The Mission Shaped Church Report was published in 2004 and approved by General Synod in that year. It made strong recommendations for the recognition of pioneers and their identification, training and support in both ordained and lay ministry. Implementation of these recommendations has been swift and very positive and we give further details here.

ORDAINED PIONEER MINISTRY

The Church of England has adopted the language of pioneer ministry for starting and sustaining fresh expression of church. The Ministry Division of the Church of England Working Group on pioneer ministry produced guidelines for the new designation of Ordained Pioneer Ministry (OPM). In 2006 the House of Bishops approved these new guidelines (Click here to download the guidelines) to encourage vocations to pioneer ministry as a recognised focus of ordained ministry. There are a growing number of candidates who have been accepted for this pathway and who are now in training and  beginning to serve their title posts as pioneers. A variety of new training pathways have been and continue to be developed to support these OPMs. By early 2010, less than five years on, some 110 have been accepted and are on their pioneering way.

LAY PIONEER MINISTRY 

However, the Mission Shaped Church report also made strong recommendations for lay pioneers as well as ordained. And the same Ministry Division Working Group had parallel guidelines published and approved by 2007. These are available to download here and we would strongly encourage any interested in pioneer ministry in any denomination to read them and we hope be encouraged by them to pursue their calling.

In many ways this development is even more exciting and significant. Experience in pioneering into our very varied and challenging mission context today is showing that the overwhelming need is for thousands of lay led teams to pioneer the planting of all sorts fresh expressions of church.

It is ACPI's hope that increasingly, when we do deploy (and sometimes pay) ordained pioneers, it will be to initiate a breakthrough into a particular sub-culture with a view to then overseeing the release of a movement of fresh expressions appropriate to that context... all of which will be led by lay pioneers.

Building on all this, we know of at least one area where an "order of lay pioneers" is being explored and this will help to take this sort of movement forward. 

This is the core vision that is needed and this is the overall strategic framework within which we believe the twin guidelines on ordained and lay pioneer ministry should be viewed and plans developed.

In this article, Freddy Hedley examines a recent article from the Group for Evangelisation (GfE). 

One of the most challenging and yet most open opportunities for mission, church planting and fresh expressions of church for many years has been the context of new housing areas. These new housing estates provide a unique short-term window of mission opportunity for five years or so. This is because: a) Those having major change in their lives are most open to new things, including the gospel, and so there is a whole population more receptive to evangelism; and b) New housing areas notoriously lack community so that any good ‘community in mission’ can be the one place new arrivals can find it!

There have been some notable successes in church planting into new housing estates over the decades. Some have been inter-church or ecumenical, but Local Ecumenical Projects (LEPs) present the greatest challenge to start and stay mission-centred.

These developments range from estates to whole new towns, where there is no church presence and no history of church involvement (either to build on or to hold you back!). They are new harvest fields that are just as important in our changing society as the increasing focus on network planting. And yet there is very little in the way of resources or supporting material to help missionary activity in these crucial areas. 

In July 2009 the Group for Evangelism (GfE), in partnership with Churches Together in England (CTE), have released a paper that explores some of what is happening on the ground, giving some stories from those involved in this mission context, highlighting the opportunities, challenges and key issues that are faced and outlining a series of helpful resource sources for those who are either actively involved or feel call to reach out to new housing areas. In particular, in their email which sent this paper round, they talk of how the current difficult financial climate is an important time for taking stock of where our projects are up to:

“During this time when many of the new housing developments are on hold, at CTE we are scoping where developments are planned and what the state of the project is at present. This is a time when the church can re-assess, pray and plan ahead.”

In this short web space we want to outline in brief some of their key findings and to encourage you to read their paper in full (itself only short at two A4 pages) for the stories and resources they have identified. You can access the paper here. 

Opportunity, Challenge and Issues

In addition to the new housing areas that have already been built in the last twenty or so years, the government has called for three million further new homes to be built in the coming years. So this is a mission context that is not going to plateau but continue to grow. Immediate key issues and challenges that arise from this opportunity include where and how these will emerge and what the Christian response should be – for example, protest or welcome? GfE highlight this and several other issues and challenges they have observed from the experience on the ground so far. These are outlined in the paper as:

• Consequences of the credit crunch and the resulting implications for Christian projects already underway when no new buildings are going up;

• Questions of best ‘model’ regarding evangelisation, e.g. church planting vis-à-vis fresh expressions networks;

• Addressing the perennial question: ‘To build or not to build’ a church, especially in larger new housing developments;

• Facing the challenge of churches to work together in partnership when seeking to share the good news of Jesus Christ;

• Answering questions of how to engage with evangelisation where there is no community and, ‘How to create community’ as an expression of ‘good news’;

• How to work best when planning processes and partnerships are long and complicated, while the finance needed for building can be daunting;

• Overcoming the challenge of churches often having too few people resources to pioneer and maintain a new Christian ‘presence’;

• Once started, maintaining and growing the work to make it sustainable and effective in further evangelisation.

