Disciplemaking Story — Al Engler

🎙️ A Disciplemaking Story: The Journey of Al Engler

Dane and Al sit down for the second edition of the “Disciplemaking Story.” Al, a veteran staff member of The Navigators and former

boss to Dane, shares a powerful story of his spiritual journey—from a military base in Germany to witnessing a post-Cold War Gospel explosion in the Baltics. This conversation explores the nuances of faith, intentional discipleship, and the unexpected ways God orchestrates life.

🌲 Pacific Northwest Roots and a God-Given View

Dane: It’s great to have Al Engler here. Al, tell us a bit about yourself.

Al: Well, my wife, Iris, and I will celebrate 49 years of marriage soon. We met in her hometown in Germany when I was stationed with the military. She’s since become a U.S. Citizen. We have two adult children: Natalie in San Antonio, and our son nearby. I’ve been on staff with The Navigators for about 40 years. I came to Christ in the military and kind of ended up having a dual career. I remained in the Army Reserves for most of my time with The Navigators, retiring from the Reserves in 2007.

We live out in Washington State now. This past summer, we decided to forgo a big vacation and instead explore the beauty everyone flies out here to see. It was a good time reconnecting with the outdoors—walking, hiking, and enjoying the incredible scenery.

Dane: The Upper Northwest—the Puget Sound, the mountains, the trees—it is intoxicating!

🧭 Finding Purpose: A Soldier’s Conversion in Germany

Dane: Everyone really needs to see that area once. You met Christ in Germany while in the military—during the Cold War when the wall was still up—is fascinating. You had no spiritual background; what drew you to Christ?

Al: I had gotten into some trouble as a teenager, which led me to join the military. I was already looking for stability and purpose in my life. By the time I met the Lord, I was married about three years into my military career, stationed in Stuttgart.

The thing that made the difference was meeting a fellow soldier, Dave. For the first time, I met a person whose life truly made me pause. The way he lived, how he functioned as a soldier, and how he treated people—he just seemed to have a real purpose and joy. I was curious even before he said anything.

One day, he just asked me, “Hey, has anybody ever taken the time to show you how the Bible says a person can become a Christian?” I was interested in what he had to share. He walked me through a simple illustration. We were sitting in a German guest house, and he wrote a few verses down on the back of a coaster.

I borrowed a Bible from my roommate (who I thought was a bit weird, but he had a large collection of Bibles!) and started looking up the verses Dave had written. I was sensing something unusual. I wanted to make sure the verses were backed up by the context. They were.

Dave’s Key Advice: After I finished looking up the verses, Dave told me to read the Gospel of John. He pointed to the verse in chapter 20 that says, “These have been written that you might believe in the name of Jesus and that he might have life in his name.” He said, “This is written for guys like you who are trying to figure out who Jesus is.”

As I read, especially the red letters—the words of Christ—it felt like Jesus was speaking directly to me. It was a scary, but captivating feeling. Eventually, I was driving in my car, and I just felt compelled to pray, asking Jesus to come into my life and take over.

The first person I saw when I pulled up to the company out of 300 people, was Dave. When I told him, “Hey, I just made a decision.” “What decision did you make?” “I made decision to trust Christ.” He was excited! His next step was to invite me to join him in the barracks basement the next morning before formation to “spend time with God.” I spent the rest of the night thinking about what it meant to spend time with God?  Was it some kind of mystical experience? 

We got together in the morning. He prayed. We read a little passage of scripture. We talked about it. And then we just prayed about what we read and then gave our day to the Lord. I did that with him for about two weeks, until he said, “Hey, I think you got this, Al. I want you to meet alone with God now.”

I wouldn’t have known the word discipleship early on, but Dave was intentional in teaching me how to walk with Jesus. That happened right from the earliest days of my Christian life.

💍 A Marriage Intertwined with the Gospel

Dane: That’s such a neat story. What about Iris? How did she begin figuring it out?

Al: She was tracking after reading the Gospel of John, but her challenge was different than mine. She felt like, “Well, I was confirmed when I was 12 and did everything the church told me to do. I’ve always tried to be a good person.” I didn’t have that religious background, nor did I think I was a good person, so my path was clearer. Her struggle with the idea of being a sinner and needing Jesus made her a little slower.

She finished John and decided to read through the whole New Testament. It took her about two or three months after my conversion (January 1980) to trust Christ in April. It felt long at the time. I remember praying for her consistently, and shortly after, she made her decision on her father’s birthday.

When we finally got government quarters, we were both growing together and even received help through couple-on-couple meetings with Dave and his wife.

