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Last day for the Blogger GiveAway: May 31st.

If you live in Orange County, you can join Todd Hunter most Sundays at Holy Trinity, a new church in Orange County, California.

Click here to visit the Holy Trinity Church Website

Sunday services are held at 9:00 a.m. at ROCKHARBOR’s “The Lab” building in Costa Mesa.

Dr. Todd Hunter is the Pastor (Rector) of Holy Trinity Church.

Paul Martin serves as Assistant to Todd Hunter.

The Mission of Holy Trinity Church

We are apprentices of Jesus…
Learning how to do what he did…
Live as he lived…
For the sake of others…which includes all manner of mission, service and evangelism.

Also available on Kindle!

Blessed Advent to you and all whom you love!

In these moments, I wish that those who think my becoming an Anglican pastor to be an odd turn of events could see me. I wish they could see the awkward half-smile on my face as I type words I could not have foreseen writing even 18 months ago. I think my journey is an odd thing, too! In fact, I have set aside most of this month to write a new book for InterVarsity Press: The Accidental Bishop—My Journey From the Jesus Movement to the Anglican Church.

While my story is unique, here is a more powerful corresponding truth: me and my new Christ-following friends at Holy Trinity Church in Costa Mesa, CA are having a blast with Advent and Christmas. Who knew that one could celebrate Christmas for seven weeks? It’s been exciting to decorate the room Rock Harbor gives us. There are Advent colors everywhere, coordinated lighting, an Advent wreath, antiphonal seating (look it up! ) and Christmas Music. All this surrounds us as we sit with humility, and with loyal trust in Jesus, to respectfully listen to the Advent and lectionary readings, and then as we comment (better known as a sermon) on them with the goal of helping us to embody the story the readings tell—and to do so for the sake of others.

Hebrews 10 in The Message says:

…anyone who is right with me thrives on loyal trust…

This first Advent as Anglicans is teaching us at Holy Trinity to do just that with our lives. As we consider the first and second comings of Jesus and the crucial part they play in the overarching story of God, we are receiving the knowledge that God is indeed sovereign over history and that we can joyfully commit our actual lives to him with loyal trust…for the sake of others.

The latest illustrative episodes occurred September 8 – 10 at Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center in Pasadena, CA. After a couple weeks of reflection on the first Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) Retreat, a couple of things stand out:

I see faces…the open-hearted and bright countenances of high quality people; friends who are sincerely engaged in the big questions surrounding the Gospel, our culture and the church. I’ll always remember the meals and the hallway conversations expressing a mixture of “the Lord is here”…”what does all this mean”…”something is happening here”…”what does this mean to me?”

Bishop Todd Hunter, Bishop Chuck Murphy, and Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini

Our leaders:

• Archbishop Kolini: I love and respect his simple focus on the Gospel of the Kingdom. He leads with power and effectiveness but without pretense. He is a wonderful model for all of us who have lost some confidence in the ability of Christian leaders to be simultaneously effective and ethical—experienced as good by those whom they lead.

• Bishop Chuck Murphy: Chuck may be the most underrated Christian leader in America. Someday, when some PhD student writes the history of First Promise and the founding of The Anglican Mission, the huge role Chuck has played and continues to play in early 21st century Christianity will come to light. For now, Chuck is rightfully content to merely go about his business—which is just another reason to respect him!

Bishop Silas Ng, Pastor Rick Warren, Bishop Todd Hunter, Bishop Doc Loomis

Of course no reflection on the retreat would be complete without a comment on the consecration of three new bishops that broke out in the middle of our retreat. Long before I was nominated to be a bishop I had asked Archbishop Kolini and Bishop Murphy to be with us at our retreat to tell us the story and describe the vision of The Anglican Mission and our part of it as C4SO.

Once I was chosen a bishop it made sense to have the consecration while they were in town. On top of that The Anglican Mission decided to do all three consecrations together. Thus we all got the privilege of meeting Silas Ng and Doc Loomis.

That night still seems surreal to me—almost like one’s wedding day. You remember it—but it seems like you floated through it more than experienced it. I know I took some serious vows that resonated with the great message by our co-worker in the faith, Rick Warren. By God’s grace I look forward to fulfilling my calling and my vows.

Thanks to all of you who were there—you made it happen—it is you who will never be far from my mind.

Kingdom Focus, Missional Encounters

Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) is led by Bishop Todd Hunter. As an initiative of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA), C4SO is launching a church planting movement designed to develop leaders committed to planting Kingdom-based, missional churches located primarily, but not exclusively, on the West Coast of the United States.

Jim Henderson and OTM specialize in something they call edutainment. Sure, Phyllis and Michael will teach as they usually do. But I know from many years of working with Jim and speaking at his events, that neither the speakers nor the hearers can be too sure what Jim will do next.

This means OTM events are always big fun, fast moving and highly participatory. As busy as I am, and as much I hate being away from home, I’ll be at Mirrors and Maps because I know it will be one of the most provocative events I’ll attend in 2009.

See you there!

http://www.toddhunter.org/?p=1093 This summer has been most unusual. Summers are normally slow for me—a nice break from busy seasons of travel in spring and fall. Not this year. Summer this year put me on the road about eighty out of one hundred days! What saved it for me was the second extraordinary occurrence: Debbie, my wife, and Carol, my 17 year-old daughter were with me most of it.

Rwanda - Summer 2009

The highlight, the once-in-a-lifetime-memory, was our 10-day trip to Rwanda. Thanks to the generosity of key donors we were able to stay in a nice western hotel so we were able to sleep well, heal the jet lag, and relax between meetings and other events.

We began our days with an evangelistic “convention” in Kigali. The theme, aimed at the whole nation was from Ezekiel: I Will Give You a New Heart and a New Spirit. Over the three-day event all the speakers, including me, spoke on some aspect of that passage. The event culminated in a meeting in the stadium in Kigali. You would have been proud to hear Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda preach the Gospel.

The few days following the convention were taken up with meetings with Archbishops Kolini (Rwanda), Archbishop Orombi (Uganda), Bishop John Rucyahana (Ruhengheri) and several other Bishop and clergy colleagues in Rwanda. They are all wonderful men.

The last days were taken up with what I call our “Rwanda education”.

Blessed Sam, who must be sick of taking Westerners on tours, was a true friend and expert guide. There is not much to say in this space about the genocide in Rwanda. But maybe two simple thoughts can capture my reaction:

1. Even seeing the aftermath; even having studied it; I could not take it all in. I cannot imagine the scope, scale and brutality of the murder, rape, torture and village-destruction. Standing at one memorial where thousands of Tutsis were slaughtered I remembered the text from Ephesians wherein Paul prayed that the Christians in Ephesus would know the height, depth, breadth and length of God’s love for them. As I remembered the passage the thought came to mind that “I have now seen the height, depth, length and breadth of evil…the context in which God incarnates himself, loves and redeems.

2. Don’t give up on the church. We may be living through a down time right now in the Western world, but we are not the whole world and all of time. One of my big take-aways from the trip was that I wish all of you could see the Kingdom work these leaders of the church are doing. It is most everything the emergent/missional church movements have been hoping for over the past decade. It was great to feel genuinely proud of the church!

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