Pioneering
Will you grow faith, community and flourishing, right where you live?
A Certificate in Local Missional Practice, formed in your neighbourhood, with a cohort walking beside you.
Pioneering
Sacred Walks for Awareness, Growth and Connections.
The challenge we face
Too many communities are dying.
Walk down almost any street in Britain and you can read the story in the brickwork. Streets that once hummed with belonging now feel abandoned. Talented local people leave for somewhere that seems to matter more. Buildings that held a hundred years of welcome sit dark and idle.
Notice who goes without. The communities that need the most tend to receive the least, including the very churches planted among them. The problem is rarely a shortage of need. It is a shortage of people who believe their place can change.
The problem is rarely a shortage of need. It is a shortage of people who believe their place can change.
The outward ache
You watch good places thin out, and wonder who will tend them.
The inward ache
You carry a quieter pull: a sense that you are meant to do something here, with these people, and no idea where to begin. That ache has a name. It is a calling looking for a way to be lived.
Joining in with God’s mission
Your place already holds the seeds of its own renewal.
Believe this first, because everything else grows from it. God is already at work within every community. The task is not to bring God into a place where God is absent, but to discern where Christ is already present, and to join in.
A Seedbeds & URC partnership
The Invitation
Apply to join the 5th Newbigin Pioneering Cohort. The United Reformed Church believes God calls all God’s people into discipleship, service, and ministry, and recognises that some are called to help discover new ways of sharing the Gospel within the places where people live their daily lives.
Developed with Seedbeds, the programme weaves practical learning, theological reflection, and spiritual formation, alongside others exploring the same questions. This is not simply a course about starting projects. It is a space to listen for God’s call, grow in confidence, and explore how Christ may be inviting you to participate more fully where you are.
The six modules
From seeing differently to bearing lasting fruit.
Follow the arc of the year. The first half forms how you see and stay. The second half forms what you grow and send.
1
1
Perception
See Differently
Slow down and pay attention: to God, to yourself, and to the place you are planted in. Begin to name the call emerging from there.
2
Participation
Joining In
Read your neighbourhood with fresh eyes. Notice the gifts, relationships, and resources already present, and learn to mobilise them with others.
3
Presence
Growing Life Where You Live
Stay put and grow life through attentiveness, hospitality, and place-making, embodying God’s love in ordinary moments.
The year turns outward
4
Peace-Building
Cultivating Signs of Shalom
Notice and nurture the fragile, real signs of Shalom. Strengthen what is growing, and help repair what is broken.
5
Preparing
Forming Communities of Hope
Weave discipleship, worship, and partnership into shared rhythms that can sustain hope over the long term.
6
Pitching
Making It Real
Become a dreamer who does. Translate vision into sustainable practice, and pitch it to a panel for support.
By Module 6 you are not theorising about your neighbourhood. You are pitching a venture from within it.
What you will be able to do
Six practices you will carry home.
Discern your calling
Articulate your personal and communal call to discipleship and mission, planted in Scripture, self-awareness, and local context.
Read your context
Identify and mobilise local assets, relationships, and partnerships through listening, presence, and neighbourhood exegesis.
Practice incarnational discipleship
Build habits of presence, hospitality, and place-making that reflect God’s self-giving love in everyday life.
Cultivate signs of Shalom
Discern and nurture peace, justice, hope, and wholeness in your community, informed by a theology of hope.
Form communities of hope
Experiment with new expressions of worship, discipleship, and community that are locally planted and contextual
Move from vision to action
Translate missional vision into sustainable practice through planning, collaboration, pitching, and experimentation.
The shape of the journey
Formation, Incubation, Integration.
Formation
Gather and be formed. Six modules over eleven months, blending in-person intensives with online learning and coaching.
Incubation
Practice and grow in place. Neighbourhood exegesis, place-making, generosity dinners, Look-Listen-Live, and the Examen.
Integration
Pitch and be sent. Bring your calling to a resource panel, graduate, and step into a sustainable way of life.
Meet your guides
Practitioners, not outsiders with answers.
Trust a guide who has lived where you are standing. The Seedbeds team has planted its life in some of Britain’s most underserved neighbourhoods for decades. We are not arriving to fix you. We are here to walk with you.
Rev Dr Ash Barker
Director
Ash has spent over three decades planting his life in urban priority areas across Australia, Asia, and the UK. He founded Seedbeds to find, form, and release local catalysts into neighbourhood flourishing. Since 2014 he has lived in Winson Green, inner-city Birmingham, serving as a local United Reformed Church minister. He leads the team behind the Newbigin Pioneering Hub.
The learning team · two regional hubs
BIRMINGHAM
Simon Jay
Community development practitioner and Black liberation theologian; Urban Expression.
Anji Barker
Pioneer Minister; Social Entrepreneur; Pioneering Cluster Lead, URC West Midlands Synod.
LONDON
Dave Mann
Church planter and community organising specialist; Pioneer Minister; Seedbeds Director; URC Thames North Synod.
Lorraine Downer
Children and Youth Development Officer, URC Thames Synod.
The practical shape
Commit with your eyes open.
The cohort runs for eleven months. It opens and closes together, in person. Between those bookends, every module keeps the same rhythm.
1 A regional Saturday intensive, with your hub, face to face.
2 Two full-cohort online sessions framing each module.
3 An online learning circle and coaching the month after.
Formation here is practical, relational, and embodied, never abstract. You learn by doing, in your place, with your people.
