The Method for SBS

Alright, for those of you that are interested, here is an overview of the method that we use for studying the books.

We start by first read the book out loud, which is actually pretty cool, even though some books are a little intense (Luke took 2:15 to read, I wonder how long some of the OT books are gonna take, lol) it’s a unique experience getting to read the bible out loud. If you ever have an hour and a half to spare, I recommend reading Mark out loud with a group of friends, sounds weird, but people regularly spend a couple hours watching a movie with friends, why not read a book of the bible instead? We do the out loud read because that would be the way that most of the original readers would have the bible due to illiteracy and the lack of availability.

After the out loud read, we then read it and colour code observations, like people, places, times, the Trinity, repeated words, commands, contrasts, figures of speech, etc. We have a list of 28 different kinds of observations to make, and it really is interesting reading the bible and not trying to interpret at all, but just observe. 

We then start to break in down a little bit, so we read it again to find paragraph titles for all of the paragraphs in the book (even the ones that are only a verse or two). Then using our colour code and paragraph titles we split the book into major divisions (2 or 3 different major sections), then we break the divisions down into smaller sections and then we break the sections down into segments containing anywhere from 1 to 10 paragraphs each depending on the book and how everything fits together. It usually will work out to about 1 segment per chapter for the books, but the segments won’t necessarily each be a chapter long; for Mark we had segments that were 1 or 2 paragraphs and then had some that were over 2 chapters. This makes up what we call our horizontal chart.

Usually after PTs and making the horizontal we do a BRI which stands for basic required information, where we find out who wrote the book (Mark actually is anonymous, but it is credited to him and it’s amazing the disputes over the authorship of Paul’s letters), who they wrote it to (every book has an audience, even the gospels), when and where it was written and then we list historical background information for the original reader (and in the case of narrative books, the original hearer as well). We do all this so that we can start to get an understanding of what things would mean to the people who lived in the culture and place at that time so that we can have a better understanding of what the author was actually saying and how they would have received what was written/said.

After all of that (which you should be done by the end of Monday – we start the next book immediately after we hand in the previous book which are usually due at 12:30), we finally start to fill in the insides of our vertical charts. We have 1 vertical chart for each segment that we have, and it lists the paragraph titles and has boxes that we can put more text from each paragraph into to give a better understanding of what is happening in the paragraph. Doing the insides of our chart takes us through our 4th reading of the book.

After we’ve done our insides we finally get into interpreting what it actually means! We read through the book for the 5th time, and while we are reading, we pull out observations of things that we’ve observed during our colour code and interpret what the author’s intent was and what it would mean to the original reader or hearer. We also will list historical background information or do word studies to give more information to back up our interpretation. After the majority of our interpretations we list a timeless truth that we can learn from the observed text. For every timeless truth we have a related application that can be a specific application that we carry out ourselves (for example one of mine was to make sure I pray before every class and before I do any work to keep my focus on God and not just on gaining knowledge), mindset application (changing the way we think about something) or a “seven spheres of influence (church, family, business, arts, media government education) application, (where we list how the timeless truth could be applied in a certain sphere and how that would influence that sphere).

After all of this we finally get to the final application where we prayerfully process all the work we’ve just done and share what God has been speaking to us through the book. We then have a major specific final application to apply all that we’ve learned.

So if it sounds like it’s a lot of work, it’s because it is, but it’s definitely worth it. It is an absolutely amazing privilege to be able to take the time to go through the bible this way, and I can’t wait to see all that God teaches me and changes in me through this time. Thank you for all of your prayers and support, because without you all, I wouldn’t be able to do this.