Do you have a heart for the Unreached? Do you desire deeper formation for cross-cultural missions? Do you long to be a part of a multicultural team environment?
Join us for a 3-month cohort and/or a 10-month cohort, starting late February each year in Melbourne.
The 3-month cohort is a live-in community experience.
The 10-month cohort option includes a formal vocational training qualification.
Our Training Model
We integrate four elements in our training – Experiencing God, Using the Bible, Engaging with Culture, and Relating to People. These elements are experienced in the learning community and in a cross-cultural ministry context.
Formational Training
2 days a week you will be trained in content designed to shape you as a disciple-maker and taught by a diversity of experienced leaders. The rest of the week is focused on applying this content through ministry among diaspora unreached peoples.
Discipleship Mentors
We seek to provide experienced, heart-language mentors for you to process how God is shaping you through community, the content, and hands-on ministry.
Cross-cultural ministry
Melbourne needs Jesus. The world needs Jesus. You will be introduced to Pioneers Core Values and approaches, and introduced to various strategies and skills for starting church planting movements as you serve on an intercultural Pioneers team in partnership with local churches.
We focus on spiritual and character formation – inward before outward, private before public.
We value and celebrate the diversity of Christ’s global Body – and desire to learn how to serve as a unified family on the mission field.
We believe learning happens best in reflective communities of practice.
Residential Cohort – 17 February to 11 May 2026
Certificate IV + Team Internship – 17 February to 27 November 2026
Pre-cohort ESL training available for 3, 6, or 9+ months before each cohort!
We aim for global accessibility through shared and simple living and embracing koinonia to ensure that everyone’s needs are met. After getting to know you and where you are heading, we set your custom training fee in a way that acknowledges your context and that also stretches your faith.
Each person contributing as they are able, so that everyone’s needs are met.
Sound exciting?
Start a conversation with us to learn more.
“I long to see healthy churches in Melbourne, Victoria and the world display the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ in compelling ways. We are looking for disciples who share and wish to grow in this vision. Join us for some of your training journey. We’d love to be a part of what God is preparing you for.”
-Stephen, Team Leader of GDM
“Eu experimentei tanto cuidado e amor. Foi um tempo incrível com Deus”
– Brazilian DTC Participant
“I really appreciated how the training facilitators were really invested in each of us and we wrestled through things with such intentionality. We went really deep in terms of our own character and spiritual formation.”
-Australian DTC Participant
“For a while now, Pioneers has recognized the need for deep spiritual formation, for training in multicultural team dynamics, and for hands-on mission practice outside of one’s home country. DTCs seek to help meet this need and launch well-formed disciple makers from all nation to the Unreached.”
– Regional Leader in Pioneers
“We explored our character, skills we need as cross-cultural church planters, and were encouraged in the Lord to continue our work ‘where Christ is not already named.’ “
-Nigerian DTC Participant
“ခရစ်တော်၏ ကမ္ဘာလုံးဆိုင်ရာ ကိုယ်ခန္ဓာ၏ အလှကို ကျွန်ုပ်မြင်သည်။ အခု ကိုယ့်တိုင်းပြည်က ကိုယ့်လူမျိုးကို သင်ပေးနေတယ်။”
-DTC Participant from Myanmar
*images have been changed for the security of those whom we are quoting
