November 01, 1996 by Dr. Edwin L. Frizen, Jr.

It's exciting to see one more mission practicing what we preach -- reaching the unreached peoples. Pioneers does that exclusively. This relatively young mission has grown rapidly since we first profiled them in our April/May 1991 issue. At that time they had 235 members. Just five years later they have 560. We asked Dr. Jack Frizen, who served for 28 years as executive director of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, to give us an update on Pioneers and to share with us what we can all learn and apply in our own spheres from Pioneers remarkable growth. -- Editor

In a Middle Eastern country that is violently hostile to the Gospel and those who proclaim it, a young Muslim recently converted to Christianity. That is cause for rejoicing, certainly. It is also cause for study because we can learn a lot from the circumstances surrounding his entrance into the new life.

The young man -- we'll call him Assad -- was befriended by two Pioneers missionaries whom we'll call Judy and Ali Barat. Judy is an American, and Ali is a national of a Middle East country who converted to Christianity from Islam a number of years ago.

As Ali and Judy talked with Assad, they sensed he was close to making a commitment for Christ, and Ali made plans to find him a new job in another part of the country in case his relatives sought to kill him -- as often happens with Muslim converts. During one of Assad's evening visits, Ali and Judy had two other guests: Dr. Lee Bruckner, a member of the Pioneers board of directors, and John Fain, Pioneers' director of field ministries. The two men were learning about the Barats' work to evaluate what type of workers could best help them as part of their team.

It was during that visit that Assad gave his life to the Lord. A few weeks later, a knock came on the Barats' door. It was Assad and his father, and from the look on the father's face, Ali and Judy knew the situation could be grave. While Judy prayed in the kitchen, Ali spoke to the father.

The verdict? The father was amazed at the transformation in his son. Before, he explained, Assad had been a holy terror, refusing to attend school, vandalizing the neighborhood, and shaming the family. Finally, his father had to throw him out of the house -- and that is when Assad met Ali and Judy.

Suddenly Assad became a diligent young man, visiting his parents often and treating them with love and respect. His father couldn't understand the change, until Assad said he had been studying the Bible. The father had one request of Ali: Would he teach Assad's older brother how to be a Christian? "Make him just like Assad!" he said.

I've been involved in missions for 50 years and I've seen all types of mission work in most parts of the world. As I look at Assad's conversion, it is a prime example of the way Pioneers works and why they have been so successful.

1: Focus On Unreached Peoples

For security reasons, Assad's people group and country cannot be named, but they are among the most unreached in the world.

When Ted Fletcher left his position in 1979 as The Wall Street Journal's national sales manager in order to found Pioneers, he had a vision to reach the five blocks of unreached peoples of the world. That vision was clarified through Dr. Ralph Winter and the U.S. Center for World Missions. In fact, 17 years later, Ted says that the U.S. Center continues to impact his thinking in a positive way.

From the beginning, Pioneers' mission statement has been to "blaze new paths to unreached people groups" in countries that are often closed to a traditional approach. Today, virtually 100% of Pioneers' missionaries focus on unreached people in 35 restricted-access countries including Albania, Mongolia, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, India, Nepal, China, Russia, and North Korea. "We go to the places with the greatest spiritual need and the least opportunity to hear," Ted says.

In 1988 when Ted stepped aside and his son John became executive director, that focus didn't change. Pioneers still goes anywhere on the globe to reach any people group without limitation as long as a team can be secured. Using this approach, Pioneers missionaries have gone to unreached peopeles in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and witnessed conversions in all fields.

To the traditional five blocks of unreached peoples (Tribal, Hindu, Chinese, Muslim, and Buddhist), Pioneers has added a sixth block -- Secular, or Atheist, which includes peoples in the former Soviet bloc including Albania, Bosnia, and other formerly communist areas.

Within this focus of reaching the unreached is the goal of planting churches to disciple these new believers. This is key to seeing an increase in the harvest among people groups that have never been reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. ,

2: Focus On Sending Teams, Not Individuals

In Assad's conversion story, we can clearly see the working out of 1 Corinthians 3:6, which we could paraphrase, "The Barats planted the seed, Dr. Bruckner and Rev. Fain watered it, and God made it grow." In his letter, the Apostle Paul, of course, was trying to prevent prideful quibbling in the Corinthian church, but he was also, in a very real way, advocating the team approach to missions. It is a focus that Pioneers has had since the beginning.

How many of us know missionaries who have burned out on the field simply because they did not have the immediate life-giving fellowship of other missionaries -- particularly in the spiritual strongholds that exist among unreached people groups? How much better it is to have a team that can offer each member encouragement, fellowship, accountability, complementary gifts, and spiritual strength in remote and spiritually oppressed areas. The Barats, for example, are part of a team of four Pioneers missionaries.

As much as possible, Pioneers teams are international. According to John Fletcher, the Lord has given Pioneers a vision to "globalize" their missionary force by establishing mobilization bases in strategic locations around the world. From these centers, international missionaries will be sent out --from all nations, to all nations. These multi-ethnic teams will reach across cultures to encircle and penetrate the spiritual strongholds of Satan.

Already, Pioneers is putting this plan into action. Africa is a good example. Solomon Aryeetey, from Ghana, heads Pioneers-Africa. Pioneers-Ghana this year sent a missionary, Seth Nyampong, to work among the Sissala tribe of northern Ghana. Michel and Elizabeth Quist are team coordinators for Benin and are pioneering an outreach to the voodoo-worshipping Ewes in the area. Jerome Aresse is training five students to be part of his team to reach the Bassar tribe in Togo. And on it goes. As Aryeetey wrote in a recent letter, "It is exciting to hear how the Lord is gradually making Christ known in these remote, difficult places using African missionaries. Oh, that this trend will continue slowly but steadily, one missionary at a time."

