Who Can Cultivate Fresh Expressions?

Part Five: A Vine of Many Branches

^“Looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” —Hebrews 12:2

Are Fresh Expressions leaders some rare species of super-Christian? Or can any Jesus follower cultivate new Christian communities with family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers?

The Church of England created a new ministry designation to describe those who are magnetized to being church with people outside the church… pioneers. They define pioneers as “people called by God who are the first to see and creatively respond to the Holy Spirit’s initiatives with those outside the church; gathering others around them as they seek to establish a new contextual Christian community.”[1]

Leonard Sweet and I have noted the problematic nature of the term “pioneer” in the United States. For indigenous people it connotes the violence, manipulation, and oppression of early European settlers. In the US we have shifted the metaphor from pioneer to adventurer.

The word “adventurer” is rooted in the word “advent,” which means “the coming” or “the arrival” of something fresh and new. This is exactly who Jesus’ followers are—advent makers, advent markers, advent risers, advent storytellers of adventure. The Latin word adventus is the translation of the Greek word parousia, commonly used to refer to the Second Coming of Christ. For Christians, Advent is less a season of the year than an adventitious mindset and an “adventual” lifestyle. Christians are on an adventure between the three appearing’s of Jesus, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Here I will utilize the pioneer language we have inherited from the Church of England, as it is currently the most accepted term ecumenically speaking, and the primary term of the Fresh Expressions literature I’ll be citing.

Pioneer ministry is grounded in the pioneering of Jesus. Hebrews 12:2 reads, “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (italics mine). Here Jesus is identified as the ἀρχηγός (pronounced är-khā-gos), which translates “pioneer” or “author” and conversely “instigator.” This term is the closest we get in Koiné Greek to “innovator” or “entrepreneur.” God bestows the pioneer upon the church for nurture, upbuilding, and expansion. Paul the Apostle is perhaps a textbook example of a pioneer. Pioneers seek to embody this initiator, starter ministry of Jesus in the world. In the same way, we embody the ministry roles of apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher (Eph 4:11).

Jonny Baker observes that pioneers have “the gift of not fitting in.” Pioneers see and imagine different possibilities than the accepted ways of business as usual, and then build a path to make real this possibility.^[2] This can certainly make them unpopular in more conventional circles.

George Lings reserves the term pioneer for “originators of fresh entities,” while discussing the differences between pioneer-starters and pioneer-sustainers.^[3] In his research, he notes the following characteristics:

• A correlation between Apostle and Pioneer;

• Eagerness to “go first” with low risk-aversion;

• On the “edge,” always going out to new territory to survey the terrain;

• Habitually “create, start, initiate” (which correlates with entrepreneurs);

• Draw followers and are followable;

• Willing to “leave” (move on when the task is done);

• Movers (opposite of static persons);

• “Are met by Jesus” (have usually encountered the Risen Christ at some point)

• Prefer to be with outsiders;

• At home with “signs” (semioticians, context/sign readers, also embrace the miraculous, and supernatural);

• Flexible strategists (employ effectual reasoning, experimentation, improvisation, and intuition, read more here);

• Disturb the peace. Some are not easy for more conventional folks to be around because their presence is perceived as threatening to the institution;

• “Bicultural,” always formed by and at home in at least two cultures (age, race, nationality, geography, and so on);

• Translators (between times, cultures, peoples, contextual theologians);

• Developers (they activate others and share the work);

• Prophetic (they see what is yet unseen and then act: “dreamers who do”);

• Can accept suffering and can expect to join Jesus in carrying his cross.^[4]

Three additional characteristics apply to the Fresh Expressions movement:

• Pioneers cultivate fresh expressions (often with little to no resources).

• Pioneers fail forward (fail frequently but keep going).

• Pioneers come in all shapes, sizes, races, and ages; they are not just young, trendy, rebels. (Some pioneers are children and teens and some are in their eighties.)

Gerald Arbuckle discusses the reality that though creativity can exist in organizations in a latent way, these ideas require application through innovative people who he calls “dreamers who do.” He distinguishes between innovators and adaptors: 

Both are creative persons and needed, especially the innovative and refounding type; both threaten the group because they dissent from the acceptable ways of doing things, but it is the innovator that particularly endangers the group’s security…^[5]

Pioneers often reorganize the local church. Beth Keith, in “The Gift of Troublesome Questioning,” draws a further comparison between adaptors and stabilizers. By their very presence, pioneers threaten overly stable systems by asking “What if?” Stabilizers operate in the impulse to immediately stabilize the disruption. While both have positive and negative attributes, stable systems often support stabilizers and exile adaptors. Pioneers have the ability “to question aspects of the church without drawing the church into question.”^[6]

Overly stable systems dampen innovation; overly destabilized systems devolve into chaos. Pioneers have a way of destabilizing systems enough to open the organization to the possibility of change. The innovation journey requires some disruption and dissatisfaction. Pioneers are a gift to the church in this way.

