The reluctant Swedish reader

I am a reluctant convert to the Swedish Method for Bible study. I read the Briefing article all of those years ago and decided to try it out in a couple of Bible study groups. It didn’t work! It didn’t seem to make group members think deeply enough about the passage, and it seemed to promote surface-level easy answers. Consequently, I gave up on the Swedish Method and surmised that it might work well in the Christian culture of Argentina, but it didn’t work well in the Christian culture of Sydney.

What I hadn’t realised was that I was the problem. I wasn’t really using the Swedish Method. I was using Carl’s Ruined Swedish Method.

I came to realise my mistake when Peter Blowes spent a week at UNSW with us before returning for missionary service in Argentina. I was training a group of students in one-to-one Bible reading, and I thought they would really benefit from hearing Peter talk about the Swedish Method.

Peter refused to talk about the Swedish Method. Instead he asked us to get out our Bibles, opened up to a passage, and helped us study the Bible using the Swedish Method. It was brilliant!

As I watched Peter lead the group, I saw all the things I had done differently that had ruined the Swedish Method. After reading the passage together, Peter immediately gave people ten minutes of silence to think about their own answers to the questions (i.e. light bulbs, question marks, arrows). I had never done that.

Then when we started hearing people’s thoughts, there was another huge difference. While I had been a typical pastor ‘helpfully’ answering everyone’s questions about the text, Peter refused to answer anyone’s questions, and refused to let anyone else answer them from anywhere other than the passage in front of us. This is vital, and it changes the whole process. Peter acknowledged questions as good and helpful, and then asked if anyone could see clues to the answers in the passage. It became a very helpful text-based discovery session. Everyone had their noses in their Bibles, and we discovered more answers (and questions) in the passage than any of us had initially seen.

I am now a convert to the Swedish Method… and perhaps a cautionary tale to those of you who have written it off, maybe without realising that you were the problem.