How to Pioneer: A five-step guide to getting started

Dave Male

Description

This five-part group study booklet is for local church communities who are contemplating setting up a pioneering church community, but are unsure how to get going. It opens up the wise insights and practical know-how of Dave Male’s book 'How to Pioneer' to the wider church, introducing the basics of pioneer ministry to PCCs and congregations.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Ministry
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781781401293
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Contents
Introduction: How to use this booklet and the accompanying animations

Session 1: You can do this
Session 2: Focusing on your mission (or keeping the main thing the main thing)
Session 3: Adapting to your context
Session 4: Creating Jesus-centred communities
Session 5: Enabling disciples of Jesus

The Lord’s Prayer
Copyright
Introduction:
How to use this booklet and the accompanying animations

Welcome to this short guide to How to Pioneer . There are five sessions to work your way through. Use the material as flexibly as you wish. You could meet weekly or maybe every two weeks or even monthly. It all depends on what works best for you as a group. The sessions are intended to work best with the pre-reading from the How to Pioneer book.
Alongside this Study Guide, five short animated films designed to accompany each session are also available from Church House Publishing. You can purchase these on DVD or access them online via www.chpublishing.co.uk/features/how-to-pioneer

This material works best if a small group of you are working your way through it together. You could gather people together who share your vision or might share that vision. Ideally this group should be between three and eight people. This might be a good way to explore possibilities together. But it may be wise to reassure people that they are not committing themselves to anything more than attending these five sessions. These sessions will help you work out together what God is calling you to start and will help individuals to decide if they want to be part of this.
Each of these sessions should take no more than 90 minutes to complete. They are designed to be led by the group members and anyone can lead the sessions even if they have never done anything like this before. It may be best to work out each week who is leading each section for the next week, so people have a chance to look over the material. Remember, this is not about getting the right answers but discovering God’s plans for you.
Each session includes:

• Some pre-reading from the How to Pioneer book.
• Watching a short introductory animation together.
• Going through this workbook and discussing the questions.
• Looking together at a passage of the Bible.
• Guidance for praying together as a group and prayers for when you are not meeting.

Note that lots of different words are used for what you are planning to create, including fresh expressions of church, emerging church, missional communities and new congregations. In this workbook we will use the phrase ‘new Christian community’ to cover all the varying vocabulary that is used.
Session 1
Session 1
You can do this

Before the session
Before the meeting, read Chapters 1 and 2 of the How to Pioneer book. Get hold of the DVD or make sure you can access the Session 1 animation online via www.chpublishing.co.uk/features/how-to-pioneer
Starting the session
Watch the animation together as an introduction to this session.

1 These are some possible assumptions about you as you meet together!
• You have never done this before.
• You have no theological qualifications.
• There is a small group of you working through this material.
• You feel nervous about what might happen.
• You are not totally sure about what God is calling you to do.
• You are wondering what you are doing in the room.
• You are reading the How to Pioneer book alongside this material.

Talk together about whether these assumptions apply in your situation.

Would you add any other assumptions that we should have made?
2 Think about what has led you to consider starting something new
Here are some possible reasons:

• Context. You are responding to what is happening in your local community.
• Frustration. You have been thinking there must be ‘a better way’ to do church for your friends, family, neighbours, workmates, etc.
• Prayer. You have been praying for your local area and now feel prompted by God to do something.
• Accidental. You thought you were doing something else but now see this could become a new Christian community.
• Asked. Someone else, maybe a church leader or a friend, has suggested you could do this.
• Mission. You want to see people you know having the opportunity to discover Jesus in places and ways that are relevant to them.