Bible Study Pioneers
The Leadership of Jane Hollingsworth and Barbara BoydFrom the beginning, InterVarsity has sought to train students for inductive Bible study. Two women in particular, Jane Hollingsworth and Barbara Boyd, were key leaders in igniting and nurturing InterVarsity's passion for inductive study.
Jane Hollingsworth (Haile)
and the Early Days of InterVarsity
Jane Hollingsworth grew up in Augusta, Georgia and attended Wheaton College. After graduating from Wheaton she entered The Biblical Seminary in New York where she was imbued with the principles of inductive Bible study. She became one of the first staff members of InterVarsity, joining InterVarsity staff in 1942.
Hollingsworth served with distinction as a staff person in the Northwest, the Midwest, and then in New York City. While on staff in New York she successfully fought, at great personal expense, to keep the InterVarsity chapters integrated and make sure Black students had equal access to InterVarsity meetings, camps, conferences, and training experiences.
Her greatest contribution to InterVarsity was to implant in the fellowship the principles and practice of inductive Bible study that she had learned at the Biblical seminary of New York. From the time she came on staff in 1942, Hollingsworth influenced all of the Bible study and Bible study groups in InterVarsity around the country to adopt the inductive approach. She stressed studying large sections of Scripture as an alternative to dipensational/fundamentalist versification that was still prevalent in American evangelicalism at the time.
Hollingsworth influenced InterVarsity towards inductive Bible study in a number of ways. She stressed inductive Bible study training in her own extensive ministry of teaching and training staff and students, not only in the immediate geographic areas in which she worked but also nationally as she taught at InterVarsity summer camps and conferences. She had a vibrant, open, winning personality and was an outstanding teacher. She developed effective ways of teaching the inductive Bible study methods to students in forms that the students could understand and apply to their own quiet times and Bible study preparation. She made good use of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which was published in 1946, and was easier to understand and study than the venerable King James Version.
Hollingsworth directly influenced the two people who developed and implemented InterVarsity-wide training in inductive Bible study, Barbara Boyd with Bible & Life and Paul Byer with manuscript study. She also wrote the first Bible study guides for InterVarsity Press and helped make IVP a strong Bible study guide publisher.
Jane Hollingsworth (Haile) was the person God used to make inductive Bible study a part of the DNA of InterVarsity, a value embedded in the very lifeblood of the fellowship from its beginning which continues strongly today .
Barbara Boyd
and the Development of Bible & Life
From the beginning, InterVarsity has sought to train students for inductive Bible study. Two women in particular, Jane Hollingsworth and Barbara Boyd, were key leaders in igniting and nurturing InterVarsity's passion for inductive study. This week, in honor of Women's History Month, we're remembering the life and service of Barbara Boyd.
In July, 1945, InterVarsity's first extended summer training camp for students was held at the newly purchased Campus-in-the-Woods north of Toronto, Canada. One of the students in attendance was Barbara Boyd, a student at Junietta College. Barbara still glows from the memory of that camp. Not only did Barbara hear famous speakers such as theologian Cornelius Van Til, but her most memorable impression was encountering Jane Hollingsworth, teaching the students inductive Bible study from Mark. Barbara says:
"I remember (Jane) taking us to Mark 1 and asking us what we know about lepers. We began to tell her facts about lepers, and she said, `Suppose you were that man...' and I began to see how you could get right into the passage and feel Jesus' touch on your shoulder."
After college Barbara taught elementary school for a few years, then went with Jane Hollingsworth on a trip to Europe. While traveling together, Jane convinced Barbara to apply to The Biblical Seminary of New York. Barbara was intent on going to Princeton Theological Seminary, but felt God's call to Biblical. Even though Wilbert Webster White had died, his Biblical Seminary in New York was at the height of its influence, with powerful teachers such as Robert Traina and its president, Dr. D.G. McKee. Barbara claims that McKee, with his clear and practical principles of inductive Bible study and winning teaching style, influenced her more than any other teacher. He taught her to see what was significant on a page of Scripture. Her greatest thrill was sitting through a course with McKee in which the class worked inductively and interactively though the entire Gospel of Mark.
After getting her Masters in Religious Education (MRE) degree from New York Biblical, Barbara joined the staff of InterVarsity in 1949. For the next fourteen years she served as a Campus Staff Member, ten years on the West Coast and then three and one half on the East Coast with a brief sabbatical. Jane Hollingsworth continued to influence her and sharpen her focus on inductive Bible study, especially learning to use inductive Bible study as the basis for evangelistic Bible studies with non-Christians as well as Bible studies for committed Christians. Barbara saw that the Bible has authority and power to lead students to Christ as well as help Christian students to grow.
