The Power of One + One

A Conversation with Jim Downing, a Lifelong Discipler
Jim Downing is currently 102 and about to release a new book The Other Side of Infamy this fall. This summer he is busy traveling across the country speaking about his experiences at Pearl Harbor, WWII, and living a life of faith. Peter Mayberry interviews Jim Downing – as seen in the May-June 2007 issue of Discipleship Journal…

At age 93, Jim Downing has spent more than 70 years, most of them with The Navigators, coming alongside people and helping them grow in Christ. And from what we can observe, his fervor for making disciples has not waned one bit. These days, Jim still meets one-on-one with a number of young believers, most of them in their 20s. And by his life and teaching, he inspires more Christians than we can count to continue his legacy of one life impacting another for God’s glory.
One of the people Jim has inspired and influenced through the years is Peter Mayberry, a former publisher of DJ and now one of the pastors at Jim’s church. Peter first met Jim in 1977. At that time, Peter had only known the Lord for a few months. He recalls thinking of Jim, Man, that guy is old, but he’s engaged!
We asked Peter to spend a couple of hours with Jim, exploring Jim’s passion for people and mining some of his life lessons about one-on-one ministry. Peter caught up with Jim right after Jim had returned from a ministry trip to Brazil.
Peter: You’ve given a lifetime to helping people one-on-one. You must have caught a passion for that somewhere. How did it all begin for you?
Jim: I was in the Navy—this was in the 1930s. I had come to know Christ through four shipmates. Those guys introduced me to Dawson Trotman [founder of The Navigators], who had been helping them grow spiritually. Dawson talked often of “spiritual parenting.” He said to me early in our relationship, “You have no right to leave your baby on somebody else’s doorstep. He’s yours.” So it just seemed natural to me that if I led somebody to Christ, I was his parent; I was responsible for caring for him. The Apostle Paul said in 1 Thess. 2:11, “I taught you (nourished you) as a parent does his child” (paraphrased).
Peter: You were a pretty young Christian at that point, right?
Jim: Yes. And soon after I became a Christian, the shipmates who had introduced me to Christ left the Navy. Dawson’s message to the sailors was: “Get out of the Navy. Go to Bible school. Go overseas as a missionary.” So three of the four guys did that. And I was left with 25 to 30 Christians about my own age. By default I became their leader. It was a matter of survival to keep ahead of them!
Peter: Wow! So what did you do with these guys?
Jim: Well, in most groups you seem to have an inner core—like Peter, James, and John were to Christ. There were about six guys on ship who formed that core. We met three times a day, 15 minutes before each meal, to pray. And in the evenings, from about 6:00 until 7:30 when the evening movie started, we fanned out for evangelism.
Peter: Then you went to the movie?
Jim: No. Every night during the movie we had “classes” of some sort. On Mondays, we—not just the core team but anyone who wanted to come—studied the New Testament. On Tuesday nights we had evangelistic Bible studies. They were announced over the ship’s loudspeaker so that everybody on the ship—all 1,500—knew about the classes. Peter: You’re kidding! The chaplain made sure that happened?
Jim: That’s right. Then on Wednesday through Friday nights we had prayer meetings or additional Bible studies. And on the weekends we had mini-conferences. We didn’t have speakers, but we had a collection of Dwight L. Moody’s sermons, and we would read those great sermons.
The Role of Teaching
Peter: It sounds like your focus was on delivering a lot of teaching.
Jim: Not exactly. Overall, we followed a pattern that Christ followed with His disciples. He imparted knowledge through teaching, and, yes, we did a lot of teaching. But He also imparted skills through guided experience, so we did a lot of that too—we can talk about that in a minute. And He imparted character through modeling. In our shipboard group, every new Christian had a role model—a slightly more seasoned Christian—and every new Christian pretty much knew what he was getting into before he decided to follow Christ. All he had to do was look around him!
Peter: Ah, that’s helpful. Imparting knowledge through teaching, skills through guided experience, and character through modeling. Let’s explore those. You said that every Monday you studied the New Testament with your guys. How did you approach that?
Jim: We didn’t have Bible study helps. We just tried to grasp the content of the chapter, to get familiar with what the Bible says.
Peter: And that was effective because you were taking novices in the faith—or even people who weren’t in the faith yet—and exposing them to God’s truth.
