The West Cork Pioneer Hub has been working on our understanding of Pioneer Ministry, ‘Reaching those with little or no connection with church’ since last spring. This week six parishes from Kinsale to Schull are taking part in a week of prayer.

The Dean of Ross, the Very Rev. Cliff Jeffers, said:

The parishes involved in the West Cork Pioneer Ministry Hub are seeking God’s guidance over eight days of prayer in our churches from the 30th November to the 8th of December.  We welcome people to come along to pray using the prayer stations in the churches and to find out a little more about Pioneer Ministry in West Cork.

Last month, Dean Jeffers wrote for our Diocesan Magazine:

At General Synod in May 2023, a new initiative called Pioneer Ministry was launched which seeks to reach out to people who have little or no connection with church. In June 2023, Bishop Paul invited clergy and lay people in our diocese who would be interested in Pioneer Ministry to an information and training session in Northridge House with Rev. Rob Jones, the Pioneer Ministry Co-Ordinator for the Church of Ireland.

A proposal was drafted for a West Cork Pioneer Ministry Hub, and following approval by Diocesan Council and Bishop Paul, we began to meet under the direction of Dean Cliff Jeffers. A Pioneer Ministry Hub is a group of people who wish to learn about Pioneer Ministry and seek an opportunity to establish a Pioneer Ministry Project in their area. First, we needed to learn what Pioneer Ministry was!

For the first half of 2024 we read and reflected on a book called ‘Pioneering a new future’ by Phil Potter and sought to discover how it might be applied in a rural West Cork context. In August 2024 we visited the Carrig Centre to see an example of Pioneer Ministry in practice. We met with Pioneer Evangelists Matt Gould and Sarah-Louise Hockey and were inspired by their vision for reaching out to people in Ballincollig.

We then started to discuss what type of project might connect with the needs of people in West Cork, and although we have some ideas, we are less certain of where God is guiding us in this work. To seek God’s guidance, the parishes involved are going to host 8 days of prayer in their churches from the 30 th of November to the 7 th of December, to which all are welcome.

There will be prayer stations to guide your reflections and someone there to answer any questions that may have.

The dates of each service can be found on the website of St Fachtna’s Cathedral, Rosscarbery.