The Completion of Our Telos Journey

by JR Rozko

For us at The Telos Collective, 2022 marks the completion of the intended five-year cycle of our mission of forming leaders at the intersection of gospel and culture.

We began in 2017 with a focus on the Gospel of the Kingdom as a basis for discipleship, mission, and the renewal of the church. In 2018 our emphasis was on Sacred Cultural Engagement as an inter-disciplinary conversation. Then, in 2019, we explored what might be meant by an Anglican Missional Ecclesiology and followed it up in 2020 with conversations related to an Anglican Imagination for Missional Leadership. Finally, in 2021, though we had to forego an Intersection Conference, we utilized the Intersection Journal, Podcast, and other mediums to engage the themes of Life in the Spirit and Spiritual Transformation.

We are so grateful for all of you who walked with us over the past five years!

As our team has discussed, prayed, and discerned the Spirit’s leading for us, we sense God bringing this journey to a close on March 1, 2022, as space is opened up for this work to grow in new directions.

New Ventures

As many of you are aware, Bishop Todd has recently launched The Center for Formation, Justice, and Peace. This is an effort to create an interdenominational community that develops the Christlike character necessary to activate justice, leading to a life of deep peace for all people. Much of the Telos Collective ethos and work will live on there. I strongly encourage you to visit and track with all the exciting work being developed through this Center!

One of the most exciting initiatives of Telos has been the Telos Lab for Congregational Discovery. The ground-level work of the Lab that Seth Richardson has been directing has already been a huge asset to multiple congregations and hundreds of leaders. I’m thrilled about the ways this work will live on and expand as it becomes an expression of our long-time partner, Gravity Leadership. To keep up with the work of The Lab, and all the other fantastic ways that Gravity is connecting and resourcing leaders just like you, make sure to get in on their email list.

Over the next several months, I, along with my wife Amy, will be working with Bishop Todd and the Diocese of C4SO to develop a diocesan expression of a missional monastic order in partnership with The Order of the Common Life. This venture is an exciting experiment to explore how religious orders, and sodalic expressions of the Church more broadly, might be relevant to the life and witness of the Church in the times we find ourselves in. It is my hope that, over time, this order might become a potent force for thick expressions of formation in community, that it might catalyze new, church-based expressions of redemptive entrepreneurship, and that it may provide fertile ground for the treasures of the Great Traditions of the Church to enrich and bless the whole body of Christ.

There are still other facets of The Telos Collective, such as the Intersection Journal and Podcast, that we continue to have conversations about living on in new contexts.

Thank You!

In the beginning of February, I invite you to visit our site to download any of our resources that might bless you or your ministry for FREE. The Telos website will be archived on March 1. We will also publish our final Intersection Podcast in the weeks to come. You won’t want to miss this last episode as we reflect on our journey together and what it’s meant to all of us.

We are thrilled when we look back on the things we learned and the relationships we built. Though we will miss the expressions of ministry Telos cultivated over the last five years, we also firmly believe even more kingdom fruit will be born as we continue to be faithful to God’s call.

We are so thankful for you—the Telos Collective wouldn’t have been possible without your support and investment! Thank you so much for contributing to the life of the Telos Collective community, whether you spoke, wrote, read, or attended a conference! We enjoyed every moment we spent with you. If you have any thoughts or questions during this time of transition, please email me. I’d love to express my appreciation personally!

Or, reach out to any of our team:

Andrea Bailey Willits, Communications Director
Ryan Boettcher, Associate Director
Seth Richardson, Director of the Telos Lab for Congregational Discovery
Erik Willits, Director & Host of the Intersection Podcast

JR Rozko has spent most of his working life serving simultaneously in local churches as a pastor and in theological education as a program developer and instructor. His main interests and passions revolve around helping the Western Church develop missional perspectives and instincts, especially through a greater awareness and engagement with Church leaders in the Majority World. Helping to create new networks, partnerships, conversations, and resources that embody and advance the good news of God’s mission of reconciliation is at the center of JR’s personal sense of call. JR has a Doctorate in Missiology from Fuller Theological Seminary. An ordained priest in the Diocese of C4SO, JR and his wife Amy pastor First Church of the Resurrection in Canton, OH. He is the cofounder of Missio Alliance and Executive Director of the Telos Collective.