Research and the growing wealth of available testimonies suggest that these are the crucial challenges and issues which must be addressed for any mission involvement, church plant or fresh expression of church to be well planned, relevant and fruitful. For those who find themselves discerning whether a new housing area is a mission field God is calling them to, we would recommend that time is taken as a team to consider these together; and also to read the GfE paper in full directly, being encouraged by the stories from what is a growing network of pioneers and accessing the websites and other resources they have identified as being most helpful.

Previously produced and sold by Administry, now republished by ACPI and available in either hard-copy or as a free download, this short paper examines the principles, values, history, opportuntities and challenges of Cell Church as a model and missionary movement. This clear and concise exploration is both a must for anyone looking for a helpful introduction to Cell, as well as an excellent addition to the resources of experienced practitioners.

Click here to download . 

The Church of England has adopted the language of pioneer ministry for starting and sustaining fresh expressions of church. In 2006 the House of Bishops approved new guidelines to encourage vocations to pioneer ministry as a recognised focus of ordained ministry. There are a growing number of candidates in training and beginning to serve their title posts as pioneers.

Click here to download the guidelines

£7.99

In the last few years there has been a growing focus on coaching and mentoring as the crucial role of leadership is recognised ever more in our challenging context. This has particularly been the case in the church where increasingly we are seeing a priority of ongoing support and learning through accompaniment and networks, to complement a leader’s development through conventional areas of training. In our ever changing society it is essential that we are able to equip our leaders to learn and develop in and through their own situation. 

Jesus’ model was one of making and growing disciples and leaders through coaching and apprenticeship. He also taught and trained on a larger scale, but his primary model was always around a small group community of learners whom he equipped for life and ministry. Jesus’ method was also an expression of the Kingdom dynamic of multiplication. Training processes enable large numbers to be involved but are based on addition, with greater potential of short-term gain. Whereas apprenticeship and coaching feeds into an ongoing relationship focussed on fewer people but with long-term fruit that can be multiplied out to great longer-term potential.

There have already been a number of national initiatives that have identified this issue and sought to invest in coaches and mentors over the past few years. Healthy Churches are now on their second national training conference for coaches and both CRM and the RUN network have also run excellent coaching courses. And this year Spring Harvest are also exploring apprenticeship as their theme for 2009. In ACPI this has been a major focus for over 20 years as we have been involved in consultation, accompaniment and coaching leaders. And for the last 7 years we have run a coaching course written by Bob & Mary Hopkins and this training has now been run in both the UK and Norway.

Out of this has come the new book Coaching for Missional Leadership, written by Bob Hopkins and Freddy Hedley. In it, Bob and Freddy explore the reasons for and benefits of coaching, unpack its biblical basis and examine the detailed practicalities involved in coaching and mentoring missional leaders as they pioneer church planting and fresh expressions of church. Primarily this is a book for the coaches themselves, to improve their skills and as an ongoing resource to return to at each stage of the coaching/mentoring process. It will also certainly help anyone involved in a coaching relationship to recognise the value of their undertaking and enrich its fruitfulness. 

This new book has been published by ACPI in partnership with Fresh Expressions and is available here  and also at the Fresh Expressions online shop , as well as from Amazon.co.uk and some Christian bookshops.

Over recent years the number of cafes has steadily increased to the point that now there are not only cafes in most towns and city areas butthere become café zones. And they are frequented to such an extent that they become the social hubs for whole networks, which then can be described as “café culture”. Even many villages may now have more than one café.

With this emergence of a distinct café culture as part of our multi-cultural context, at the same time as we have seen a developing movement of mission producing fresh expressions of church, it is therefore not surprising that a whole range of café church initiatives have emerged.

As we have observed one new initiative after another we have reflected that a number of categories are arising which themselves are instructive of some of the principles of mission engagement in this newmovement. Currently we discern five or six such types of café church.

This questionnaire 'Task, People, Rules' is a helpful questionnaire for individuals to use to identify what they naturally prioritise in how they operate. Groups can then start to understand how different personalities can work together.

The questionnaire is referenced in 'Coaching for Missional Leadership' by Bob Hopkins & Freddy Hedley, a new book shortly to be published by ACPI. 

Click here to download the questionnaire  

Here is an extract from the European Church Planting Network's (ECPN) concept Paper 1. It tells of Zolder50 church made up of missionary small groups and one of their activities that keeps them in mission motivated mode... heading off together for a weekend of prayer, listening and "loitering with intent" in other villages, towns and cities. How about adding some of this vision where you are?

"Just over a year ago Zolder50's home groups each committed to go to another city in Holland, in an exercise they called 'spying the land'. Most home groups spent a weekend in the city carrying out surveys to discover what people thought about God and each other, but they were also tasked with getting to know the city to see if they could possibly plant a church there in the future.

Back in Amsterdam, the church recently split into two 'Neighbourhood churches' with four home groups (75 people) in each. They have some connections and ties, and meet in the same building although at different times. Zolder50's optimum size for a neighbourhood church is between 50 and 150 people, so in theory, as these two churches grow they will split again. In that way they have the potential to become a network of neighbourhood churches across the city, who are loosely organised as a City church that meets once every two or three months for worship and envisioning."

Direct link for paper