Jim: Right. Later, as a new believer became more familiar with the Bible, we approached Bible study differently. We developed a simple plan for any passage: Assign a title, identify a key verse or passage, identify a personal challenge, and discuss the difficulties.
Peter: Identifying a personal challenge? So you weren’t just teaching them about what was in the Bible but also how the Bible could impact how they lived.
Jim: Yes, and these guys were really driven to obey Scripture. Any hint in the Bible of something they were supposed to do, they eagerly did it. They looked for things to obey. They were trained to be effective in their military responsibilities; perhaps they felt the same drive to be effective in their Christian responsibilities.
I’ve found that this responsiveness is key if our teaching is to affect a person’s character. Every scriptural truth that we obey consistently becomes part of our character. If we get a guy in the Bible—through Bible study and private reading—it will do its work in him. Pretty soon that person will develop a conviction, and as he lives in obedience to that conviction, he will develop character.
The Role of Guided Experience
Peter: So that’s how you handled teaching. Now tell me what you mean by guided experience. What did this look like in practice? Jim: Let’s use evangelism as an example. Suppose I see that the guys I’m helping need training in evangelism. And suppose I say, “I’m going to hold classes. It will take us about eight months to cover everything you need to know about evangelism. So we’ll meet for an hour once a week for eight months. At the end of the course, everybody will get a diploma.” Now, if that’s all we did, would there be any increase in evangelism?
Peter: Probably not.
Jim: Exactly. But consider this scenario. I turn to one of my most responsive guys and say, “What are you doing tomorrow night? Cancel it.” And then I explain, “I’m going to show you my list of unsaved people I’m praying for. I’m going to show you how I make an appointment to talk with a person about Christ. I’m going to take you with me and show you how I open a conversation, how I meet objections, and how I lead someone to Christ.” And for the next two weeks, that’s what we do.
By the third week I say, “Next week bring your list. You’re going to make an appointment, and I’m going with you. I’ll help you if you get in trouble.” We do this for two weeks.
After a month I’m going to approach another young Christian and go through the same process with him. And the guy I’ve been training will do the same—he’ll pick someone to help. And we’ll keep repeating this pattern.
Peter: So that’s what you did on ship?
Jim: Yes. But I didn’t stop there. I also wanted to impart character. So for a while, I’d check every week with the guy I was training in evangelism, and I’d ask him, “How did it go last night?” Eventually, he’d tell me, “Jim, you don’t have to check up on me anymore. I’m as motivated in evangelism as you are!” That told me there had been a change in this guy’s character. He not only had the skills for evangelism, he had the heart as well.
Peter: The people reading this are probably thinking, that was in the 1930s aboard ship. These guys had nowhere else to go. They were a captive audience. But you weren’t always in that environment. How have you engaged with people as you moved on in life?
Jim: It hasn’t changed all that much. Peter: You mean when I see you these days at the neighborhood restaurant meeting with some Christian, you’re doing the same things you did with sailors aboard ship?
Jim: That’s right. I still teach, offer guided experience, and instill character through modeling.
Peter: You are 93. What guided experiences do you provide at this stage in your life? Jim: I focus on discovering the gifts of the people I’m helping. I believe the formula for fulfillment—fulfillment is so important to young people today—is to discover your gift, dedicate your gift, develop your gift, and deploy your gift for the glory of God. So I try to discover early on what a guy’s gifts are. Then I ask, “How are you using those gifts?” And that’s where guided experience comes in. I give him encouragement toward exercising his gifts. Sometimes I create a situation in which he can use his gift. Peter: What do you do with these guys in the area of character?
Jim: Lorne Sanny [of The Navigators] always said, “More is caught than taught.” Take spiritual gifts, for instance. The people I’m helping know from spending time with me that I’m much fulfilled. And they know that I’m fulfilled because I’m using my gifts for the glory of God. They realize that they can have the same fulfillment if they will use their gifts for the glory of God. I didn’t have to tell them that; they caught it from being with me.
The Uniqueness of One-on-One
Peter: It sounds as if your ministry has included large groups, small groups, and one-on-one interaction. Yet I know your passion all these years has been for one-on-one ministry. Why is that?
