What is a pioneer minister? using the language of an 'entrepreneur'

If I had a pound for everytime I am asked what a pioneer is, I'd be, as the saying goes, 'in the money'. And if I went 'double-or-quits' when the follow up remark was in the vein of "that's only good parish ministry", "I'm a pioneer too then" or "surely we should all be pioneers" I'd be laughing (grimly) all the way to the bank.

I wonder if the language of pioneer ministry has been eroded by over-use (a constant hazard for new terms that become very popular and zeitgeist-y) or whether it has become stretched beyond whats helpful. Norman Iveson's recent blog post on this (and more specifically on the gender-biases that language can sometimes reveal or promote) gives a helpful overview of the term 'pioneer', in particular the tension it reveals between venturing and exploring new territory and the suggestion that, having explored it, the pioneer's role is to settle it and shape it to what he or she believes it should look like. The arrogance of this position is not lost on, for example, native Americans or Maori people and so we should be pretty clear that any 'pioneering' forms of mission in our culture should avoid making those kinds of mistakes again.

Personally, I prefer the language of entrepreneurship to pioneering: pioneering is all cowboys and gun-totin', talking about myself as an entrepreneur brings to mind more of a "Alan Sugar, 'You're Fired!' "vibe, which people understand better I think.

So when I'm told by other clergy that what I'm doing is just good parish ministry that they no longer have the luxury of time to focus on because they are so busy being an incumbent, I politely introduce the notion that while Richard Branson is undoubtedly a business leader, using techniques and practices that most successful business leaders use, he is also an entrepreneur, who creates business success where others don't even think to look for opportunities.

So yes, much of the tools of my ministry are the same as good, missional parish ministry - presence and creatively inviting people into the story of God by word and sacrament - but there is a difference in where and how I do that ministry: taking risks, making connections and noticing opportunities, persevering, tolerating ambiguity and cognitive dissonance, viewing the future with an "unquenchable self-belief that this opportunity can be made real through hard work, commitment and the adaptability to learn the lessons... along the way; ...[being] prepared not just to work seriously hard but to back their judgment with personal investment at a level which will cause problems if they are wrong about the opportunity..." (to quote Chris Oakley's definition of an entrepreneur.)

So to continue with the metaphor, on one level Richard Branson just runs companies that sell insurance, banking products, airline seats, cola drinks and mobile phones, along with countless other companies whose CEO's or founders aren't so well known. But more pertinently, he built businesses that did things differently, focussed on unusual aspects of each market, saw how things could be reimagined and found ways to work in the gaps between other sectors.

Interestingly, in this analysis of the characteristics of an entrepreneur, states:

"Even though entrepreneurial skills can be identified, analysed and taught, we believe that the position of the entrepreneur in society is more aligned to a calling than that of a skill-set."

(The rest of the article is a really interesting - albeit a bit long - read).

Certainly, my experience is that I can't help but be a pioneer, its not something I chose or learnt to do. Its something about the way I see things: my training incumbent said the other day that I like to make connections between things, but I countered that I don't make connections, I see the connections that are already there.

The other thing is I have a really high tolerance of risk and failure - as I began my training, Bishop Graham asked me what I pioneer is, and I replied:

"A pioneer is someone who takes a risk, falls flat on their face, picks themselves up and dusts themselves down, reflects on what went wrong, tells everyone else what went wrong (so they don't have to make the same mistakes) and then gets on and does something else."

For an entrepreneur who's not constrained by the aim of making money, I think that's not a bad working-definition....