Key dates · 2026–27
Phase Event/Module Dates & Mode
| Start | Orientation & Induction | Sat 12 Sept 2026, 10am–1pm · Full cohort, online |
| Module 1 | Perception · Birmingham residential | Fri 25 – Sun 27 Sept 2026 · Whole cohort, in person |
| Learning Circle & Coaching | Wed 7 Oct and w/c 12 Oct 2026 · Online | |
| Module 2 | Participating · Regional | Fri 13 (online) · Sat 14 (regional) · Wed 18 Nov 2026 (online) |
| Learning Circle & Coaching | Wed 2 Dec and w/c 7 Dec 2026 · Online | |
| Module 3 | Presence · Regional | Fri 22 (online) · Sat 23 (regional) · Wed 27 Jan 2027 (online) |
| Learning Circle & Coaching | Wed 10 Feb and w/c 15 Feb 2027 · Online | |
| Module 4 | Peace-Building · Regional | Fri 5 (online) · Sat 6 (regional) · Wed 10 Mar 2027 (online) |
| Learning Circle & Coaching | Wed 7 Apr and w/c 12 Apr 2027 · Online | |
| Module 5 | Preparing · Regional | Fri 21 (online) · Sat 22 (regional) · Wed 26 May 2027 (online) |
| Learning Circle & Coaching | Wed 16 June and w/c 21 June 2027 · Online | |
| Module 6 | Pitching · Regional | Fri 9 (online) · Sat 10 (regional) · Wed 14 July 2027 (online) |
| Finish | Pitch to Panel & Graduation · London | Sat 17 July 2027, 10am–3pm · Church House, London |
Forming a new “Community of Pioneering”
We aim to discover, nurture, empower and release a new generation of Pioneers. This will include helping Pioneers connect with new mission contexts, pathways, retreats and coaching. We believe we can go further and deeper in our calling as Pioneers if we connect together well. We will form this ‘Community of Pioneers’ out of those who currently identify as Pioneers as well as those coming through the ‘Certificate in Pioneer Mission.’
“The Seedbeds Pioneering course was brilliant. It helped validate what I was already doing and encouragement to keep going. Having the support of like-minded people helped me enormously, when you can often feel alone. I also enjoyed the process of seeing us all grow as the course progressed, and I will be excited to hear how people’s projects take off in the future“. Kim Baker, Cohort 4
“It’s been crucial for me to gather with other people on the same journey, to be in a place where you are not the only person in the room with crazy ideas! I have loved being alongside a group of people exploring how best to serve their communities in creative and inspiring ways and I have learnt as much from them as from our lecturers, who bought new understanding and a depth of knowledge and wisdom. If you are searching for a way to deepen your understanding of how God is at work through you in His mission in your community then I cannot recommend it enough.” Gavin Hicks, Cohort 4
Online Taster Events
These are opportunities to connect, find out more and ask questions about the ‘Community of Pioneers’ and the ‘Certificate in Pioneer Mission’ programme that is run by the ‘Newbigin Pioneering Hub’.
The next online taster event will take place on Wednesday 17 June 2026 with the opportunity to ask any questions about the pioneering programme on zoom with Rev Dr Ash Barker. Starting at 6:30pm, log in on zoom.
“The Church in each place is to be the sign, instrument and foretaste of the reign of God present in Christ for that place; a sign, planted in the midst of the present realities of the place but pointing beyond them to the future which God has promised; an instrument available for God’s use in the doing of his will for that place; a foretaste – manifesting and enjoying already in the midst of the messianic tribulations a genuine foretaste of the peace and joy of God’s reign.” – Lesslie Newbigin
The Newbigin Annual Public Lecture
To stimulate Christians into more thoughtful and deeper engagement in the places they live and serve, we offer a public lecture with a high profile Christian leader who embodies a contemporary spirit of Lesslie Newbigin. In previous years this has included: Dr Steve Bevans (2018), Dr Krish Kandiah (2019), John Newbigin and Dr Ash Barker (2021), Dr Cathy Ross (2022), Shane Claiborne (2023), Dr Deirdre Brower (2024), Professor Anthony G. Reddie (2025) and Revd Dr Sam Wells (2026)
Next year’s Newbigin Annual Public Lecture will be delivered by Dr Ruth Valerio at 7pm (doors open 6pm) on Wednesday 30 June 2027 at Lodge Road Community Church, Winson Green, Birmingham B18 5BU.
With responses TBC.
Light refreshments provided.
A free event but donations welcomed!
The investment & places
Everything you need, in one place.
The investment
£500 £800
URC members Non-URC members
Includes all tutoring, resources, coaching, meals in regional hubs, and accommodation for the residential.
For URC members, successful completion may form part of the pathway towards recognition as an Assembly Accredited Lay Pioneer, with opportunities to explore Stepwise and the Church Leadership Programme.
The places
24
places for 2026/27
Twelve in each regional hub.
A cohort small enough to know you, large enough to carry you.
Could God be calling you?
If not you, then who?
Picture what becomes possible. You know your neighbours by name. The idle hall hosts a thriving gathering. You carry a tested plan, a community of practice behind you, and a way of life that fits your calling rather than fighting it. Your place is still waiting.
Register your interest for the 2026/27 cohort. Twenty four places, twelve in each hub.
Not sure yet? Take the free Local Leaders Readiness Survey.
You did not leave to find purpose. You found it here.