The DNA of Pioneer Ministry

Andy Milne

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780334054092
• eBook ISBN: 9780334054115
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

This book is a resource to help people involved in fresh expressions, pioneering, youth work and mainstream church ministry. It explores God's calling, teamwork,how to plan, worship and much more.

PART 1
Early days – foundations

I
Beginnings – who are you?

A common problem in starting the pioneering process is working out where to begin. There might be many needs in your area suggesting several pioneering possibilities. Your church might have a list of hopes or expectations for doing mission. The pioneer might feel multi-gifted or simply unsure where to start. All this can lead to too many choices! So where does a pioneer begin?

September 2000

‘What do you want to do when you finish college?’ asked Tracy. I paused for a moment and thought hard.

‘I’m not sure yet, I just want to do whatever God wants me to do,’ came my non-descript answer, though it was an honest answer. I really didn’t have a clue why God seemed to want me at college and what he had in store for me (if anything) when I had done the course.

‘Yeah, but what really excites you, Andy? What would you really like to do when you’ve finished college?’ Tracy kept on at me with her line of questioning. I suddenly remembered two conversations from the previous week. Both were about pioneering churches. Suddenly, without really knowing what I was going to say, I said it! One sentence that could be reduced to two fairly small words – two words that were about to change our lives!

‘The thing that would really excite me is to start a church for young people – a church that is relevant, fun and God-centred.’ The sentence could of course be reduced to those two words ‘youth church’.

Strangely, no sooner had I spoken this sentence, I sensed the Holy Spirit’s presence. This sense of God’s presence stayed with me throughout the next half an hour as we stayed on the phone chatting about what this could mean. As we chatted, a whole load of memories came flooding into my mind of youth work experiences, experiences of evangelism, people I’d talked to, books I’d read and teaching I’d heard; all these things seemed to have a theme running through them and that theme was ‘youth church’.

‘Can God really be saying “youth church”?’ I asked Tracy as we neared the end of our conversation. We then spent some time giving our thoughts, feelings and future back to God, asking him to confirm this very sudden and unexpected sense of call to pioneer a ‘youth church’.

Over the next few weeks, a whole load of things started to make sense, the feeling of being called to pioneer a youth church didn’t go away and I had the chance to visit and study several examples of ‘church among young people’ in the UK scene at that time. I wrote a paper on what I saw on my travels and what I thought would be the way ahead. But the most important thing was to look back on my journey with God and see how he had been at work preparing me for this strange pioneering thing called ‘youth church’.

Looking back – God the dating agency

During the late 1990s, Tracy and I went from being youth work volunteers together, to being prayer partners together, to becoming supportive friends for each other, until eventually we became a couple and decided to get married. With gifts and personalities that complement, Tracy and I being together would prove vital when starting Sorted. It would seem that God knew what he was doing years before we did (there’s a whole story of God’s guidance that there isn’t space to share here).

Looking back – fun times in Leeds

As a young Christian, I found myself involved in evangelism, often among young people.

One Saturday afternoon while skating outside Leeds Uni, two brothers started to laugh and take the micky out of me because of a small ‘Jesus saves’ sticker on my skateboard.

‘Are you some kind of Bible basher?’ asked the younger lad.

‘No, but I do believe in God,’ I replied.

‘You must be a bit dumb to believe in that stuff,’ came the next attack.

‘Well, I’ve seen God answer prayers to heal people, and people can even feel God near them when they pray. I can try and pray for you if you like?’ I asked, trying to switch from defence to attack.

The older lad looked a bit surprised and paused for a moment.

‘Er, yeah, OK. What do I have to do?’ he asked.

We all sat down on skateboards (me, the two brothers, plus their two friends) and I explained a bit about who God is and then prayed over them all. Something powerful happened. I could see the lads really engaging with God. The next thing that happened was the two brothers both recognized that God had answered the prayer and had felt his peace.

The brothers apologized for the way they had teased me earlier and we started to get on really well. We chatted a lot about God because they were suddenly really interested and wanted to know more.

Two weeks later, after getting to know three more skaters in Leeds, I travelled to meet them and their mates in their home village of Yeadon. After skating for half an hour, the opportunity came to talk about God to one of the lads. Within a few minutes, everyone crowded round to listen. What amazed me most was how quiet and attentive the whole group of 15 were as I talked for about a quarter of an hour. God’s presence was tangible in the playground, bringing such a peaceful atmosphere.

This led to many of these young people getting a touch from the Holy Spirit after prayer with the laying on of hands. Shortly afterwards, four lads were completely healed from wrist and ankle injuries they had picked up through skateboarding. All the young people and I were totally amazed at the power God showed as he instantly healed these guys.

I would always follow up these experiences by explaining how to become a Christian, sometimes leading them into a prayer of asking God to come into their lives and then encouraging them to become part of a local church. It was this last part that usually went wrong. Let me explain.

Looking back – it’s over here, or is it?

