Your chance to question Todd Hunter.
30 May 2004
He’s one of my biggest heroes, and one of my most major influences for current life, church and ministry, thank you Todd Hunter.
You probably have heard that Todd Hunter has taken up the position of national director of Alpha USA. Todd previously was left the presidency of Vineyard USA in 2001 to join Allelon Ministries International as a director, helping it become a comprehensive resource for emerging church leaders.
His move to head of Alpha USA has been a surprise to many of you, and us :-) We have been talking to Todd about an interview and asking him some tough questions, and we suggested we open the interview to you all, which he is up for. So please post your questions below in the comments.
We will ask the questions to Todd in person in June, and record the interview, then rip it to an MP3 for you to download for free later in June. We’ll give you the link for the download when the interview is done.
We have already asked Todd some questions, so please read them in the continuation section before posting yours incase they have already been asked :-)
To read about Todd Hunter becoming the new USA Alpha president, go here
1. Pearl of great price
Back on the 9th May 2000, AVC USA published an excerpt from your resignation letter from your post as National Director, which included your comments that you were leaving because, “My dream is to be a church planting missionary to postmodern generations.†What has happened in the last 4 years to lead you to Alpha USA, in what seems to many of us a major U turn of that dream?
2. A Tale of Two Gospels
In an article you wrote titled “The Tale of Two Gospelsâ€, (http://www.levistable.com/allelon/resources/articles/aa/taleoftwogospels) , you proposed a thesis that what had gone wrong with the modern church was a reductionist, bullet point, propositional, pray a prayer to go to heaven when you die Gospel, that had a soteriology and eschatology that needed more than fine tuning but a major overhaul. Alpha to many of us as valuable a tool as it is for reaching modern Christians, seems to embody all the parts of your previous thesis? How are you going to be working with a gospel message tool that seems to embody all the things you said were not helpful for post modern people?
2. Changing Alpha?
Are you going to be working with alpha as it is, or are you being employed to bring some changes and developments? As we understand it one of Alpha strongest values is that the material is not changed, or enculturate, but taught as is.
3. Your Experience?
Do you come to alpha having led any or been part of any alpha groups yourself, have you enjoyed any evangelistic success with it in your church?
4. Para church – church based?
When the modern evangelical church was at it’s height many people dissatisfied with church moved into Para church groups, YWAM, YFC, OM etc. Do yourself making a similar move here to Alpha?
5. Your own ecclesiology – how are you doing church now?
How are you working out church yourself now? Are you part of a church yourself, and will Alpha be part of what takes place in your own church community?
Tagged: Key-Posts
7 comments
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Comment by Sivin Kit
12.46 am on 31 May 2004
This is going to be exciting! Way to go .. Jason and Emergent UK. Looking forward to hear Todd’s reply!
Comment by Steve Burnhope
9.55 am on 31 May 2004
In the ‘Off The Map’ interview, Todd makes a case (that I have heard argued by Alpha-ites before) that Alpha has a number of PM-friendly characteristics – communal setting, asking questions, discussion-oriented etc. However, is it not the case that Alpha is still a process designed to produce a result, in a predetermined timeframe? I am sure a ‘PM-sensitive’ course leader can do Alpha relatively well, but surely in the hands of the modernist, results-oriented evangelical leader typically using Alpha it is just another variation on the theme of decision-focused, grow-our-numbers, evangelistic methods? Similarly, in your appraisal of its success with 20-somethings at Holy Trinity Brompton are you perhaps turing a blind eye to the fact that HTB is classically a white, middle/upper-class Anglican church, situated in a prosperous London area, and as such attracts an unrepresentative cross-section of society? The young people they touch are far more likely to have some ‘christianised’ background that can be ‘revived’ through something like Alpha (in which role, I am sure, it is very effective).
Comment by Steve Burnhope
10.21 am on 31 May 2004
Me again. This will probably sound harsh, although it is not meant to. I just don’t think there’s another way of saying it (there probably is, but I can’t think what it is…)
In the ‘Off The Map’ interview, the reason for the job-change is stated (in typical jargon) as being “(the Allelon) organization made some changes, which freed Todd up to look for new opportunities”. That usually means ‘I lost my job’ and therefore ‘was in need of another one’. One would assume there aren’t too many corporate positions in a rather messy, unstructured, emerging-church movement that kind of eschews organisations and big programs. The alternative of going back to a local, grass roots church planting situation may have been an unattractive idea at this stage of your life. So, in reality, was it a case of having to do something remunerative without too much delay, to put food on the table? The Alpha job came along and had enough positives about it – nothing’s perfect, after all – to make it something you were happy to go with?
By the way, I don’t see anything bad about that if it is the case – there’s a lot of super-spiritual hot air talked about these things, especially where ‘ministers’ are concerned (non-ministers are allowed to be pragmatic and use ordinary language to descibe job crisis situations; ministers have to cloak theirs in spiritual language – related to ‘calling’ and such like – lest we the Christian-public discredit what they’re doing and why they’re doing it).
I believe we would benefit by being a bit more frank and realistic and a bit less less pie-in-the-sky about our spirituality sometimes.
Trackback by Pat Loughery @ Mt. Si Vineyard
4.38 pm on 31 May 2004
Interview with Todd Hunter
Jason Clark at emergent-uk has begun an interview with Todd Hunter and will post the results here in a few weeks. Todd previously led the Vineyard movement in the USA, then left to pursue his dream of being “a church…
Trackback by Pat Loughery @ Mt. Si Vineyard
4.42 pm on 31 May 2004
Interview with Todd Hunter
Jason Clark at emergent-uk has begun an interview with Todd Hunter and will post the results here in a few weeks. Todd previously led the Vineyard movement in the USA, then left to pursue his dream of being “a church…
Trackback by Pat Loughery @ Mt. Si Vineyard
4.45 pm on 31 May 2004
Interview with Todd Hunter
Jason Clark at emergent-uk has begun an interview with Todd Hunter and will post the results here in a few weeks. Todd previously led the Vineyard movement in the USA, then left to pursue his dream of being “a church…
Comment by uli
8.43 am on 1 Jun 2004
missional communities? kingdom community? what^s the link to alpha form there?
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