Impact Seminars
Developed as a resource for persons in active ministry, impact seminars facilitate meaningful dialogue on important theological and practical topics.
2025 Seminar — Reading with Jesus: A Brethren in Christ Approach to Biblical Hermeneutics
Description
The Brethren in Christ hold several positions which make us stick out from the wider society and even from many of our fellow Christians. For instance, we hold to a peace position that takes preparation for or participation in war to be inconsistent with the teachings of Christ, and we have an understanding of God’s intentions for human sexual difference that leads us both to ordain women and to maintain a traditional understanding of marriage. Not many groups have quite this mix of commitments!
Are we just quirky? Perhaps we are! But there’s a profound reason for our quirkiness… we are convinced that these positions are scriptural. It is in reading Scripture together that we have come to these views and it is to Scripture we must return as we wrestle with these and other questions today.
To that end this seminar will offer an exploration of biblical hermeneutics from a Brethren in Christ perspective aimed at illuminating some of our distinctive commitments. At its core, the presented approach understands Jesus to be both the teacher who opens the Bible for us and the one whose face can be recognized on every page once we have acquired eyes to see.
Objectives
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Study Jesus’ way of reading Scripture as presented in the Gospels and as extended by Paul.
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Illuminate Jesus’ way of reading by looking at two capacities he cultivates within us: spiritual perception and analogy.
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Demonstrate how key Brethren in Christ distinctives emerge from this sort of Bible reading.
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Draw on various historical examples (ancient and modern, good and bad) to better understand the nature and stakes of biblical hermeneutics.
Cost
This is a free event, but registration is required at least one week before a seminar begins.
2025 Dates and Locations
| October 18 | Upland BIC (Upland, Calif.) | 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. PST | Register |
| October 25 | Fairview BIC (Englewood, Ohio with Zoom) | 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. EST | Register |
| October 29 | TMH Carlisle (Carlisle, Pa.) | 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. EST | Register |
| October 30 | Elizabethtown BIC (Elizabethtown, Pa.) | 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. EST | Register |
| November 8 | Revolution BIC (Salina, Kans. with Zoom) | 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. CST | Register |
| November 22 | Cristo Vive BIC (Hialeah, Fla.) | 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. EST | Register |
Main Presenter
Zach Spidel is a pastor and Ph.D. student in theology. His dissertation, now underway, is a redescription and defense of the biblical hermeneutics of Origen of Alexandria (c. 185-254 AD). He lives with his wife and 2 kids in the house from which, in 2012, he and a ragtag band of Jesus’ disciples launched the church that would become the East Dayton Fellowship – where he continues to be privileged to serve.