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You can find previous episodes of “The Stone Chapel Podcast” at Lanier Theological Library.
“The Stone Chapel Podcast” is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.
This episode has been edited for clarity and space.
David Capes
Hi everybody, and welcome back to “The Stone Chapel Podcast.” My name is David Capes. I am the Academic Director at the Lanier Theological Library. Why am I telling you that? Well, because today’s podcast is going to be a little different, and that is because it’s a call for papers, and I’m going to be both the guest and the host!
Now, a call for papers has gone out from the Evangelical Foundation for Biblical Research. I’m going to tell you a bit more about it, but first, let me tell you about what the EFBR is, the Evangelical Foundation for Biblical Research. It’s a group who creates opportunities and events, and then finally, publications to promote biblical studies from a primarily evangelical perspective in ways that have the church in mind. We have created, over the past 15 years, a number of different events in Cambridge and Oxford, in Houston and, more recently, in Colorado Springs. So we want you to know about it.
Our next event is going to take place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in May of 2026 but more about that in just a second. Now, the best way to view this call for papers is to go to efbr.net. Here are the dates, May 28 to May 30, 2026, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, or Surfside Beach, which is located right there. Now there will be two symposia, one for New Testament, one for the Old Testament.
Let’s talk about the New Testament. First, the theme is “the role of the Spirit in spiritual formation.” We’re very excited about this colloquy. We are go inviting about 12 to 15 New Testament scholars. Some of these will be be senior scholars. Others, junior scholars. Some of those are going to be mid-career. So wherever you are, if you’re contemplating and writing about these matters, we would love to hear from you. Now, here are just some of the topics that we’re thinking about at this point. Obviously, Pentecost comes to mind. But was there an understanding of the role the Spirit in the life of Jesus prior to Pentecost, and also we might even say discipleship? And was the gifting of the Spirit—the Spirit’s coming–was it for the advancement of the church, or was it for individual believer’s spiritual enhancement? Those are some of the questions.
Here’s some other ones. If worship is so critical to spiritual formation, as a lot of people think, then, what does the New Testament teach about how the Spirit guides and animates worship? What can be said in the New Testament period about the inspiration of the Spirit in composing and collecting and canonizing the Hebrew Bible? And then also what we know today as the New Testament, all of the Christian scriptures. Also, when you think about it, when early Christians read and reread the books of the Old Testament—the prophets, the law, the writings—what role does the Spirit play in shaping how they read and how they interpreted those texts?
Now the Old Testament symposium is going to meet at the same time, and they will be discussing the Holy Spirit’s role in the Old Testament believer’s spiritual formation. Sometimes we talk about spiritual formation as if it’s just a post-New Testament phenomenon, but in fact, we certainly can describe the idea of the role of the Spirit in and forming and shaping the people of Israel, the people who became the chosen people. So, they’ll be looking at questions related to that.
Here are some of the questions that we’re considering. One is, in what ways can we talk about the third person of the Trinity in the Old Testament as a part of the spiritual life of a person who was a child of Israel? How does the idea of holiness and righteousness relate to the work of the Spirit, and one might even say one’s ability to “keep the law or do the law? How does that relate? Is there a difference between what we see in the Old Testament and the New Testament when it comes to the role of the Spirit? And then, of course, we have to ask the worship question, what role might the Spirit have had in worshiping in the Old Testament period in relationship to the temple, in relationship to the sanctuary and other aspects.
Now, in order to be considered, these are some things you’ve got to do. First of all, let me encourage you to go to the website efbr.net, and we want you to submit a title and an abstract for a paper that you would like to do. The names of the people and the way you can send them are on the website. We want you to submit those by December 15th of 2025 and the directors of the EFBR will select the papers [to be included] by the end of January 2026.
If your paper is accepted, then your transportation, lodging and your meals will be paid by the EFBR. And if your paper is invited to be a part of the publication, then we’ll pay a $500 stipend to anyone who can finish the paper and submit the paper by our deadline. We hope many of you will take us up on this opportunity. Now the EFBR has been in business, as it were, for about 15 years now. We’ve done symposia, and we have several books that are out, and several books that are in the offing right now. We look forward to greater events and more publications. This is a great opportunity for a young scholar, an older scholar, a mid-career scholar, to come and be a part of a great conversation.
This is not like SBL or another professional organization, where you have one speaker up front and you’ve got 10-15 rows of people who are silent waiting for their paper or just waiting to hear something of interest. This is an ongoing conversation with about 12 to 15 Old Testament scholars and 12 to 15 New Testament scholars, and that will give us an opportunity to have some very good connections together over meals and perhaps over plenary sessions that will be described. Since our topics are related, it makes sense that we come together from time to time and discuss what our findings are.
We’ve got some great people lined up already to come to both, and we want you to be a part of that. So go to efbr.net, look at upcoming events, and you will be able to see the details about that.
This is a different kind of podcast, I know, but I think the importance of it for many of our listeners will be significant. And we will let all the rest of you know, who can’t be there for whatever reason, what the results of those conferences have been. We’re going to have the conference, we’re going to create the book. We’re going to make that available to people, we hope in the next couple of years. It takes a while to edit all the papers and to get into a publishable format.
This is designed to be both a scholar’s and a church leaders’ type of event. We want the scholarship to be in service to the church. We want to create papers and thoughtful engagement so that the people who are present can go back and influence their students, their churches, their church leaders. In addition to this, I should say we invite, not only people who are scholars in a field, we recognize and invite church leaders who might have an interest in these topics as well. We want you to know about this. Go to the website if you have questions. You can send in your abstract, but please do so by December the 15th, 2025 so that you might be considered for the conference that we’re holding in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, May 28 and 29th 2026.
Well, it’s a little different kind of podcast here today for The Stone Chapel, but I think it’s worth it. One of the reasons we’re doing this on “The Stone Chapel Podcast” is because two of our conferences have been at Lanier properties. The first was in 2022 at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas, where we took up the topic, does it really matter who wrote the Bible? We had about 25 scholars there. And then in 2024 we had a conference at Yarnton Manor, in Oxford. The New Testament side, discussed the pastoral implications of the parousia, looking at the ethical, formative kinds of things that we find in the New Testament and beyond.
The Old Testament scholars, led,by Dan Fredericks, looked at a different question. They looked at the aphorisms in the Old Testament. They looked at the book of Proverbs and Wisdom books, where there are these statements about [practical matters]. Those scholars questioned to what degree those kinds of statements, those kinds of texts, figured into the spiritual lives of the people of Israel. In what way did that happen? It’s different than law, of course. It’s different than a worship text like you might find in the book of Psalms. How did these particular texts work and function. That was their question.
Well, there’s more to come. Just stay tuned to the EFBR by visiting their website, efbr.net. Until next time, I’m David Capes. Thanks for listening.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