3: Focus On Youth

Ali and Judy, the missionaries in Assad's story, are 42 and 35 years old respectively. They are typical of Pioneers missionaries, where the average age approaches 35.

One of the strengths of Pioneers, as I see it, is not only young missionaries but also young, dynamic but experienced leadership--all with a passion for reaching the unreached peoples of our world. Ted Fletcher himself will tell you that he is no longer the driving force behind Pioneers. Since 1988 when he stepped aside as executive director and the Board asked his son John, just 29 years old at the time, to take the helm, Pioneers has grown five times.

Pioneers holds three candidate schools a year and has an active short- term missions program called "The Edge," which is geared to young people. Even the art design and graphics of the recruitment brochures are youth-oriented.

As a result, Pioneers has averaged 75 career missionary appointments in each of the last four or five years. That is about the number that much larger missions with more than 1,000 missionaries need just to keep even.

The average age of those on Pioneers' home office staff is close to 35, and there is young but experienced leadership on the field, also. They are able to identify with young people today.

At the same time, they are open to listening to those of us who may have more experience. Not all young people are willing to do that. Pioneers invited me to be a consultant, and I volunteer in their offices twice a week and during candidate orientation sessions. I serve as an honorary member of the Board, so I have input on that level, but as far as the operation of the mission, the youth need to carry the load.

Pioneers missionaries may be young, but in my experience they are well prepared for the field--and they have a genuine heart for the unreached. Many Pioneers candidates, for example, have taken the U.S. Center's Perspectives courses which have strengthened their vision for reaching peoples who have never heard the Gospel before. These courses have proven invaluable--not just for Pioneers' missionaries but for those of other missions as well.

Beyond These Walls

Frankly, using traditional missiology parameters, I can't explain Pioneers' extraordinary growth, even with my years of experience in missions. Their strategy breaks all the rules. They don't have field representatives around North America to represent them; they haven't sent magazines and promotions to their mailing list (and in fact are only now launching a ministry newspaper). They have a very small mobilization staff, and place ads in magazines very selectively. Outside of prayer letters sent by individual missionaries, Pioneers sends out only one letter a year to inform people what is happening on the field.

Yet without these standard vehicles, Pioneers has grown rapidly. There are currently more than 150 appointed missionaries in various stages of preparation for the field as part of the full missionary staff and leadership of 560. By the year 2000, John Fletcher projects more than 900 missionaries, appointees, and staff serving in 50 countries, with a U.S. staff of 50 or more. This is God's doing in answer to consistent prayer.

In 1994, Pioneers purchased a 40-acre site in Orlando, Florida. Already the mission has outgrown the site's temporary facilities and is raising funds to build a headquarters to serve, care for, support, and lead the missionaries and their efforts worldwide. The facility will include offices; six short-term housing units for candidates, missionaries, and guests; and a multi-purpose building.

As a career missionary, I can only marvel at God's blessing on this organization. I believe the reason He has been so gracious to Pioneers is because their heart matches His heart --for the unreached.

Dr. Edwin L. (Jack) Frizen, Jr., served as executive director of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association of North America from 1963-1991. He helped found the Far Eastern Gospel Crusade (now SEND International), and served 13 years with the mission in the U.S. and the Philippines. He currently serves as chairman of the Tyndale and Crowell Foundations and also works advising the leadership of Pioneers.

You may contact PIONEERS at 12343 Narcoossee Rd., Orlando, FL 32827 Ph. (407) 382-6000 Fax: (407)382-1008 Email:[email protected] World Wide Web at

http://www.pioneers.org In Canada: P.O. Box 220 Dorchester, ON N0L 1G0 Ph. (519) 268-8778 Fax: (519) 268-2787 Email: [email protected]

Let Pioneers Be Pioneers by John Fletcher, Executive Director, Pioneers

For Pioneers to be true to our name and our heritage, then wherever we are in our history, it will always be just the beginning:

• The beginning to challenge new frontiers
• To seek new impossibilities
• To undertake giant ventures for God
• To discover and penetrate new unreached people groups with the message of Christ's love.

The way to step toward tomorrow is not to follow, but to lead, to blaze a new path to the unreached with the strong conviction that there is no place on earth where Christ cannot be proclaimed, and that there is no door too closed that God cannot open. As multitudes continue to pass into a lost eternity, now is the time to pray and give. Now is the time to act.

And now is the time to pioneer.

With these words in mind, we enter the closing years of this decade, our "future of challenge." A theme our mission has adopted can be summed up in two words: Onward Bound. As the Lord told Joshua, "There are still very large areas to be taken over" (Joshua 13:1-2).

It is necessary in pioneer work that new outreaches have the freedom to be tried, to fail, and to ultimately succeed. Without this freedom, Pioneers will not move ahead, but live in fear of its own potential. And so, I am fond of saying that we must "let pioneers be pioneers." In so doing, we share the ambition of Paul: "Yea, so have I strived to preach the Gospel, not where Christ was named lest I should build upon another foundation" (Romans 15:20).

Pioneers’ Purpose Statement Reads:

"In dependence upon God for His greater glory, Pioneers will:

Penetrate the five major unreached frontiers (Chinese Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Tribal) with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, by innovative means of church-planting, through teams of qualified Western missionaries, nationals and tentmakers;

and

Recognize the centrality of the local church in God's redemptive activity. By seeking to assist churches in their responsibility for the Great Commission by soliciting their counsel on how to best thrust out an army of cross-cultural representatives, and by imparting to newly planted, indigenous churches the urgency of their own responsibility for world evangelization."