Dane: Dave seemed so smart, not pushing, but definitely intentional. It was serendipitous, too.

Al: I’ve learned over the years that Dave is naturally intense, which can push some people away. But when he finds someone who is super hungry, like I was, he knows exactly what to do. For me, he turned on the fire hose once I said I was ready to follow Christ, and it was the right thing. It worked. Over time, though, I’ve learned to put my intensity into my prayers and relax a bit more with people, letting them go at their own rate.

🏃 Early Challenges: From Ministry to Disciplemaking

Dane: You had this spiritual support, but were there any early challenges in your growth in Christ?

Al: Early on, our challenge wasn’t so much personal growth but moving from general ministry to intentional disciplemaking. I was in a Navigator environment, constantly hearing about 2 Timothy 2:2 and life-to-life spiritual generations, and I wanted to help others. Dave and I were doing a lot of evangelism and started a Bible study, but I wasn’t seeing that life-to-life reproduction—I didn’t have a “guy” like I was to Dave.

After Dave and his wife transferred, I continued to lead the ministry. My challenge was: How do you actually reproduce your life in the life of another person?

My Navigator rep at the time helped me with the principle of selection: help as many people as you can, but look for a few people who are hungrier and offer them more. This helped me overcome my frustration.

This principle played out beautifully during an evangelism attempt. I had just finished playing racquetball with a neighbor and we were sitting in the base snack bar having a Gatorade. I was attempting to share the gospel, but he was not interested. Meanwhile, a young soldier named John kept changing seats, moving closer to our table.

I asked him if he’d ever asked Jesus to take over his life. John said, “Yes, I just did! I’ve been asking God to help me find other Christians.”

I gave him a packet of five verses, told him it cost 75 cents (to ensure he was serious), and that if he memorized them, he should call me. An hour later, as I was showering, Iris told me John was on the phone—he’d memorized all five. John was that hungry guy, and he followed me around like a shadow for three years. This was my first taste of what I’d been hearing about—experiencing intentional, life-to-life reproduction.

🎯 Discipleship vs. Disciplemaking

Dane: You’re touching on two key Navigator topics: discipleship and disciplemaking. How would you define them, and what’s the core difference?

Al: The key word is intentionality.

• Disciplemaking requires an intentionality, where an individual—within the context of the body of Christ—says, “I want to help this person become a disciple of Jesus and then a maker of disciples, and I will intentionally pursue that life-to-life.” It’s a direct, purposeful investment.
• Discipleship is anything that helps people grow as disciples of Jesus. A good Bible study, a church where the pastor preaches the Word, listening to sermons—all of these things contribute to discipleship.

It’s possible for people to become disciples of Jesus without ever having someone personally invest in their lives. However, based on Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus commanded us to make disciples. If we are to obey everything Jesus commanded, that must include making disciples. Discipleship can happen organically, but disciplemaking is a command that requires action and intention.

🔥 Gospel Movement After the Cold War

Dane: Fast-forwarding to the fall of the Iron Curtain—what effects did the collapse of the Communist Bloc have, and what did you see in terms of hunger for the Gospel?

Al: It was a unique time. The Iron Curtain seemed permanent. Watching the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany was awe-inspiring. Very shortly after, a bunch of us ministering to the U.S. Military realized God had opened a door to our former enemies.

We began probing for ministry opportunities. We learned that a Navigator team lead, Hans, had gone to Riga, Latvia (a former Soviet Republic), and found tons of new believers, mostly in their 20s. These were people who were out in the streets blockading Soviet tanks and, through the fear and turmoil, God had given believers a supernatural boldness to share their faith. We went in initially for a survey and quickly shifted from evangelism to discipleship to help these new, on-fire Christians grow in the basics of their faith. To this day I have not seen such rapid movement of the Gospel. It was incredible.

The summer camps we ran were life-changing. We brought military people over to be small group leaders. We allowed non-believers to serve as translators because of the language need, and sure enough, the translators all started coming to Christ!

This season deeply impacted me. It was chaotic, but it was also a time of supernatural happenings. God did things that exceeded my existing theological framework, showing me the power of the Holy Spirit in ways I hadn’t seen before. While we still taught the basics—the Word, prayer, fellowship—I would say it led to a deeper dependence on the Spirit of God because we witnessed firsthand Him doing amazing miracles.

🎯 The Simplicity of the Great Commission: A Theology of Place

🏃 Don’t Chase the Spectacle, Embrace the Place

Dane: You’ve seen the Holy Spirit moving in spectacular ways. Now that you’re back in the U.S., particularly the Pacific Northwest where spiritual things often seem like “rocky ground,” how do you deal with the difference?

