When I was in college, I was active in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Through my involvement with IVCF, I learned how to do an inductive Bible study. It is a great tool to allow a passage of Scripture to speak for itself.

Fast forward to today. In our small group at church, we are getting ready to start an inductive Bible study. My co-leader and I thougth that it would be good to teach our group this tool as a way to study the Bible. We introduced the topic last night at our meeting. It turns out that none of the other participants had ever been taught how to do an inductive Bible study. I wonder whether anyone has ever taught any of them how to study the Bible other than to just read a passage?

Inductive Bible studies ask three types of questions. First, the cover the observation questions. What is happening, who is speaking, what are they saying, where is this happening. The next set of questions are intepretation. Why are the doing this, what does it mean, etc. Finally, you get to the application questions. What does this mean for me, how does this affect my beliefs, my actions, my attitudes, etc. Observation, Interpretation, Application. It is pretty straight-forward. It focuses on what the original meaning of a text is, not what the what does the passage mean to me. It is a very easy way to let the passage speak without having to rely on expensive tools, or other teachers.

I found a couple of handouts to help illustrate the process. I printed out this handout from Campus Crusade for Christ and gave it to the group, because it was pretty straightforward. I also found this set of resources from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. The IVCF handout titled Daily Passion for the Word (pdf) has some slightly different questions, and spreads the study of a passage over two days. I debated between the two options for a couple days before settling on the CCC handout.

Inductive Bible Study. If you haven’t heard of it before, why don’t you consider giving it a try?