Jim: Let me give you a roundabout answer. Once I was studying the Bible with a colonel at the Air Force Academy. I asked him to describe his job. He said, “I’m heading up a task force that is going to revolutionize learning at the Academy. A cadet will sit in front of a computer in his room and get an academic education. We have found that we can take a complicated engineering textbook, reduce it to questions and answers, and the cadet can master that material in 20 percent of the time it takes with the conventional approach.”
That fascinated me. I asked the colonel what obstacles he was running into. He said, “Nobody knows what the learning process is. How do you computerize it?” And then he added something I’ve thought about a lot since then: “We think it’s related to curiosity. Unless a person is curious about a subject, he won’t learn.”
I’ve since asked several teachers, “What is the secret to being a good teacher?” They’ve all answered, “Creating interest in your subject.”
Peter: And how does this relate to one-on-one ministry?
Jim: There are certain things you can communicate in large groups—Bible doctrine, for example. There are other things you can communicate best in small groups. But chances are that, with any topic a small group covers, a few people will be curious and engaged, while several others will be bored. So the optimal setting for arousing curiosity and enhancing learning is one-on-one. That’s where you discover the other person’s interests, the life issues he is struggling with; that’s where you discover the questions he is asking. That’s where you can adapt your teaching to his curiosity.
Here’s an example. At one point in my Navy career, I had a private office, and I slept in that office. Every morning when I got up to go brush my teeth, there was one guy sitting outside the door waiting. He always had a list of questions. Now, we were in a group study together. But he didn’t get all his questions answered in that environment. There were things he wanted to know that could only be imparted one-on-one.
Good Investments
Peter: How do you know whom to give your life to in one-on-one ministry?
Jim: Lorne Sanny had a great answer on that. He said that you can’t possibly meet with everybody. Nor should you. You meet with the ones who can help you help others the soonest.
Peter: “Meet with people who can help you help others the soonest.” That’s a mouthful. Is it hard to practice that?
Discipling is meeting people’s needs.
Jim: It’s hard to improve on that. Second Timothy 2:2 describes investing in somebody who is faithful and who has the ability to communicate with others. Those are two things I look for when I’m thinking about helping someone spiritually.
Peter: Where do you meet these people?
Jim: Many of the people I spend time with one-on-one are people I met at Bible study. In every Bible study group I’ve been in, there are a few people who want to know more than what was covered in the session. I watch for that kind of person.
Peter: Ah, it’s that curiosity thing again.
Jim: If his questions are on an academic level, that’s one thing. If they relate to life’s battles, then I’m interested. I want to help someone who wants to know how to win the battle more than a guy who wants to accumulate knowledge.
Know. If they need a diaper change, they let you know. If they want to be held, they let you know.
Similarly, when you spend time with people as a spiritual parent, they let you know what they need. That has remained unchanged in all my years of discipling others.
In fact, I was talking to a girl at a conference just a few weeks ago. She was a fairly new Christian. She said, “I’ve concluded that discipling is meeting people’s needs.” I thought, Now why didn’t I think of that? Why does it take some new Christian to figure that out? That’s what discipling is. It’s meeting people’s needs—mainly their spiritual needs but also their other needs.
Agendas and Objectives
Peter: Say you’ve met a Christian who is curious and responsive. Do you have a plan for how you engage with him?
Jim: Not really. But I know what I’m after. My objective is that every person will be at his best for God. The first time Christ met Peter, He said, “You are . . . you will be” (Jn. 1:42). Throughout His life Christ looked at Peter and saw who he was going to be—a leader—not who he was at any particular point.
So I want to know what is frustrating a person from being his best. What is the barrier to his next step of growth? Then after we deal with that issue, what’s the next one and the next one? Instead of having a predetermined agenda, I simply want to know where a person is and how I can help him move forward into all God has for him.
Peter: How do you find out what these issues are?
Jim: Newborn babies always have been— always will be—very effective communicators. If they are hungry, they let you
Obstacles to Sharing Your Life
Peter: Can every person do this? Or does one-on-one ministry require certain spiritual gifts?
Jim: Whatever your spiritual gifts, you have something to offer another person. Lack of gifting is not a hindrance to one-on-one ministry.
Peter: Then what are the hindrances?
