Telos

Interview with Bishop Todd Hunter [video]

Todd Hunter — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:47:57 +0000

In a recent trip to Virginia Beach, for a Telos Event, Todd Hunter sat down for a live interview at Regent University. Todd talks about his latest book “Our Favorite Sins”. In addition, he shares about church planting and answers questions from students in attendance.

We know that you will enjoy it. WATCH VIDEO

http://www.regent.edu/admin/media/fms/vod/singlePlayerURL.cfm?address=9000840

Our Favorite Sins

Todd Hunter — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 02:04:53 +0000

Our Favorite Sins provides the only resource that matches a perceptive awareness of the sins we face today with the solutions and strategies employed by our brothers and sisters who trod similar paths in centuries past. After finishing Our Favorite Sins, readers will 1) be equipped to battle the temptations they face; 2) have a unique and empowering perspective on sin and temptation; 3) know that while their particular temptations may seem unique to them, they also share a strong bond with believers of the past. As a bishop, author, and a frequent speaker, the author is positioned to appeal to readers in two broad audiences: the mainline liturgical world and the evangelical community. Continue reading →

Our Favorite Sins – New book from Todd Hunter

Todd Hunter — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:07:28 +0000

Informed by exclusive Barna research findings and more than three decades of pastoral experience, Our Favorite Sins shines a revealing light on temptation for contemporary readers and demonstrates how ancient, liturgical, and sacramental forms of Christian spirituality can assist a follower of Jesus in defeating temptation and getting victory over sin.

Our Favorite Sins provides the only resource that matches a perceptive awareness of the sins we face today with the solutions and strategies employed by our brothers and sisters who trod similar paths in centuries past.

After finishing Our Favorite Sins, readers will:

be equipped to battle the temptations they face
have a unique and empowering perspective on sin and temptation
know that while their particular temptations may seem unique to them, they also share a strong bond with believers of the past

As a bishop, author, and a frequent speaker, the author is positioned to appeal to readers in two broad audiences: the mainline liturgical world and the evangelical community.

——

Buy Book – Amazon
Buy Kindle Version – Amazon

Telos :: Atlantic Beach

Todd Hunter — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:19:50 +0000

TITLE: “Apprentices to Jesus: Within Your Already Existing Life” ::
DATE: Sunday, April 29, 2012 :: TIME: 9am & 11am (Part I) & 5pm (Part II) ::
LOCATION: Beaches Vineyard, Atlantic Theatres, 751 Atlantic Blvd, Atlantic Beach, FL 32233 [MAP] ::
HOST CHURCH: Beaches Vineyard, www.BeachVineyard.net ::
COST: Free (Contributions are welcomed and accepted for Todd’s church planting movement. Everyone who contributes will get a copy of one of Todd’s books)

Our story, as seen in the pages of the Bible and in the narratives of church history, reveals how God rescues people from traps, giving freedom, granting fresh starts and empowering new beginnings. God makes us new for a life in the Kingdom. Our life counts and we are growing into His image as we encounter him through spiritual disciplines and practices. Paul says it well, “Everything – and I do mean everything – connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life – a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you” (Ephesians 4:22-24, Message Bible).

Telos :: Virginia Beach

Todd Hunter — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:03:16 +0000

TITLE: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others :: A teaching retreat with Bishop Todd Hunter. Connecting with God through silence, teaching, and Holy Communion. Not a conference. Not a seminar. A teaching retreat.

DATE: Friday, April 20th, 6-9pm & Saturday, April 21st, 9am-12pm.

LOCATION: Regent University, 1000 Regent University Drive, Virginia Beach, VA 23464-9800 – Building Two, Regent University Library Building, Second Floor, Library Atrium [map - pdf]

Registration: $25 Adults, $10 Students

Our outward journey involves using our ears by listening to people and relies heavily on the leading of the Holy Spirit. Our job is to love the people he places in our lives and be the kind of Christians they can trust when they are ready to talk about faith.

When one arrives at our event, they will notice something different. It is not so much a seminar or a conference. It is more like a teaching-retreat. A participant will experience a time to connect with God through silence, teaching, small group interaction and Holy Communion. We conclude by each guest being sent on mission with a life infused with new meaning and purpose. The teachings will incorporate the core principles from my books (see toddhunter.org) on Kingdom living and spiritual formation for the sake of others..

Telos :: San Diego

Todd Hunter — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:14:13 +0000

TITLE: “Following Jesus for the Sake of Others” ::
DATE: Saturday, March 31st :: TIME: 9am – 3pm ::
LOCATION: Point Loma University, Smee Building, 3900 Lomaland Drive, San Diego, CA 92106 [MAP] ::
HOST CHURCH: Icon Church, San Diego, http://iconchurchsandiego.com ::
COST: FREE (Contributions are welcomed and accepted for Todd’s church planting movement. Everyone who contributes will get a copy of one of Todd’s books) PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO REGISTER. IT’S IMPORTANT.

*Please join us at 8:30am for coffee and refreshment.

When one arrives as a Telos Event, they will notice something different. It is not so much a seminar or a conference. It is more like a teaching-retreat. At a Telos event, a participant will experience a time to connect with God through silence, teaching, small group interaction and Holy Communion. Telos concludes by each guest being sent on mission with a life infused with new meaning and purpose. The teachings will incorporate the core principles from my books on Kingdom living and spiritual formation for the sake of others (mission).