Al: I often think of Jesus’s words to Nicodemus in John 3: “The wind blows wherever it pleases… So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” The Spirit of God works how and where He chooses. He does do miracles, but in the ways and means that He selects.

A mistake believers sometimes make is chasing the spectacular. While there’s an adrenaline rush in those overwhelming moments, I believe most of what God calls us to is the hard work of removing stones and sowing right where we are. We must trust God with the results in the places—whether hard or easy—He puts us.

I’ve seen Christians spend their lives trying to run after where they think the Spirit of God is working, and they end up wasting their time. He wants you to focus on where you are and He’ll give you the means to do the work there.

I look back at the 40-plus years of walking with the Lord, and I see awe in the hard times, the fast times, and the slow times. The whole journey is amazing. You just need to learn a Theology of Place—a local focus that allows you to see the miracles God is doing. They aren’t always flashy, but they’re still deeply miraculous.

🗺️ The Core of a Theology of Place

Dane: For those who are unfamiliar, how did you get into this idea, and what are the basics of a Theology of Place?

Al: I was asked to lead a new Navigator effort geared toward neighborhoods, which required me to “go to school” on how disciplemaking takes place in local settings. That opened up this concept.

Once you start seeing it in Scripture, you can’t unsee it. Disciplemaking is always tied to locality:

• Acts 1:8 names places: “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the remotest parts of the earth.”
• Matthew 28‘s call to make disciples of all nations was understood by the apostles as going to specific places to plant the Gospel.
• My favorite verse on this is Acts 17:26 (ESV): “God set the boundaries of their dwelling place.”

God plants people within these boundaries and wants to use them to spread the Gospel of the Kingdom. The goal isn’t just saving people out of a place; it’s impacting the place itself through the people, giving a foretaste of the future renewal of all things.

A Theology of Place means asking: What is for the flourishing of this place? It involves both the people and the place itself. It’s about weaving a fabric of love and care right where we live. This shift has changed my thinking as much as my experience in the former Soviet Union did—the Great Commission is fundamentally about people in places.

This is why Paul’s epistles are written to places. He urges people to live out the Gospel in a certain way so that it can saturate every nook and cranny of that locality.

Dane: As one pastor put it: “You tell me you want to go to the mission field, I ask you, what are your neighbors’ names?”

Al: Exactly. I’m not negating the call to go to other places—we do need people to start work elsewhere. But for the vast majority of us, God plants us in a place, and He wants us to be faithful there first. It was true my friend Dave, who was simply present and invested in his military base. He had plenty of work right there.

💡 The ABCs of Discipleship and Disciplemaking

Dane: Given your unique experiences—from the rapid, miraculous growth in Europe to the slow, intentional work in the West—what are the simple, core basics you would teach someone to help them grow as a disciple? And then, what helps them bump up to a disciplemaker?

Al: Over the years, I collected notebooks and tools, and things got complicated. Now, I find the culmination of all my experience is a return to simplicity. I call it the ABCs of Discipleship (with a bonus D).

The ABCs of Discipleship

1. A: Abide in Christ.This is foundational. Help people grow in an ever-deepening personal relationship with Jesus by becoming self-feeding Christians—saturating their lives with the Word of God through multiple methods and practicing faithful, obedient living and prayer.

2. B: Be Faithfully Present.

1. • Help people understand the boundaries of their habitation: work, home, worship, family. The power of God will naturally flow out of those who are abiding in Christ and are simply present with people. The key is slowing down long enough to spend sufficient time so people can actually see who you are.

3. C: Commit to Community.

1. • Help people connect with a local church, drawing help from the body of Christ and contributing as a member. Critically, help them understand that the church is a “huddle” that prepares you to play the “game” in the broader community where God has planted you. Don’t let the huddle pull you out of the game.

4. The Bonus D: Disciple

1. • The stepping stone to becoming a disciplemaker is simple: Start asking God to give you a person. Dave told me, “When I got there, I asked God, give me somebody, give me a person. And I just sensed that it might be you.”
   • You are looking for someone who is hungry. This could be a non-believer ready to move ahead or a Christian who sees your life and asks, “How do you get to be that way?”
   • Once you stick with someone and experience seeing your life reproduced in theirs through intentional, life-to-life disciplemaking, it becomes core to your identity. It’s hard to imagine ever giving that up.

 

Dane: That’s a powerful and simple trajectory: Abide, Be Present, Commit to Community, and Disciple. Al, thank you for sharing your story and your wisdom on both the spectacle and the simplicity of God’s work.