In 1963 Barbara was asked to become a full time Staff Specialist, responsible to develop training in inductive Bible study for students, especially students small group Bible study leaders. Those were the days when InterVarsity had only 52 field staff in the whole national movement, and there was not much intensive training or deep investment in students by staff members, who often staffed ten or twenty schools each. Barbara noticed that many of the students who were Bible study leaders did not have good training in the basics of the Christian life. Before she could train Bible study leaders in the techniques of inductive Bible study, Barbara felt that she had to develop a training program in the basics of discipleship. She wanted students to be godly before they learned Bible study techniques. She wanted them to be committed to the Lordship of Christ, to have the discipline of a daily quiet time with God, to be committed to fellowship and community, and to know how to share their faith with their friends on campus.
So in 1964 Barbara developed a training weekend in the basics of discipleship that she called Bible & Life. The first Bible & Life conference was held in Pittsburgh with eleven students in attendance.
The conference was received warmly, and soon Barbara was traveling around the Northeast leading Bible & Life conferences and training InterVarsity staff how to set up and run the conference on their own. The conferences varied in size from 11 to 120 students. In order to multiply the effectiveness of the conferences, Barbara developed standards for a Bible & Life conference, such as a limit of 42 students allowing good staff/student interaction; a requirement that students register eleven days before the conference so that the students could complete a pre-course assignment and the directors would be able to pray for the students and assign them to small groups; a minimum of one staff member as small group leader for every six students; personal follow-up by the staff; etc. Barbara saw Bible & Life as a fun conference but also as serious training, demanding disciplined and prayerful preparation on the part of staff who ran the conference and a serious investment on the part of the students who attended.
The Bible & Life discipleship weekend was a weekend immersed in Scripture. There were at least three intensive interactive Bible studies during the weekend as well as a number of large group talks from the Bible plus individual times in Scripture. The philosophy of the training weekend was based on convictions about learning that Barbara had developed through her schooling and long experience on InterVarsity field staff on both coasts:
• True learning affects the inner and outer person.
• Learning is gradual. That is why Bible & Life is a weekend and not just a day of training.
• Learning is by stages and involves processing. Barbara tried to established spaces within the weekend for processing, and make Sunday morning a time for review rather than new input.
• Learning happens best when it is built around a few related concepts (for Bible & Life these were: Knowing Christ; being His disciples; sharing the Gospel with non-Christian friends; and discipling).
• Concepts in a training weekend need to hook and eye together, to fit together and build on each other.
• Learning occurs best within a supportive, encouraging atmosphere.
• Learning works best where there is accountability and discipline.
• That learning needs strong, planned encouragement and follow-up afterwards to really affect a life.
Bible & Life caught on as staff were eager to have a tool that would help them train their students in the basics of discipleship in a well-planned way using pass-on-able manuals and principles. Soon Bible & Life was used in every area of InterVarsity in the USA and in a number of provinces in Canada.
After spending three years solidifying the first level of the Bible & Life program, the basic discipleship level, Barbara turned back again to developing training in inductive Bible study. She developed a weekend which fit the same pattern, schedule times, and learning philosophy of the basic Bible & Life discipleship course described above. She called the basic discipleship training weekend Bible & Life Level I and the course in inductive Bible study Bible & Life Level II. A student had to participate in Level I before proceeding to Level II .
The goals of the Bible & Life Level II weekend were to give the students a first hand experience in the Word of God, to show them a method of inductive Bible study that they could use in their quiet times and their Bible study preparation that would give them new depth and joy in their Bible study, to cover a key portion of a book of the Bible in depth, and to inspire the students to use the Bible with their non-Christian friends so that God could use His Word to lead others to Himself.
Barbara went back and interviewed both Robert Traina and Dr. D.G. McKee and then, with their input plus her own experience, developed a method of inductive study that could be taught to a student in a three-hour session during the Bible & Life Level II weekend. This was the heart of the Level II training that began in 1967.
Barbara simplified the method and boiled it down to a series of steps that could be put on a card and given to every student who attends a Level II weekend. She called this Daily Discovery. The theory behind Daily Discovery is that it can be used by students to study the Bible inductively in the context of their daily quiet times.
Inductive Bible Study: Daily Discovery
First the student is encouraged to observe the facts in the chapter or part by observing the who-what-when-where- how, finding some connecting words or phrases, sensing the atmosphere of the passage and writing some overall impressions. Then the student is asked to make a simple chart of the passage and find connections among the paragraphs: words or phrases that repeat, are similar, contrast, or have causes that lead to effects. Then, for each connection, the student thinks through the meaning of the connection: what is the principle or significance behind the connection? Why did the author put it in? This finding of connections between paragraphs is the unique genius of the Daily Discovery method. It helps the student find the main threads in a passage, the underlying structure that holds the passage together. Then the student writes the meanings into a main summary statement and thinks of specific ways to apply that truth to life.
A national Teacher Training Course was established in 1972 to train InterVarsity staff in how to teach the Bible & Life Level II Daily Discovery method to students in the weekend. This training course is very demanding, but generations of staff have gone through it and appreciated the thorough, mentor-oriented, hands-on training.
Adapted from a paper by Bob Grahmann entitled, "The History of Inductive Bible Study Within InterVarsity Christian Fellowship: With Special Consideration to the Future of Inductive Bible Study within InterVarsity," 1998.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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