New Beginnings

Starting a blog is a daunting task. I didn't think it would be until I placed my curser in this box. Will anyone read it? Will I offend anyone? Will anyone laugh? I guess I'll find out as comments are or aren't posted. I welcome comments.

Since this is titled A Day in the Life, I'll start with today, which takes me to yesterday. I"m reflecting back on the Leadership Workshop we just completed last night. We learned the Inductive Bible Study Method in Manuscript form. For those who aren't familiar with these terms, I'll clue you in.

You start with having your Bible passage in a form that has no breaks, no paragraphs, no titles, and no verse numbers. It just runs together. This eliminates all the clues and distractions of contemporary text and was the way the Bible was originally written. This is the Manuscript form.

Many people approach Bible reading deductively. They open the Bible and say, "What do you have for me, God?" We start looking for things that apply to us. Things that jump out or things that have to do with what we're going through.

In an Inductive study, you start by observing. You look for the Laws of Compositon, like repeated words, comparisons, contrasts, cause to effects, means to an ends, climaxes, introductions, explanations, generals to particulars, etc. You take colored pencils and start marking these things on your text. Then you make lists of some of your repeated words. I like to start with God. List all the things the text says about God. For example, in Genesis 1, God says, God lets, God creates, God blesses, etc. This observation phase takes the most time. When you do observation correctly, you have a much better chance of doing the next two parts correctly, interpretation and application.

Interpretation is where you ask questions of the text. Where did this take place? Why was it written? What type of literature was it, narrative, prophesy, song, etc. You figure out what this text meant to the people at the time and why it was significant to them.

Next you do application. Based on your interpretation, what does this mean to you? Is there a sin to forsake? A truth to rejoice in? A command to obey?

Last night we learned how to write Bible Study questions. This was so valuable. We can now, with a little practice, do a Bible study directly from the Bible, know how to order the questions, how to ask an opening question, lead people to the main verse of the passage, and help them see how to apply the passage to their life. It's so rich! The text just jumps out at you. I'm very excited to learn a new way of studying the Bible. I can't get enough of it. I'll be posting some of the manuscript forms on our church website very soon, so if you're interested, you can download them and start this amazing process. If you would like more info on how to do an Inductive Bible study, you can email me and I'd be happy to send it to you. If you'd like to sign up for a future class and learn how to do this, email me.