The CGGC Bible Quizzing Finals took place during the last week of July. Teams from all across multiple CGGC regions met at Camp Sonrise Mountain and competed in both Junior High and High School competition. We’ve seen the massive impact that Bible Quizzing has and continues to have on kids, raising them up to positions of leadership in the CGGC, and we wanted to hear from CGGC Bible Quizzing Director and Pastor Rachel Neely-Pletcher about how this season went, and what her vision is for Bible Quizzing in the future.
How has this past year of Bible Quizzing been special or significant? What were some of your favorite moments?
The main goal is always that the kids learn the Word of God. But one of the other benefits of it is that the kids interact with each other and get to know people across the regions. The Pennsylvania kids get to know the kids from Ohio and Indiana.
This year we have really seen all of those walls break down and lots of kids are interacting, and everybody kind of knows everybody. That's a really neat benefit of it, the friendships that are made.
The quizzing was great too. There were a lot more kids [this year] that learned all the memory verses and we had different coaches stepping up to lead different pieces of the tournament. We had the actual quizzing tournament, and then we also had a memory tournament going on led by Nancy Morton (coach and former quizzer from Shippensburg Church of God), and we had a fun quizzing room that Nancy [Hiser], (Youth Pastor at College First and former quizzer from CrossPoint) led. That was so the kids could quiz more, as some of them are really into it and like to do that.
What books did the Quizzers study this year?
This year was Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. 5 of Paul's letters. We alternate each year. It's typically a gospel or the book of Acts. And then the opposite year it's 1 of Paul's letters, or a group of Paul's letters, or we do Hebrews, and 1st and 2nd Peter also. It rotates through those books.
It covers the bulk of the New Testament, and certainly the story of Jesus is super important. And quizzing on multiple gospels gives us that opportunity to teach about Jesus, and how the different disciples, or different writers of the gospels tell the story.
What are some key takeaways for you this season? What did the kids learn?
The kids were wrestling this year with Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. We got a lot of Paul teaching about your words and your new self, and being a person who doesn't let any unwholesome talk come out of their mouth.
At the mid-season retreat, one of the kids came up to me, and he said, “So if that's the person we're supposed to be, using good words and saying things that are helpful, then why does Paul say, ‘I wish they'd go the whole way and emasculate themselves’?” For reference, in Galatians 5:12 Paul says, “As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves”, when speaking about certain trouble makers misleading the Galatian church to circumcise themselves.
But what was great about that was that [the student] put it together. They were dealing with the whole Scripture and saying, “Okay, so Paul's allowed to be sarcastic, what do we do with that? Why is he that way?”
I think it's a picture of humanness. Right? That we are not all perfect even in our new self. Paul's expressing his frustration. And it maybe wasn't one of Paul's stellar moments, but it was also a time when he was being real, he was very genuine.
How does memorizing scripture for competition translate to discipleship?
Part of why I'm so passionate about this is because I know what it did in my own life. Quizzing took me from a very shy, backward child to being able to speak in front of a crowd. And to feel like I had something that I could say.
The amount of Scripture that I can still pull out of my heart and mind… The Bible talks about when you hide the Word of God in your heart, that God will give it to you, and give you the words you need in the moment. And a lot of times people who have quizzed will say, “Oh, yeah, that verse just popped into my head.” They've had it ingrained in their hearts and minds.
Often as a pastor I'll find myself going, “You know. Where's that verse? Oh, yeah, I know. I quizzed on it!” And I'll tell you. I passed my ordination, I'm sure, because of Bible Quizzing. No doubt. And even the college classes I took were so much easier because I knew it going in.
We continue to see it be so foundational in developing leaders. In hiding the Word of God in people's hearts and in connecting people with other church leaders. In quizzing, we read the entire scripture. Whatever we're quizzing on that year, we read all of it, and not just the easy parts of it, you know, we don't read just John 3:16, we read [all of] John. And so, you have to argue with the hard passages and the challenging things.
It develops an understanding in kids that not a lot of teenagers get. We see kids really develop as leaders and be willing to step out. It also develops their ability to speak in public and to pray in public, to interact with other people, and meet new people.
How is Bible Quizzing different than a youth group?
So, one of the things that I think is great about quizzing is you can start with 2 kids. With a youth group, you tend to base it on big games and fun things that get more fun with more kids. But quizzing is great because you can start with 2. The teams run between 2 and 5 students and so, by definition, you should have an adult for 2 to 5 students. It automatically builds in a ‘small group’ feature, which allows you to make a lot of connections and just be very relational.
The other real strength in quizzing, like I said before, is that we cover the entire book. It's not cherry picking. You have to talk about the whole thing, which is challenging, but it’s also giving you the whole picture.
With young children's ministry, we often tell the hero stories. You know, Abraham's an amazing person. David was an amazing guy. Joseph was an amazing guy, but we never talk about the other part of the story. Which is appropriate for young children, but as students get older and they start to realize that life is challenging, and it does have another side… Reading the whole story and seeing the whole picture is helpful.
What is your vision for the future of Bible Quizzing as we move into this next
It's one of those ministries that has stayed very much the same at its core, because it's always about learning the Word of God.
But we're also open to doing that in whatever way works. So, this year, we were able to do the standard competition, but we had coaches who were willing to come up with other ways to challenge the students to keep learning. Nancy Morton did the Memory Verse Challenge, where kids were able to quote the verses that they learned. It was neat to see her take the initiative on that and it gave kids who weren't into the jumping part, or the really serious competition part of it a chance to also learn and to be able to demonstrate what they've learned.
Nancy Heiser was doing the fun quizzing part of it, and that was not something I would have ever come up with because I'm like, “these kids are quizzing too much”. But she was like, “Yeah, no. Some really want to do it. So, she created this other outlet for that. Kids were able to demonstrate what they've learned but in a less stressful kind of way and with a different kind of motivation behind it.
I think seeing more coaches, more people from different churches, creating ideas and outlets for students to learn and having different kinds of motivations to want to keep learning. I love the way it works [now], but if it can evolve into whatever helps people learn the word and apply it, not just memorize it, but apply it.
Thanks Pastor Rachel!
The next season of Bible Quizzing start soon, at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school semester. But it doesn't take much to get started practicing. As Rachel said, you only need 2 kids to start a team!
New? Check out our Starter Guide
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CGGC eNews—Vol. 18, No. 34
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