Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Bishop Todd Hunter joins the ACNA

George Conger has the story at Anglican Ink:


Bishop Todd Hunter
Bishop Todd Hunter of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) has been received by the Anglican Church in North America and will serve as an assistant bishop in the office of the primate, the Most Rev. Robert Duncan.

On 4 May 2012 the California-based bishop held a conference call with Archbishop Duncan, Bishop Chuck Murphy of the AMiA, and Bishop Terrell Glenn of PEAR-USA/ACNA to discuss his future plans.

Bishop Hunter stated that he had a “warm and collegial conversations” with the three bishops and “articulated for each of them my vision of C4SO becoming a servant to all the various Anglican entities within North America. C4SO will happily plant churches in partnership with PEARUSA, TheAm and the ACNA.”

C4SO – Churches for the Sake of Others – is a church planting initiative run by Bishop Hunter that will now move under the ecclesial oversight of the ACNA.

In a letter to members of his mission network in the AMiA Bishop Hunter explained that “over the past many months there has been much talk, publicly and privately, about who each of us will dance with in terms of Anglican connections. I have been slow in this process, like an awkward junior-high kid at his first dance, struggling to discern direction from God. I realized in the past day or so that I was asking the wrong question, that jurisdictional issues were not on the top of God’s mind for me.”

Bishop Hunter also stated that he had asked for and had received forgiveness from the Primate of Rwanda, Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje for “my part in actions, attitudes or communications that were hurtful to him or to my brother bishops in Rwanda.”

He also stated: “in spite of our recent disagreements, I have respect for the positive aspects of [Bishop Chuck Murphy’s] leadership over the years. I refuse to be dismissive of anyone, to allow “dissing” in my heart at all.”

Bishop Hunter said he was “grateful to Chuck for his acceptance of me into the Anglican world, his investment in C4SO and his willingness to have a cooperative organization-to-organization relationship between theAM and C4SO.”

The draft agreement between C4SO and the ACNA envisions Bishop Hunter serving as a “special bishop to Archbishop Duncan leading the work of C4SO.”

C4SO will not be a diocese within the ACNA but will serve as a church planting agency in cooperation with the ACNA, PEAR-USA and the Anglican Mission in America.

The bishop said that he will not exercise ecclesial jurisdiction over churches and clergy – but will provide pastoral and administrative oversight to church planting projects on behalf of the sponsoring dioceses/ecclesial entities.

Read it all here. The Rt. Rev'd Dr. Todd Hunter is an adjunct professor of evangelism and contemporary culture at George Fox University, Fuller Seminary, Western Seminary, Vanguard University and Wheaton College. He is past President of Alpha USA and former National Director for the Association of Vineyard Churches.  He was consecrated an Anglican bishop by the Anglican Church in Rwanda for AMiA in 1999.

1 comment:

Daniel Weir said...

I have hoped that the ACNA would be able to bring together all the folks who left TEC becuas of the conscientious objection to the actions of the GC. I hope there willbe more stories like this one in the future.