Last Saturday, on January 27th, College First Church of God hosted a Bible Quizzing Meet in Findlay, Ohio.
First Church from Columbia City, Sugar Grove Church of God, Trier Ridge Community Church, Mount Tabor, and of course College First Church provided 16 different teams for the competition. Most churches fielded multiple teams consisting of 2-5 kids, and that fostered plenty of competition not only between churches but also within churches.
To get more information on the latest Bible Quiz meet we reached out Pastor Nancy Hiser of the host church to see how it went, and how Bible Quizzing can be a benefit to churches that may or may not yet have an interest in the program.
For this meet, students were studying the books of Galatians and the first three chapters of Ephesians, which makes for pretty difficult content. “This is harder to quiz on because it’s not a story”, Pastor Nancy said. “We were happy with the number of correct answers, and a lot of points were scored. So we thought all the kids did great”. Considering that quizzers can be anywhere from early middle school through high school, it's impressive to see kids of all ages memorizing such tough and contextual content; content that even adults find difficult to work through and understand, much less memorize.
But it’s not all about competition, Pastor Nancy says. The primary purpose of Bible Quizzing is to “encourage kids to spend time in the word of God, to memorize and interact. When you quiz, you have to dissect every verse. They’re doing it for competition, but they are still doing it.” The amount of time that quizzers spend in the word is impressive and probably aspirational for most of us. “If they are in quizzing in all their years, and they never practice at home, they spend more than 1000 hours in the word.” Pastor Nancy said, “and that’s if they never study on their own.”
Then there is the aspect of fellowship that is naturally fostered alongside the competition. These are kids after all, and while they might compete, they also form fast friendships. They get to see each other multiple times a year, and some hold onto those relationships even after they stop quizzing, or when they meet up later at church camp.
Pastor Nancy and the other leaders were most excited to see more church jump on board this year. Trier Ridge Community Church just join this year, and Mt. Tabor had their first team last year.
Is your church called to start a team? Is God calling you to lead it? Don’t know how?
Pastor Nancy would encourage you to reach out to her, Rachel Neely-Pletcher, or Lory Norden. Send us an email at and we'll get you in contact with a bible quizzing expert in your churches region. All of these quizzing experts would be happy to help you and your church get started. “I would say bible quizzing is the ideal thing to start if you only have a few kids. A bible quizzing team is 2-5 students, and they will be a full team. It’s a great way to spend time together”, Nancy said.
“And they get to be part of a bigger body of students. They get to see their camp friends because a lot of them are camp friends too. In a bigger church context, bible quizzing is where we are developing many of our leaders, but even in a small church it works, because there isn’t this pressure to be bigger.”
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