Jim: The greatest reason people don’t reach out in this way is fear. What if you’ve communicated what the Bible teaches and what walking with Christ looks like, and soon the other guy catches on and asks, “Well, if this is such a hot idea how come you don’t do it?” One reason people fear a one-on-one relationship is that they don’t want the exposure, the transparency. They think, I know what I should be doing, and I’m not doing it. So I can’t help anybody else.
Peter: How do you deal with that fear? Jim: You have to remember that people do not resent it if you’re imperfect—they know they’re imperfect too. Sometimes I just have to say, “I know that the Bible teaches this, and I know I should be doing it. But I need help. Maybe you can help me in this area. Would you pray for me?”
Peter: By asking the person to pray for you, you give him the freedom to ask you to pray for him. So you can actually grow the relationship.
Jim: Yes. It’s very effective.
Peter: Do you see any other reasons why people resist one-on-one ministry?
Jim: Not good reasons! As I’ve said, everybody has something to offer to someone else. We all know someone who—I need to phrase this carefully—knows less than we do and has a need that we know how to meet. I believe I have an obligation to help meet that need.
Peter: Isn’t time an obstacle? As I listen to you, I’m thinking, but it takes time to consider the people around me and notice opportunities. It takes time to develop relationships. It takes time to meet regularly with someone so I can begin helping that person grow in Christ. Jim: Yes, time is definitely a factor. We’re all a little selfish with our time.
Peter: How do we overcome that?
Jim: I challenge people to look at what mattered to Jesus. It was people. That’s what should matter to me too. You might say such an attitude is the opposite of pride.
Peter: Explain that, please.
Jim: One of the best definitions of pride that I’ve heard is “preoccupation with self.” Love is just the opposite—it focuses away from the self. It focuses on the good of the other person. If I have love for people, then the willingness to invest in them will follow, and I will be motivated to make the time.
Keeping On
Peter: Jim, you’ve spent 70-plus years investing in people. Why do you keep doing it?
Jim: I was asked that by some student leaders at Cal Poly. Here’s what I told them: I want the best there is in life. And this is the best. When Christ asked Peter, “Are you guys going away too?” Peter said, to paraphrase, “Why should we go away? You’ve got everything we want, everything we need. Why would we go someplace else?” (Jn. 6:67-69)
That’s my response too. Why would I do anything else? Investing in others brings me the greatest degree of fulfillment.
I came to Christ because of the quality of life that I saw in four guys on my ship. I continue to follow Christ because of the quality of life that it affords me.
The Apostle John wrote, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4). I know what he meant.
Peter: Are there particular people God gave you the opportunity to influence, and now you think, Thank God that I had an opportunity to do that because their influence is so far beyond mine?
Jim: I was meeting with a guy one evening in the dining room at Glen Eyrie [the conference center of The Navigators]. Another guy came over to our table and said to me, “When I first became a Christian, I heard The Navigators could help me grow. So I wrote to them. They sent me two tapes. One was your tape on meditation. I took your tape on vacation. I bought what you said. I embraced it. I’ve been doing it, and it has been foundational in my life. I just want to thank you for taking the time to put that on tape.” We shook hands, and he went on his way. Later I learned the guy was Rick Warren. [Laughter] He was leading a pastors’ conference at the Glen.
Peter: I can tell you have another story . . .
Jim: Once at a military conference, a mid-shipman at the Naval Academy asked to talk with me about what it was like to be at Pearl Harbor. I spent an hour with him. Years later he told me, “I’m in Christian leadership today because you took the time to talk to me about Pearl Harbor.”
Peter: You took an hour to talk to a mid-shipman . . .
Jim: And I was probably a little reluctant to waste that time talking about the war. But you never know. The time spent with individuals is rarely wasted.
A Final Challenge
Peter: Is there anything else you want to communicate to the DJ readers?
Jim: I must emphasize that everybody has something to offer. If you are reading this, you have something to offer. Make a list of 10 people who know less than you do about spiritual things. Then pick a person from that list. That’s where you start. Be willing to share what you know with that person, someone just a little less far along with the Lord than you may be. With those steps, you can have an impact with your life.
Want to hear more from Jim Downing?
At www.discipleshiplibrary.com you will find dozens of mp3 (audio) files of his messages.
Used by permission of Discipleship Journal Copyright © 2007, Issue 159, The Navigators. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. www.navpress.com.