Connect

Newsletter

March 5, 2025

📰 In this month's issue:

• Take our audience survey → impact future BIC communications!
• World Missions announces 2025 short-term trips.
• Upcoming seminar answers, “What are Biblical Hermeneutics?”

Quick Links

🍽️Lent starts today; our guides help you enter this season with intentionality.

🌎Meet Krista Barnes, new BIC U.S. missionary to Ecuador!

🙏Pray: Regional meetings start this weekend and continue through April. Pray for encouragement and unity in our regions.

Scripture Meditation

What are you preparing me for?

READ

Esther 4:15-16 - “Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: ‘Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.’”

REFLECT

During Lent, Christians around the world practice self-denial, repent of their sins, and commit themselves to prayer. These practices were key as Esther prepared to step out of safety and advocate for her people.

This Lent, ask God, “What are you preparing me for?”

Audience Survey

How can we help you?

This question is at the core of our 2025 audience survey. As we plan for the coming year, we want to ensure the topics we cover in articles, videos, and webinars are helpful to you, our audience, as you live out Christ's call in a complicated world.

Your response to this 4-question survey will directly impact the kinds of content we produce in the future.

As a thank you…

We are giving $25 Amazon gift cards to four people who complete the survey!

We invite each of you, our Connect subscribers, to voice your opinions and share your insights. We can’t wait to hear what you have to say!

The survey is only 4 questions, doesn't require your email, and can be completed in less than five minutes. Your feedback is very valuable to us; thank you in advance!

Join a 2025 Short-Term Trip!

This year, World Missions will lead one-week trips to three locations, each focused on a different area of ministry:

🌎Bogotá, Colombia, June 7-14

Children’s ministry at El Camino Academy

Applications due March 30

🌎Dearborn, Michigan, July 27-August 1, August 3-8, and August 10-15

English and math camp for refugee children

Applications due May 1

🌍Samos Island, Greece, Fall 2025, TBD

Refugee care

Applications due June 1

These trips offer a unique opportunity to connect with people across cultures, encounter God at work around the world, and grow deeper in personal faith.

Participants from last year’s teams share key takeaways from their experiences in our latest article. Read their stories and get all the details for these upcoming trips.

The first due date is fast-approaching, so don’t hesitate to apply!

Impact Seminar on Biblical Hermeneutics

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:

1. We hold to a peace position that takes preparation for or participation in war to be inconsistent with the teachings of Christ.
2. 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.

Are we just quirky?

Perhaps! But there’s a profound reason for our quirkiness: we have come to these views by reading scripture together, and it is to Scripture we must return as we wrestle with these and other questions today.

Our 2025 Impact Seminar will offer an exploration of biblical hermeneutics from a Brethren in Christ perspective aimed at illuminating some of our distinctive commitments.

Starting in October, the seminars will take place in each of our seven conferences. Registration is now open.

Biblical Hermeneutics: approaching the Bible in a way that 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.

Don't forget!

Complete our audience survey for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card!

Blessings,

The BIC U.S. Communications Team

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