Believers in Burundi: How D4D Training Has Led to Generations of Impact

In a village in Burundi, a woman named Deborah* has watched God transform her family and community. 

By using the Navigators Discipling for Development (D4D) lessons, she has seen significant impact. Starting with raising goats to pay for her four childrens’ school fees, she eventually bought a house. Then, she started to think bigger.

Hoping to start a church, she traveled to a nearby village. Deborah walked through the community beating a drum and singing, and gradually more and more people started to gather. Her method was unconventional, but effective. A group was formed, and together they decided to farm a field together to raise crops to fund the building of a new church.

One by one, they completed walls and a roof, and gathered toilets for the church. Her vision was achieved, and the gospel found a new presence in the nearby village.

Deborah’s story of rising up and inviting the Lord to work in the lives of her community, is just one of the hundreds of stories that have come out of Africa and around the world through the D4D program — a Navigators ministry that trains people to practice whole-life discipleship, address poverty alleviation, and work with their communities to experience God’s restoration in all areas of life.

The Impact of D4D Around the World

In 1979, Navigator Merri Lee Hipp’s father created an organization called Mission Moving Mountains, a group designed to bring holistic and spiritual discipleship to impoverished and marginalized communities. Starting in Uganda, they worked to mentor local leaders to meet the needs of communities and train them how to improve their lives through economics, health care, agriculture, marriages, spiritual health, and more.

After a couple decades, The Navigators contacted Merri Lee and her husband, Gary, and they merged Mission Moving Mountains with The Navigators ministry to form the D4D ministry in 2007. Now, D4D has mentorship programs in over 300 communities, and has seen people come to faith in Jesus and communities transform.

“The Navigators would talk about the three E’s: evangelism, establishing, and equipping,” Gary says. “And then the next level beyond that is building local leaders. So when we merged with The Navigators, we told them to give us those local leaders who are already established and equipped, and we will build them up, helping them go into communities and discipling them to become all that God intended them to be.”

The D4D process is broken into a series of stages — first, they will find leaders to train, helping them create a healthy team. Then they go into the communities to work with local leaders to discover the specific and unique needs of their area. “We ask them what resources they already have, and what problems they need to overcome,” Gary says. “They can often identify an area where they say, ‘If we get training in this area, we will be able to flourish.’ So then we disciple, mentor, and coach them in a relational way.”

This model of whole-life discipleship has a tendency to multiply from community to community. “They see how their community has been transformed, so they will go to one another’s homes and give advice,” Gary remarks. “Suddenly, we have generations of disciplemaking.”

Impact in Rwanda, Burundi, and Beyond

This model is what the Hipps implemented when they held a D4D training in Africa in 2007. 13 different countries were represented, including missionaries serving in Rwanda who had over 60 churches from their denomination across the country. For seven years, the Hipps continued to mentor these missionaries as Navigator alongsiders — people who come alongside The Navigator mission — coaching them on how to bring holistic discipleship to their church members and communities.

These missionaries eventually spread their reach to Burundi and Eastern Congo to continue practicing and teaching the D4D process in their churches. It was in Burundi that one of those missionaries discipled a pastor, who eventually discipled Deborah. Over 20 years later, the impact of the Hipps’ D4D training and mentorship has continued to multiply and bear fruit.

Though Deborah succeeded in building a church, she is still continuing to support and build up her community. She and her friends work to aid widows by helping them raise livestock. “Recently, we helped five widows in our church build homes,” she says.

Through the D4D training and discipleship, Deborah has witnessed her community change through the strategic use of their resources. “I have experienced transformation in my family and in the church,” she says.

Join The Navigators as we pray for our D4D ministry, that other local leaders like Deborah can impact and build up impoverished communities, continuing the chain reaction of growth and the spread of the Lord’s kingdom around the world.

“Our prayer is that this would become a desired approach, and we are ready to mentor and coach folks that want to do this kind of ministry,” Merri Lee says. “Spiritual life, marriage, agriculture, health, business — all of those things, the people are getting skills that they can pass on to their neighbors. Good things aren’t fully accomplished until people have a capacity to pass it on to others.”

*Name changed for privacy.

Discipleship Tip:

The D4D ministry is so successful partially because disciples continue to pass on the skills and lessons they’ve learned to other communities. Think about what lessons you’ve been taught by mentors over the years. How can you pass on what you’ve learned to others?