If the church is not on mission, it is not itself.
Archbishop Foley Beach has commissioned a new gospel task force to help reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. The Telos Collective: Anglicans at the Intersection of Gospel and Culture, is a small, strategic alliance of the best missional minds in The Anglican Church in North America who will gather each year to think, plan and dream about reaching the culture for Christ.
Archbishop Beach asked missional thought leader Bishop Todd Hunter of the Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others to found and lead the Telos Collective, with the goal of catalyzing 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 gave 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.
Last week Bishop Hunter issued an invitation to leaders from each diocese in the province to participate in the Telos Collective. At the College of Bishops meeting, he asked for each bishop’s help and support to recruit the missional leaders who can best serve the province.
“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?”
That issue will be central to the annual Intersection Conference, an intensive ”missional greenhouse” where Telos Collective leaders will receive specialized training in a collaborative setting. The first conference is slated for May 18-20, 2017. Upon being nurtured and trained, leaders 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 Bishop 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. If you’re wondering about these 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.
