Pioneers on pilgrimage

After her own experience of walking part of the North Wales Pilgrim Way, Natalie Burfitt spoke to two experienced pioneer pilgrims to find out more about pilgrimage and why it might be a good practice for pioneers.

Inspired by the BBC2 programme Pilgrimage, where seven celebrities (who else?) took two weeks to walk the North Wales Pilgrim Way, I managed three days of this route earlier this year. The sense of this as an embodied spiritual practice grew with the days, even in this shortened version. 

I wanted to find out more about pilgrimage and why it’s a good practice for pioneers to consider. I talked to Ash Barker who leads Newbigin Pioneer Hub in Winson Green and Cathy Chapman who is currently studying there for the certificate in pioneer mission. They are both regular walkers of pilgrim trails, both in the UK and Europe.

They began by telling me how they got into pilgrimage:

Cathy: I was working in Rwanda with VSO and I met an Irish woman who told me about the Camino de Santiago. She was very funny – and something in her story really attracted me. Then I saw some pilgrims when I was holiday and was intrigued.

The other thing that was important was that I’d recently returned to church after a time away and I wanted to do something meaningful – a demonstration that I was walking back to God and pilgrimage seemed to fit that. 

My first pilgrimage wasn’t this serious thing I’d been expecting – it brought me so much joy that I became quite a fan of walking them!

Ash: On my 50th birthday, I was desperate to go to the Holy Land and I came across a fundraising walk for a hospital there, walking from Nazareth to Capernaum with a group and I thought. “I want to do that, I want to connect with the land not just go on a bus.”

As a pioneer, place and place-making has been a really important theme, and so I loved sitting in those places that Jesus had sat – being physically present to place and people. 

And then other friends from Australia were doing the Camino and St Cuthbert’s Way and I joined them.

When I got to my sabbatical, I was pretty exhausted and really needed to look after my health a bit better and preparing for a two week walk of the Camino Portuguese was instrumental in a re-set. The walk was a magnificent experience.

So pilgrimage is good for personal renewal and also an embodied, experiential enactment of the spiritual journey?

Ash: Yes, and that happens around three areas. One is a self-awareness of your whole being. Pioneering can be a head and spirit preoccupation but this makes you reconnect with your body. It’s also time with God and it’s about personal growth. For me, in this second half of life, it’s really important that I make time to reflect, to be a human being not a human doing.

As regulars to this practice, how has it developed? And how does it relate to your pioneering?

Ash: We take our local people on pilgrimages and they LOVE it! We do it with a support bus so that if people get stuck, they can ride the bus for a while – we make it really accessible. 

Walking these sacred walks together has been beautiful. Two of our guys got baptised on Holy Island this summer. 

For a pioneer, it’s all those things that we seek coming together – the community building, the journey, the discipleship, the mission. 

For a lot of our people, just being away from the local context and being out in nature under those big skies creates a liminal space where they can open up and experience new things. 

And the strength of connections that are built is remarkable – five days of pilgrimage is worth a year of meetings! We all feel we know each other a lot better – snoring and burping and farting together!

Cathy: I’m more comfortable as a pilgrim than a pioneer at the moment as I’m just learning pioneering. 

There are a lot of similarities with pioneering – things unfold. In pilgrimage, each day is different, you respond to who you meet and what needs occur. You are putting yourself “in the way of beauty” – you’re opening yourself up to conversation in a way that nothing else can as you’re sharing the journey.

I’ve done different pilgrimages and they’ve taught me different things. One of trips took me to Greece where I volunteered with a UN resettlement programme for refugees.

My pilgrimage was, in a small part, standing in solidarity with those who have journeyed across continents by human power. Obviously, it’s a lot easier for me – but even then, something that you think is going to be difficult turned out to be a real joy. 

Walking really helped me to have first-hand experience, both by hearing people’s stories, and in my own journeying, of what human migration is like with families scattered across borders, trying to find life but living on the edges.

Ash: We’ve also experienced this ‘borderland’ world that forms in you this pilgrim approach to life. You’re not quite sure of the rules any more, it can be dangerous but also incredibly innovative and creative. You really need faith, hope and love. We do pilgrimages but you bring back that mindset to your pioneer practice.

What would you say to people considering a pilgrimage walk for the first time?

Cathy: Do it!

Ash: Yes, try it out – honestly, you won’t regret trying it. Even if it’s not for you or your group in the end, you won’t regret trying it. You might even love it like we do. And you get fit by doing it – so don’t worry about your fitness level.

Cathy: Maybe start with just a day trip. Get a group together and maybe pick a theme like ‘nature’ and you’ll find as the day progresses that conversations just happen. It’s such a natural thing for humans to walk side by side and talk. It features in the Bible a lot doesn’t it? Jesus is always walking – moving from place to place, up mountains on his own – it’s how he does life.

Ash: Pilgrimage is different to hiking. There’s a sacredness to pilgrimage. Places like the Camino carry you. You can start with a small introduction. We do the walk across the causeway to Holy Island which only takes an hour and we encourage people to be quiet, to ponder their own journey, to try out the practice.

Cathy: If you want to travel abroad for your pilgrimage, do look at overland travel rather than flying! Make all of your journeying part of your activism.

Ash Barker regularly runs pilgrimages that you can join. Go to the Seedbeds website for booking information.

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP