Empowering gospel-driven Christians to go to the ends of the earth in
relentless pursuit of the unreached.

Annual Report

“Do you not say, ‘There are four months, then comes the harvest?’ Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” – John 4:35

Looking to the future

Steve Richardson, President of Pioneers-USA

Steve Richardson
President, Pioneers-USA

I am intrigued by what Jesus said in John 14:12, “Whoever believes in me…will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” What could be greater than walking on water, feeding 5,000 people, or raising Lazarus from the dead?

Yet here we are experiencing things that would have left the disciples utterly amazed. We live in the most dramatic and fruitful chapter of redemptive history. Let me mention some of the dynamics which I believe will continue to shape the future of global missions.

  • Multiplication: God’s worldwide family is growing. Prepare to be amazed as momentum continues to build.
  • Mobilization: God is answering our prayers that He would “send out workers into his harvest field” (Luke 10:2).
  • Collaboration: The Great Commission has always had a global scope. Now it also has a truly global workforce. We have unprecedented opportunities for partnership.
  • Disruption: God is shaking the nations socially, geopolitically and economically. Are we ready for the harvest God is bringing in unlikely places?
  • Opposition: Opposition is not new, and it won’t stop until the Lord’s return. The testimony of persecuted saints will continue to be a powerful force in global missions.
  • Celebration: Jesus promised that “people will come from east and west and north and south and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). What a celebration that will be!

Annual financials & statistics

Here’s a snapshot of Pioneers from our last global census.

Pioneers global reach

WHO WE ARE
3,054

Total members *

465

Field teams

81

Countries of citizenship

* Total includes field missionaries, appointees, support staff and board members. Includes 1,225 field missionaries sent from the U.S.

WHERE WE WORK
108

Countries

100+

Languages

441

Distinct
people groups *

* Uses categories from Joshua Project, and counts each group living in multiple countries as a single group. Includes distinct groups engaged both through direct ministry and through media outreach efforts.

Primary religious blocs served

Muslim – 56.4%
Buddhist – 12%
Tribal / animist – 6.4%
Hindu – 4.8%
Unreligious / secular – 3.2%
Other – 17.2%

Partners

46,183

Donors

3,345

Partner churches

Financials

A bar graph showing Pioneers financials in 2022.

82.9%

Program

11.7%

Administration

5.4%

Fundraising

Accountability

Pioneers values integrity, stewardship and accountability. For this reason, we link arms with other evangelical mission organizations and submit to godly leadership. Learn more or download financial statements.

A ministry of multiplication

Multiplication--a group of South Asian women in a discipleship effort

What comes to mind when you think of a pioneer? Someone who goes ahead, leads the way and does what others don’t, won’t or can’t? In many cases, pioneering missionaries find they can make a bigger impact by taking a lower profile. They faithfully serve behind the scenes to equip others for fruitful frontline ministry. They may join hands in strategic partnerships under the leadership of a local pastor or network. And they often focus on coming alongside believers who share a vision to reach the least reached in their regions.

A Mongolian woman playing a traditional stringed instrument.

Crisis response and relief efforts

When tragedies strike, Pioneers and their partners rally to help.

In February 2023, a series of earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria. Pioneers helped the Christian community provide food, shelter, care, comfort and trauma debriefing. Many supported this work and the workers through their prayers.

A few months later, war broke out in Sudan. Pioneers in Egypt worked with local churches to meet the tangible needs of more than 900 refugee families, showing them love and offering them hope. More than 60 house churches have already been planted among refugees in the area.

Where believers are one in a thousand

More than 30 million people live in the mountainous country of Nepal, once the world’s only Hindu kingdom. Despite decades of Christian ministry, more than 200 of the nation’s people groups are unreached with the gospel. The majority belong to people groups with virtually no known followers of Jesus—at most, 0.1%, or one person in a thousand.

Pioneers works with an all-indigenous Nepali church-planting team using a “media-to-movements” strategy to share gospel content online, identify Nepali people who are spiritually open, make disciples and plant churches. The ministry began in 2021, and each year since, its impact has doubled.

  • 1,000 spiritual seekers are contacting the Nepali team each month.
  • Approximately 2,500 have made professions of faith in Christ.
  • 1,200 have been baptized.
  • 250 discipleship fellowships have formed.
Three Middle Eastern men sitting at café tables.
A Mongolian woman playing a traditional stringed instrument.

Preparing Arab leaders for ministry

One group works with Muslim-background believers primarily in North Africa, the Middle East, and other places with immigrant Muslim populations, especially Arabs. This ministry offers Bible courses, discipleship and leadership training for people at all stages of Christian maturity.

Each effort is tailored to a cultural context and addresses real challenges people from a Muslim background face in their journeys of faith. In addition, all the teaching is easily reproduced. This way believers can use the same materials to lead others to faith and maturity.

“For years, we have looked for a program like this,” a group of Arab Christians ministering to Saudi believers reported. “This is precisely what we need.”

Pioneers-USA staff & board

Pioneers-USA mobilization base


The U.S. mobilization base team is composed of dedicated professionals committed to using their skills in finance, IT, marketing, counseling, fundraising, recruiting, coaching and more to support Pioneers efforts to initiate church-planting movements among the unreached. Many have experience serving on cross-cultural church-planting teams, in local churches or in the marketplace.

Our office is a busy place. Throughout the year we host events that help strengthen our relationships and better accomplish our mission.

Explore

Orientation for new and prospective Pioneers members is held six times a year and helps those who come prayerfully discern their next steps.

Connect

Three times a year, we offer Pioneers members on “home assignment” the opportunity to debrief their field experiences and prepare to return.

Launch

While pre-field requirements are set on a case-by-case basis, three times a year, we offer a week of training, connecting and commissioning for all appointees.

Church Partner Forum

Twice a year we host gatherings for church mission leaders considering ways to strengthen their church’s mission vision and impact.

Board of directors

Many of our staff are active outside the office, too, visiting field missionaries and supporters or representing Pioneers at mission conferences and classes, colleges and church events.

See who serves on the board →

2022 Board Members

Click or tap through the tabs below to view the different report sections.

Church Partnerships
Mobilizing New Missionaries
New Book
Relentless Pursuit Podcast
Media Outreach

Pioneers & the local church

Pioneers & the Local Church—several Church Partner Forum attendees chatting.

Each member of Pioneers-USA is commissioned by a sending church committed to helping them thrive where God has led them. A team of church partnership facilitators serves as a point of personal contact for U.S. churches. We actively partner with 693 sending churches.

One of our favorite ways to make these connections is through our semi-annual Church Partner Forum. This highly interactive event typically covers topics such as the need for a clear mission vision and strategy, the case for the unreached and what it takes to provide effective missionary care. The event is free, excluding travel costs, for up to four people per church. Forums attract church mission leaders from across the country.

In 2023, Pioneers welcomed 43 mission leaders from 39 churches all over the U.S. to a Church Partner Forum. In 2024, we will host forums February 13-15 and October 15-17.

Making an impact

After attending a Church Partner Forum, a church in Tampa held its first church-wide missions event. “We are hopeful God will use this event to stir our hearts toward reaching the world,” a pastor reports. The day before the event, they held an interest meeting for people interested in being sent out. “We had about 15 people who were interested in missions come to that interest meeting. We are beginning the process of discipling them and helping them move toward the field. I would not be surprised if we are able to send five or more missionaries in the next few years.”

Meet the team or sign up for a forum.

Mobilizing missionaries

A journey to the edge & back

Each summer, Pioneers mobilizes, mentors and sends college students and other young adults to the ends of the earth. Edgers serve alongside long-term teams, following their lead and getting a taste of what it’s like to learn an unfamiliar language and culture.

In 2023, we sent 49 Edgers on 12 teams to 11 countries. As they returned for debriefing, they shared how they were challenged and shaped by what they experienced and excited to take their next steps in God’s mission to the unreached. For 2024, the Edge staff is developing new training materials for the field mentors who receive Edgers and looking forward to sending Edgers to two field teams who have never hosted Edgers before.

Seeing Scripture through new eyes

Members of an Edge team in South Asia became friends with a girl who lived next door to them. When she showed interest in understanding what they believe, they invited her to read the Bible with them. Reading together, the Edgers saw Scripture through new eyes and took on the challenge of trying to explain the stories to someone who had never heard them before.
‍

Even after they returned to the U.S., she reached out to them because she wanted to continue reading and discussing Bible stories with them. One of the Edgers said, “I’m just so thankful that she’s getting to discover all these things about Jesus and that we get to be part of her journey to finding out who Jesus is.”

Global mobilization efforts

It’s a joy to leverage our resources to also support the work of new missionaries God is raising up in other parts of the world. Africans, Asians and others are joining or linking arms with Pioneers to serve in their own regions and beyond. And they are bearing fruit. Pioneers leaders in Egypt report that in the last year, at least 30 people came to faith and four churches were planted through their new missionary candidates.

A Mission Mentor having lunch with a new Pioneers missionary candidate.

U.S. annual mobilization impact

  • 1,151 people filled out an initial contact form
  • 180 adults attended Explore candidate orientation
  • 114 new long-term missionaries were appointed
  • 84 new missionaries went to the field
Join us in the relentless pursuit of the unreached.

Same God. Same mission.
New assignment.

Travel bag and book Items May Have Shifted

Many missionary biographies tell the stories of men and women who persevered for decades in a single context. Today, though, God seems to be moving His workforce from place to place with growing frequency.

Items May Have Shifted: When Missionaries Get Rerouted is a collection of stories from Pioneers missionaries who left everything and moved across the world to serve among the unreached and then were redirected, often without much warning or explanation.

Their experiences illustrate an inherent tension missionaries must maintain in our chaotic world: the commitment to go deep in difficult contexts as if it’s forever the the openhandedness to accept that plans may change at any time.

You (or missionaries you care about) may be on the move by necessity or by choice. Either way, these stories remind us all that God’s people are called to a flexible, responsive faithfulness, clinging to the God of the unexpected.

Login to read this book online. It’s also available in paperback and Kindle editions. Also this year we published a new edition of another great read, Arlene Richardson’s book Threads: Unexpected Adventures in Business, Missions and Family.

Demystifying missions


The lives of cross-cultural workers can be shrouded in mystery or obscured by misconceptions. Each episode of the Relentless Pursuit podcast takes you behind the scenes to hear a missionary describe their life and work. We’re now on season three.

Join us as we uncover the messy, rewarding and sometimes dangerous journey of following Jesus to the nations.

Episode 8: Green Missions
Some things are meant to go together. Salted caramel and chocolate. Peanut butter and jelly. Agriculture and church planting. Didn’t see the last one coming? Dave in Peru may change your mind.

Episode 9: A Vision Fulfilled
Cynthia was single, in her forties and had worked in the business world. But God had given her a vision of helping young girls in South Asian villages avoid being trafficked. Making disciples and planting churches was at the heart of the solution.

Episode 10:  The World Next Door
The nations are coming to our doorstep as immigrants, refugees and international students. Paul from Texas shares how this move brings unprecedented opportunity to share the gospel with people from unreached parts of the world.

Start listening to the podcast!

Multiplying media ministry

Jesus told His disciples to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes in Him will find eternal, abundant life. Usually, however, only a small percentage of those who don’t already follow Jesus are open to considering it. In some places, you could spend a lifetime sharing the gospel and find very few people ready to hear.

So, Pioneers members and their partners are using websites, social media and chat apps to find those who are searching for Jesus. When online relationships lead to face-to-face meetings, the seeds of new churches are planted.

Mahdi, a Sudanese refugee who came to faith through our media ministry in the Middle East, puts it this way:

“There are places where people had never heard of Christ who can now hear because of cell phones. And I expect that technology in the future will make it possible to spread the Word of God to everyone across the world—to all the people.”

We asked Mahdi and his wife Hanedi, who now live in France, to tell their story in their own words. Hear how media outreach made a difference, why Mahdi decided to follow Jesus. That choice led to the launch of more than 50 house churches across Egypt.

Annual impact

Ministry impact is often hard to measure, but media efforts lend themselves to metrics. And they show us something worth celebrating: Pioneers workers and their partners are seeing an average of six people a day make professions of faith in Jesus through online media outreach! Here’s what else our media outreach ministries reported for 2023:

  • 15,071 people contacted us in response to media outreach campaigns
  • 23,338 Bibles were downloaded or distributed
  • 2,624 people made professions of faith in Jesus: a huge step
Love a good story? “Googling Jesus” features our best or favorite stories about media outreach. Sign up for a series of nine emails about how God can change the lives of the most unlikely people.

Connect with us

  • Hear from us regularly. Subscribe to Pioneers Updates.
  • Help take the gospel to the unreached by praying for the needs of Pioneers missionaries and partners around the world. Become a Courier.
  • You can always find us through the chat feature on our website.

Have you engaged with Pioneers on social media? We’d love to meet up with you there.

Join the Couriers and get these free gifts—three stickers and a bookmark.

Thank you for partnering with us!

A Bolivian man wearing a traditional hat.

For almost 45 years, Pioneers missionaries have been using innovative and creative means to bring the gospel to every corner of the globe. Your partnership with Pioneers will make 2024 another fruitful year in the harvest.

This is a pivotal year. We are prayerfully preparing to begin new efforts in 2025 that will dramatically increase our footprint among the unreached in the coming decade.

Also in 2024, we will seek to recruit 180 U.S. missionary candidates and help Pioneers ministries in the Global South recruit 95 more candidates, as well as send missionaries to 30-40 unreached people groups to start locally led movements of faith. They will join teams using digital strategies and other methods to connect with tens of thousands of spiritual seekers, make disciples and plant churches.

Help Us Reach These Goals
Contact
We’re Hiring
Privacy Policy
Giving Help

Tax-exempt Nonprofit, # 52-1206938.