The two brothers mentioned above did try visiting a local church but found it boring and didn’t understand any of it. I tried to invite loads of skaters to a youth Alpha course in my local church but it was unrealistic to expect them to travel by bus at night to my part of town because, even though God was now cool to them, it didn’t mean they associated finding more of God with going to church (as you or I might do).

I also met weekly with a different group of skaters to pray and read the Bible in my parents’ house. They sometimes came to my church, so we did youth Alpha with them and the church youth group, which went fairly well, and later took them all to Spring Harvest. But although the church was warm and welcoming, it still felt like someone else’s world to them. They would say things like, ‘They are nice people but . . .’, or the comment I heard repeatedly was, ‘Why don’t we just keep meeting at your house, Andy, to do the Bible study for an hour, and then go skating afterwards?’ They wanted Jesus, but didn’t feel at home in the local church.

Over a few years, I saw lots of young people come to faith in Jesus but never felt comfortable in an existing church. This is something that troubled me for years, but I could only start to see a solution when God called us to set up a youth church. Perhaps planting a church within their culture would provide a solution to the problem I had been experiencing.

To summarize, God calling us to pioneer a youth church was the third part of a triangle of reflection from God. The first part had been Tracy and I coming together; the second part had been the early mission experiences I had in the mid to late 1990s among mainly non-churched young people, which taught me some lessons but also left me with many questions.

Lesson – beginning the pioneering process starts with prayer, discernment and reflection on our journey with God

The apostle Paul, perhaps the Church’s greatest pioneer, tells the church in Ephesus that God has a plan for their lives and he is working in them to fulfil his purposes (Ephesians 1.11). It’s the same for us today. If God wants you to pioneer something then he will already have been at work in your life preparing you for the task ahead.

But how do I find out what God wants me to pioneer? If we start by praying, discerning and reflecting on our spiritual journey then some of our questions about pioneering (e.g. Am I called to pioneer? If yes – where/when/how?) may start to be answered. So how can we do this practically?

1 Praying and seeing what God is doing

Good ideas are OK, but God ideas produce spiritual fruit and a harvest. There may be good ideas for mission in your church, or lots of needy situations that shout out, ‘Come and pioneer over here’, but we should really seek to know what God is wanting us to do. In fact, all Christian ministry can be described as seeing what God is doing, then joining in!

‘I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you . . .’ (Ephesians 1.18). Paul writes to the Ephesian Christians, praying that they see the hope God has for them. This was a church that pioneer-planted several other churches in Asia Minor, and so clearly part of God’s plan for these Christians was that they would reproduce several times. We might expect Paul to give loads of practical advice on how to pioneer successfully, but instead he starts by asking them to pray and see. We too should ask God to help us see what he is doing in us and in our situation.

As we go through the following steps, it is good to do each step prayerfully so that through the process we might see more clearly.

2 Looking back

Often we have to take a look back at our journey with God so that we can make sense of what God is calling us to do now. His story in our lives will inform our future with him. There are lots of practical aids that can help us to look back reflectively.

One practical aid is to write or map out a timeline of your spiritual journey so far, highlighting key moments and time periods on the way. Do you ever write a journal? If so, you may want to read through journal entries over a period of time. Other people might prefer to create, draw or paint to help them reflect. Still others might value sitting down with a person they trust and simply telling the story of their journey while asking the other person to prayerfully listen. There are no right or wrong ways to look back, it’s about which aids work for you. Don’t rush one of these exercises, take a couple of hours or do it over a few days so that you can really reflect deeply.

Whatever aid you use to look back, it’s good to ask questions, such as:

• What areas of work have I tended to serve God in?
• Is there a pattern of how I’ve been serving that is emerging?
• Are there particular people groups I’ve worked with most?
• What are my gifts? How might God use my gifts in pioneering?

The answers to these questions are designed to help us spot emerging patterns which God may have been working through to prepare us for a pioneering task. For example, my reflections pointed me towards pioneering with non-churched teens, but your reflections might point you towards young families or young adults or something else.

3 Can you reimagine yourself as a pioneer?

In the early years of Sorted I was given the labels ‘detached worker’, ‘schools worker’ or ‘local churches worker’ as people saw an aspect of what I was doing in the early stages of the pioneering process. In some ways, this became a test of whether I yielded myself to one of these labels, choosing to settle permanently into one of these roles or persevering with God in his calling to pioneer a youth church.

Often, changing the way we view ourselves is the hardest change to make as it can mean seeing ourselves in a totally new light. We may have to reimagine ourselves as pioneers of a new thing that doesn’t yet exist. This is tough because some people w...

Table of contents

• The DNA of Pioneer Ministry
• Contents
• Foreword by Canon Mark Russell
• Foreword by Canon Phil Potter
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction – the story of Sorted
• PART 1 Early days – foundations
• PART 2 Getting started – beginning the pioneering work
• PART 3 Making it happen – getting stuck in
• PART 4 Looking further ahead
• Bibliography