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What is a pioneer?


In the introduction to 'The Pioneer Gift', Jonny Baker, the founder and leader of the Pioneer course at CMS, considers the problem of defining 'pioneer'.  This definition is taken from the Fresh Expressions website:

A pioneer minister is someone who has the necessary vision and gifts to be a missionary entrepreneur: with the capacity to form and lead fresh expressions and new forms of church appropriate to a particular culture.

'Fresh Expressions' is the name given in the Church of England to new ways of being church, and the term arose out of the Mission-Shaped Church report of 2004.  The report was an Anglican-Methodist collaboration which sought to describe and reflect upon 'fresh expressions of church' which had popped up around the UK.  It's available online as a free download and is definitely worth a read.  One of the conclusions of the report was that 'pioneer ministers' should be recognised, trained and released to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to new places in new ways.  

A glance at the contributor biographies reveals some of these 'new ways'.  Two of the contributing pioneers, Karlie and Andrea, go to pagan festivals and mind, body & spirit fairs to share Jesus with people who are on a spiritual journey but who wouldn't necessarily see going to a church as part of that journey.  During one memorable session at CMS we were given the task of getting into groups and summing up the Christian gospel in a paragraph for people at a mind, body & spirit fair.  While I don't think my group got very far on that occasion, I've since come across a very simple one-sentence summary of the Christian message for people who believe there's 'something out there', but don't necessarily have the religious categories or language that Christians would use. Here it is:

The universe is on your side.


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