Do you remember that old saying: “I’m a Poet and didn’t know it.” Well it turns out that I was a pinoeer minister and didn’t know it. It seems that a pioneer minister is a minister who is trying to see church in a different way and reaching out to those outside in new ways – poor definition but it works for now. I’ve been trying to do this all my ministry and didn’t know it had a title.
My concern is that somehow whenever the church gets its hands on something and tries to define it they end up squeezing the life out of it.
The thing with this kind of ministry is that it requires the church to be open to new things and new ways of doing things and once you define something others start to see if it fits the definition. The definition becomes what it is rather than what it is being fluid enough to break out in new directions.
I wonder if this is what happened to ministry in the first place? Surely, all ordained ministry should be in some way pioneering in that it concerns an individual responding to God’s call. If God wanted us all to be the same he would call people who are all the same – but in my experience he doesn’t.
Maybe the biggest challenge is to the churches expectations. I am in a good situation because the churches are very understanding of what I am trying to do – but I sometimes wonder how long that will last. It’s easy to be understanding when the sun is shining but if it means me being somewhere else when they want me to be doing the more normal expectations of ministry, will they put up with it forever? Pioneer ministry is also hard to measure and the Methodist church seems to be obsessed with statistics – how long will they tolerate a ministry that cannot be quantified? Even the new ‘assessment’ system, sorry I mean guided reflection, for ministers is predisposed to very traditional ministry – whatever those in high office tell us.
Only time will tell.