What is pioneer ministry? Who is it for? How has it developed? Individuals, Circuits and Districts within the Methodist Church keen to explore this form of mission are now able to find out more in a new booklet, Called To Pioneer?
The Methodist Church is developing Pioneering Pathways within its Discipleship and Ministries Learning Network and Called To Pioneer? introduces the concept of pioneer ministry and charts the story so far.
A DVD, Methodist Pioneering Pathways – turning possibilities into reality, will also be released shortly to accompany the booklet. The six-minute clip above is being shown at most forthcoming district synods with a 20-minute version produced for individuals and group discussion. It will be available online from the Methodist website and hard copies can also be provided.
Ian Bell, Pioneer Ministries Coordinator for The Methodist Church, said of Methodist Pioneering Pathways,
We deliberately called it Pathways because we feel that somehow it needs not to be a linear approach, where people take a course and they're a pioneer at the end of it, but more of a framework within which people can engage in the whole process of vocational discernment and be helped to ask, and answer, the question about whether pioneering ministry is something God is calling them to.
I think we're at a very exciting place at the moment in the light of all that we've been learning about pioneering in the Methodist Church and we are now saying, 'This is something that God is initiating' and we want to respond to that creatively and appropriately.
Called to Pioneer is available in packs of 10, priced at £2.50 per pack, from Methodist Publishing.