Pioneers do not fit neatly into our theological pigeonholes. Their activity and effectiveness challenge the “closely defined liberal, evangelical, or catholic theologies and churchmanship” and they move us “towards something unknown and developmental, with an emphasis on mission, diversity, dialogue and evolving belief and practice.”^[7]

Pioneers learn in the process of doing through experimentation and improvisation. They thrive in apprentice-based learning systems.

Pioneers are typically not diplomatic and have impatience with the political maneuvers of the institutional church. Because of their “sharp edges” and the “gift of not fitting in,” it’s easy to write off their questioning or brainstorms as mad ramblings. The Church of England wisely created an alternative training pathway, and the Pioneer Assessment Panel, which consists of a group of established pioneers who evaluate incoming pioneers.^[8]

The activity of pioneers can create “institutional confusion.” The “typical institutional response exhibits stabilizer tendencies and the inability to adapt old data in the light of new experience. The lack of permission to engage in transformative critique may hinder pioneers’ abilities to imagine new possibilities.”^[9] So the tendency then is for the church to select and authorize the “safe” pioneers who will play well with the system, not question common church assumptions, and still develop new forms of church. Unfortunately, this is an unreasonable expectation. Thus, denominations often eject the very persons gifted by the Spirit with the adaptation skills that could bring actual revitalization.

There is an ongoing conversation around whether pioneers are born or made. The late Angela Shier-Jones found it important to understand a pioneer not as a particular sort of person but as a particular sort of ministerial conduct or focus within the wider framework of the church.^[10] All Christians are called to follow the great pioneer, Jesus; this will always include being involved in pioneering. All people created in the image of God have the capacity to start new things. Yet, certain people are particularly gifted to be effective in that focus of ministry.

Not all people are pioneers, yet all people can be involved with pioneer ministry.

In my experience of creating and leading pioneer academies the most prominent trait of a pioneer is simply confidence or what missiologist David Bosch called “bold humility.” Pioneers believe Jesus is inviting them to co-create new things.

Yet, if pioneering is a gift, it can also be a curse. Hebrews 12:1-2 indicates that when we follow in the slipstream of Jesus’s pioneering, enduring a “cross” is par for the course. This includes friendly fire. Pioneers often lead the way with arrows in their backs.

Finally, can you imagine a church of all adaptors and no stabilizers? Or can you imagine a church where everyone is exactly like Paul? Or if Paul had no Barnabas, a companion encourager (Acts 4:36) who supported him (Acts 9:27), or Ananias, a permission-giver who sent him (Acts 9:17)? So, with fresh expressions, we understand the equal importance of three roles: pioneer, supporter, and permission-giver.

• Pioneers are passionate about mission on the edges.

• Supporters are passionate about supporting and releasing pioneers.

• Permission Givers are people who use their role to foster release of pioneers and to influence the system to be more willing to experiment.

Perhaps whether pioneers are born or made is the wrong question. A more fitting question is how can we be the church in such a way that every person can be involved in the exciting work of starting new Christian communities? Here is a conjunction we must hold together in creative tension: every single person can start new things and pioneers seem to be especially gifted for this work.

This leads us to the more essential truth: pioneer ministry is a work of the body, the whole people of God, and not individual acts of lone-ranger leadership.

Pioneering is a communal endeavor.

Shier-Jones wrote, “Pioneering ministry cannot be done to a community by someone who knows what they need; it can only be done with a community by someone who shares in their need.”^[11] Pioneers are dependent upon the “persons who share peace” and work with the indigenous inhabitants of a community. They must work together with supporters and permission givers in a strategically team-based way, both for the health of the pioneer and the initiatives they start. It’s more appropriate to speak of pioneer teams than individual pioneers.

Any follower of Jesus can start new Christian communities in the matrix of a team. And if not, we are doing something unfaithful to the design of Christ.

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[1] David Male, “Do We Need Pioneers?” 2017. https://freshexpressions.org.uk/get-started/pioneer-ministry/.

[2] Jonny Baker and Cathy Ross, The Pioneer Gift: Explorations in Mission (Norwich, UK: Canterbury, 2014), 1.

[3] G. Lings, “Looking in the Mirror: What Makes a Pioneer” in David Male, Pioneers 4 Life: Explorations in Theology and Wisdom for Pioneering Leaders (Abingdon: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2011), 31.

[4] Lings, “Looking in the Mirror,” 30–43.

[5] Gerald A. Arbuckle, Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 109.

[6] B. Keith, “The Gift of Troublesome Questioning” in Male, Pioneers 4 Life, 57.

[7] Keith, “The Gift of Troublesome Questioning,” 56.

[8] Vocations to Pioneer Ministry, https://www.cofepioneer.org/assessment/.

[9] Keith, “The Gift of Troublesome Questioning,” 58.

[10] Angela Shier-Jones, Pioneer Ministry and Fresh Expressions of Church (London, UK: SPCK, 2009), 3–5.

[11] Shier-Jones, Pioneer Ministry and Fresh Expressions of Church, 123.