by the characteristics of The Navigators as a result. In fact, we can trace our early emphasis and current strengths in discipleship and leadership development (two of the five essential components of gospel movements) to our roots with The Navigators. Here’s how.
Novo-US President Sam Metcalf, among those original Novo founders, describes The Navigators this way: “Begun prior to WWII by Dawson Trotman, The Navigators was a movement that emphasized personal evangelism and discipleship, spiritual reproduction, intense biblical intake, and a disciplined life of obedience to Christ.” Their strength as an organization, Sam explains, has always been, “in-depth, individualized discipleship training and reproduction.”
Due to our foundation with The Navigators, Novo has always had a relational discipleship focus and a belief that relationships are where people grow best. We’re also committed to first and foremost be disciples of Jesus ourselves, pursuing intimacy with Jesus as our most important work and the foundation of all we do. Novo has also always kept both feet firmly planted in historic biblical orthodoxy—another Navigator distinctive. We value and look to God’s Word as authoritative for faith and life. We are grateful to The Navigators for their part in solidifying these values in our organization.
Our vision was also directly inspired by the work of The Navigators. Novo’s founders saw the impact The Navigators had on university campuses through the Nav’s strategic and self-replicating discipleship approach, and became convinced that local churches needed to understand and implement the same kinds of processes. Sam and Patty Metcalf and the other founding couples believed that discipleship and leadership training were essential components for the health and future of the Christian movement. “The aim of this sodality (mission organization) is to produce laborers for the body of Christ and leadership for the Church,” they explained in a letter at the end of 1979. “By providing discipleship models and assistance in training shepherds for leadership in the Church, this sodality [will] contribute a specialization to the total body of Christ that in many ways is not unlike the Navs.”
This was one of the first instances where The Navigators had a group of their staff leave to start something new, but the future Novo staff were sent off with the blessing of Navigator leadership. “I trust that the Lord will greatly bless your new direction in ministry,” the Metcalf’s regional director with The Navigators wrote. “Be sure to keep me posted on what is happening. If there is anything I can do to be of help and encouragement I certainly want to do that.”
Nav Roots and Gospel Movements
From our earliest days, Novo was committed to the discipleship and multiplication of effective leaders for the Church. As already mentioned, in our understanding of gospel movements, Making Disciples and Growing Leaders are two of the necessary components. Novo was formed with the specific purpose of multiplying both. Our founders built on the strategies they learned from The Navigators, further developing and refining their methods and approaches for discipleship and leadership development for different cultural contexts around the world. By 2007, when Novo began to embrace a comprehensive paradigm for gospel movements that included the “five components,” we’d already spent more than twenty years digging deep into discipleship and leadership development in all kinds of cultures all over the world—from nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to secular and postmodern contexts in Europe and the US. We were thus poised to make a significant contribution to the work of gospel movements around the world in these areas, and to teach others all the things our experience had taught us.
The high view of scripture we inherited from The Navigators also prepared us to embrace the strategies behind gospel movements. At the heart of Disciple Making Movements is using the Bible through simple, rapidly multiplying groups called Discovery Bible Studies (DBS). In DBSs, the expectation is that the Holy Spirit will speak powerfully through the word of God to draw people far from God into becoming obedient disciples of Jesus.
As these disciples grow and mature, intentional leadership development helps take new followers of Jesus to the next level, providing the guidance and coordination for even more new groups of disciples and multiplying the movement. So, discipleship and leadership development go hand in hand to keep a Disciple Making Movement thriving and multiplying.
Looking at where we began and the vision for gospel movements the Lord of the harvest has entrusted to us, Novo-US President Sam Metcalf sums things up this way: “We are deeply indebted to The Navigators. For that legacy, we are deeply grateful.”
This is part 1 of a series exploring Novo’s foundational influences and 40 year history. Read part 2.