What is Pioneering Work?

Are you a pioneer, or an explorer?

Are you only a pioneer if you are an overseas missionary?

Are you only a pioneer if no one understands you?

Pioneering is living and leading on the edge. It means you are doing work that not many people will understand or be willing to undertake themselves. (That’s why you have to go first.)

You might mistake being a pioneer for being an explorer. They are different. A pioneer has the intent to settle new territory. An explorer investigates and returns, which is actually easier. Instead of settling among a people group, in an apartment complex, or into a new form of ministry, they just explore and return to the safety of what is familiar. Pioneers pack up the wagon and head west. Now, they can turn around, and some do, but their intent when they leave is to fully settle in a new place.* If you want to establish the kingdom where it is not, you, by definition, are not going to be surrounded by a large group of other believers.

A favorite kids' book of my family talks about early American farmers this way:

“It was farmers that took all that country and made it America… the Spaniards were soldiers, and high-and-mighty gentlemen that only wanted gold. And the French were fur-traders, wanting to make quick money. And England was busy fighting wars. But we were farmers, son; we wanted the land. It was farmers that went over the mountains, and cleared the land, and settled it, and farmed it, and hung on to their farms.”¹

A pioneer for the kingdom has the mentality of taking land for the Kingdom, so they can establish a community of believers and keep it as Kingdom terrain. In the above quote, the farmer doesn’t want to give his land back to the wild. As kingdom pioneers, we don’t want to give it back to the prince of the earth.

“If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.”²

Does that mean a kingdom pioneer never leaves? Of course not. We see Paul establish communities of faith that outlasted him by decades (centuries!). But we can miss how long he stayed in a place because of how fast the narrative in Acts flows. He spent over a year in Corinth and three years in Ephesus (and even then, he still had to send letters and coworkers back to those places to make sure the Kingdom didn’t lose ground).

We may think pioneers only go to unreached people groups. But a pioneer can also be someone who launches out to pursue what they see in the Word. If someone looks at the status quo and sees that it's inadequate to make a difference in lostness, or that it doesn’t line up with biblical principles, that person has a choice to make: They can play it safe, or they can pioneer and leave the comfort of community, consensus, and tradition. The pioneer heads out on a journey to find something more Christ-centered and Word-centered. The pioneer goes all in.*

While this can be geographical, it’s also philosophical. We are practicing our faith differently first, and possibly in a different location. And once you make that move of the pioneer and head away from the “norm”, it's going to cost you. One of the biggest things kingdom pioneers wrestle with is loneliness and criticism. If a person decides to do a church in their home, they can feel very isolated, even in a Christian culture.*³

We will talk more about loneliness in the future. For now: Are you a pioneer? If you’re looking to settle new ground for the Kingdom among the lost, you most certainly are. Your physical location and the primary way you make a living do not matter.

To get from where you are to where God is will require major adjustments.
These adjustments may relate to your thinking, circumstances, relationships, commitments, actions and/or beliefs…
You cannot stay where you are and go with God at the same time.⁴

1. Wilder, L. I. (1961). Farmer Boy. Harper & Bros. p189, Emphasis mine.

2. Hebrews 11:15, NIV

3. *All paragraphs with an asterisk were adapted from audio messages from an anonymous friend. Also, doing church in your home does not make you a pioneer automatically. There are plenty of stagnant house churches.

4. Blackaby, H.T. (1994). Experiencing God. Broadman & Holman Publishers. p38.