M. Eugene Boring, I & II Thessalonians: A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), 1.
As a reader, I bring my agenda to the [biblical] text, and I cannot do otherwise. While hidden agendas are rightly frowned upon, the word itself has no sinister overtones. The agenda is simply the list of business items that is to be taken care of, that with which we are concerned, what we are about. I need to be aware of the contents and priorities of my agenda, how it influences what I can hear from the text, and acknowledge that I may need to amend it en route, in dialogue with the voice that speaks to me from the text. Hermeneutics can never be neatly settled in advance and then “applied,” cookie-cutter like, to the text; interpretation is always rebuilding the ship at sea.
The Amateur Exegete 