If the church is not on mission, it is not itself. 

Last week, Bishop Todd Hunter issued an invitation to leaders from each diocese in The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) to participate in The Telos Collective: Anglicans at the Intersection of Gospel and Culture, a new gospel task force to help reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ.

The Telos Collective is a small, strategic alliance of the best missional minds in the province who will gather each year to think, plan and dream about reaching culture for Christ. Archbishop Foley Beach commissioned Hunter to found and lead the Telos Collective to catalyze a theologically faithful and contextually compatible response to 21st century culture.

“I am burdened for a culture that, by and large, has turned away from God,” Archbishop Beach says. “My desire is to mobilize the Anglican church to be part of the solution—to be on mission in contemporary culture. We have a unique voice, a deeply sacramental, missional tradition, and a rootedness that our nation desperately needs.”

The Telos Collective will build on the impact of previous ventures like Anglican 1000, which helped to shape a new culture and give new language and metrics to The Anglican Church in North America. With God’s help, The Telos Collective will further renew the Anglican church with the confidence and tools it needs to turn outward—to be re-missioned and re-sent into the world to joyfully make disciples.

 

 

The hub of the Telos Collective will be its annual Intersection Conference— the first slated for May 18-20, 2017. At this intensive “missional greenhouse,” leaders will receive specialized training in a collaborative setting. Upon being nurtured and trained, they will return to their churches and communities and continue the missional conversation through Learning Communities, groups of lay people or clergy who meet periodically to share ideas and missional strategies on a local level.

Any Anglican leader can apply to attend an Intersection Conference, but Hunter is specifically seeking people who think like missionaries, who are committed to using every strategy at their disposal to reach 21st century North Americans for Christ.

“It’s about being change agents, simultaneously listening to your church community as well as the non-churched community around you,” Hunter says. “How do you get those two things in fruitful conversation without compromising the gospel or the core of Anglicanism?”

If you’re wondering about the same things, and striving to find solutions for contemporary mission, you’re invited to apply to attend the Intersection Conference and join the important work of the Telos Collective: Anglicans at the Intersection of Gospel and Culture.