Telos :: New Orleans

Todd Hunter — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:45:33 +0000

TITLE: “Apprentices to Jesus: Within Your Already Existing Life” ::
DATE: Saturday, March 10th :: TIME: 9am – 12pm ::
LOCATION: Vineyard Church of New Orleans, 4340 Sal Lentini Pkwy., Kenner, LA [MAP] ::
HOST CHURCH: Vineyard Church of New Orleans, http://www.vineyardneworleans.org ::
COST: Free (Contributions are welcomed and accepted for Todd’s church planting movement. Everyone who contributes will get a copy of one of Todd’s books)

The Enemies of Rest

Todd Hunter — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:22:29 +0000

Richard Foster, who I deeply admire as someone who practices working from rest, observes, “In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds.” Because that is surely true, we desperately need quiet time. But, Foster also knows the life is no solitary. Rather, it connects us well to God, to other spiritual practices of Christianity and to the rest of life. It prepares us for the compassionate life (social justice), the virtuous life (holiness), the evangelical life (Word centered), the charismatic life (Spirit centered), and the incarnational life (the sacramental life). Eugene Peterson notes, “All our ancestors agree that without silence and stillness there is no spirituality, no God-attentive God-responsive life.”

Here is an interesting and revealing questions related to the practices of preludes: is quiet time a work or a grace? Do we imagine that God bestows grace in payment for devotional regularity? We often think, “If I read my Bible and pray enough, somehow I will pull the right level with God and he will respond!”

This line of thought leads to a bigger challenge: misunderstanding grace. All of God’s actions and inactions – his patience, his withholding judgments and so forth – are of grace. Creation is an act of grace; all of the ongoing human abilities to live and breathe are acts of grace. Grace does not have to do merely with fixing the problem of sin. Once we see this, we see that quiet times are themselves graces, the means to connect with the mercy and power of God. They are not properly understood as works.

Think of the rhythm of Jesus’ life, who easily and frequently moved from private times of prayer to times of public teaching, healing and confronting. In these routine times of solitude and quiet, was Jesus working to earn something from his Father? Or were all the actions of Jesus’ life, pubic and private, motivated and energized by the grace of God? I think it is the latter.

This understanding has freed me in numerous ways. It never crosses my mind to wonder how many chapters I should read today or how long I should pray. These types of questions have been replaced – repracticed – by a life in which prayer is never far away, never confined to the next morning, and thinking about Scripture is foundational for all of life, not just early mornings.

I experience repracticed quiet time this way: as I pay attention to the people and events of my day, my life is full of divine appointments and divine interruptions. This produces the desire and the need to have daily uninterrupted times of focus on God. But it is important to see this as practical and functional, not an attempt to earn anything from God or to get him to do something for me. It’s all part of one contiguous whole. That whole is my life lived before God in public activity and private contemplation, prayer, and study.

So when sitting quietly in a sanctuary, thinking and praying while beautiful music plays, I know I have only ascended the diving board. Once the benediction has been pronounced, I walk out the door ready to splash into the realities of life. I then experience a life of centered peace, working from a place of rest gained from engaging in the spiritual practice of prelude.

Why Not Better Results?

Todd Hunter — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:16:44 +0000

A big part of my motivation for writing this book is rooted in deep and gnawing intellectual curiosity: Why don’t the various aspects of church life produce better results? How does it happen that people can follow and experience profound liturgies for their whole lives and not feel connected to Jesus in a personal way? How can people hear great sermons for dozens of years and yet cheat their customers and cheat on their spouse?

Philip Yancey says, “My deepest doubts about the faith can be summed up in a single question: ‘Why doesn’t it work?’” In the margin of Yancey’s Soul Survivor, I wrote, “Me too!” As a leader of pastors, every time I’ve seen one crash and burn with sex, money or pride, I’ve wondered, Why doesn’t our faith work? And when I’ve watched a parishioner ruin his or her family through foolish behavior, I’ve asked the same troubling question.

This question is not for the faint of heart. But it demands an answer. Here is my best shot: The problem has little to do with our liturgy, sermons, Sunday school curricula or any other aspect of church life. These elements are common means of God’s instruction, power and grace. Our problem has more to do with two other things: first, we have no place, no story and no context with which to act on anything we might hear or receive; second, in our pseudo-religious society we lack the basic intention to act on what we have heard. Practical obedience hardly crosses the mind of those who merely want to care for the spiritual side of life by taking in an occasional church service or other religious event.

When Jesus invites us to share his yoke, he is calling us into his story, into the life-shaping orientation provided by his sense of what the Father is doing. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).

A yoke is a wooden beam used between a pair of oxen to allow them to pull a load. I loved the mental picture of being in a yoke with Jesus. The friends Debbie and I shared a home with while attending Bible school knew this and took a picture of a yoke on the side of a barn in West Virginia. Tim and Susie framed it nicely and placed a small bronze plate in the bottom of the frame with an inscription: “Stay in the yoke… Matthew 11:29.” In the years since, I have moved offices many times, but that picture has always hung prominently on the wall. A few years ago my wife, knowing my affection for the yoke image, bought an authentic yoke at an antique store and gave it to me as a Christmas present. It hangs in an important place on our porch.

As much as the yoke of Jesus has shaped my imagination for life in Jesus, its flame was fanned further the first time I read the same words in Matthew 11 of The Message:

“Are you tired? Work out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Communities Trained to Respond

Todd Hunter — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:03:32 +0000

I am amazed by the men and women who are society’s first responders to disasters or crisis situations. They don’t stop to think; they instinctively do what has been drilled into them through repeated practice. They don’t panic or fold.

Whenever I see them in action, I think, Wow, they are really living in their story; they are faithfully acting their part. When a crisis is announced, when things are far from routine, the first responders begin their routines, what they are trained to do through years of inner and outward disciplines.

They respond for the sake of others, practicing their disciplines in the worst situations our world has to offer. They are models for how the ambassadors of the kingdom of God should respond to the world.