Pioneer Hub to start in London

We’re excited to announce that a pioneer hub is launching in London in 2019! This is a partnership between CMS and London Diocese (through the Centre for Church planting and Growth) and is aimed at people who want to start something new in mission and are working full time. It will be delivered over a series of weekends. Because London is big it means that the weekends will be able to be hosted in places where pioneering is happening so we can learn from what is going on on the ground (which in our experience is one of the best ways to learn).

London Diocese is known for church planting because it has done that so well over that last couple of decades. But what is less known is that London’s strategy has included a vision for a mix of missional communities and church planting for some time now and is committed to a diverse approach so this way of catalysing pioneering and innovation is a perfect addition into the London ecosystem.

We already have a number of pioneers in London on the team (Jonny, Andrea, Johnny) and who have trained with us or are training with us in Oxford and together with Mark Bishop and Phil Hoyle who lead for the diocese on missional communities it feels like there is a good network and team to help this really fly. So fun times ahead!

We have piloted a pioneer hub St Cedd Centre for Pioneer Mission in Chelmsford as a partnership which is now into its second cohort of pioneers and expect a few more hubs to be catalysed over the next few years. Andrea and Johnny on our team are blazing the trail with this.  I confess to a personal sense of excitement being a Londoner myself. There is great value in doing the sort of in depth training we offer in Oxford but all the research shows that loads of fresh expressions and pioneering is done by volunteers who are working full time so it’s a no brainer to add this sort of hub into the wider pioneer ecosystem. Give it 5 years and having done a bit of maths we expect we will have a network of around 1000 pioneers who will have done some training with us which seems like a pretty hopeful thing.

A few more details are here on the press release. It’s called The School of Pioneers so if you are in London and want to go to pioneer school now’s your chance!

If you’re interested, email pioneer@london.anglican.org to find out more.