Christ the King Parish to host Jeff Cavins’ Bible seminar

By Sean Gallagher

Christ the King Parish, 1827 Kessler Blvd., E. Drive, in the Indianapolis North Deanery, will be the setting for a two-day seminar on the Bible on Sept. 21-22 led by well-known Catholic author and speaker Jeff Cavins.

The seminar will focus on Cavins’ Bible study program, “The Great Adventure: A Journey through the Bible,” that helps participants grasp how salvation history is told as a story in various books of the Old and New Testaments.

Although Cavins has led this seminar some 250 times, he said that it never grows stale for him. “I’ll teach it in Indianapolis and I’ll feel like I’m teaching it for the first time,” he said.

“God is infinite. You can’t exhaust the story,” he said. “You cannot come to the place where you say, ‘I’ve mastered that and I am ready to move on to something else.’ What are you going to move on to?”

Cavins lives in Maple Grove, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis. He was recently named the interim director of the Archbishop Harry J. Flynn Catechetical Institute, which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2008 at the St. John Vianney Seminary School of Theology in St. Paul, Minn.

He said the seminar can be fruitful both for those who have studied the Bible for years and for those who have “literally never picked up a Bible before.”

Cavins said he hopes those who attend the seminar will come away with three things.

First, he said, the seminar will give its participants confidence that they can indeed study the Bible.

“You can read the Bible and understand its basic story,” Cavins said. “With most people, it’s not the want to, it’s the how to. We show people that, and they get very, very excited.”

Second, Cavins said people who attend the seminar will not only learn about the Bible, but how they fit into the story that Scripture tells.

“What they’re going to get out of it is finding their place in history, that their life has meaning in light of his story,” he said. “That’s really the only place you’re going to find meaning in life, ultimately.”

Finally, Cavins said that the seminar will show how the story of salvation history presented in the Bible is the basis for the Church’s foundational beliefs.

“They’re going to see the basis for all things Catholic,” he said. “They will see in this story the scriptural basis for the key points of Catholicism.”

The seminar will run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Sept. 21 and from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Sept. 22.

Registration for the seminar is $35. Seminar materials and lunch on Sept. 22 are included.

(To learn more about the seminar or to register for it, call Christ the King Parish at 317-255-3666 or send an e-mail to cflaten@ctk-indy.org.) †