I arrived to a nicely organized
and well-run Bible quiz program in the fall of 1980. I wish I could remember
the churches that were involved, but I mostly remember some of the kids and not
where they were from. It wasn’t a very large program and with the size of the district,
I knew it could be much bigger. I set out to make sure every church knew about
the program. Quizzing was part of my plan to help bring district youth
together. If they saw each other at quiz meets they would want to see each
other at camps, retreats, LIFE and other event planned for you. I tried to
expose the district to quizzing through the newsletter posting scores and team
placement. Since LIFE always followed family camp there was an exhibition most
years and family camp was a place to bring the sometimes wide spread team
together for their last practice.
Andy asked what lead to the growth
of quizzing and I would say the promotion helped, but nothing was more affective
than enthusiastic quizzers.
My memories of the program are not
linier and as has been the case at most places over the years it begins to
appear to me that everyone I knew was involved in quizzing at the same time. So
my thoughts will be rather random.
One of the strangest incidents was
a church involved for only one year with a pastor better suited to a different
denomination. He was not happy at how our girls dressed. He wanted them in skirts
or dresses below the knee. The slacks and shorts were certainly apropos from
his point of view. We went round and round about that and he ultimately pulled his
team out of the program over the issue. I most bothered by the damage I saw
being done to those kids.
Because of the size of our
district, ever meet was an overnighter and each church had the responsibility to
house and feed the visiting teams. There is no questions that part if not all
of the fun had to do with that side of the program.
When I arrived the program would
be run with one quizmaster and I left needing three in three locations all
running at the same time. We started with a group of kids and ended with a mob.
I understand that now there is a herd.
I got involved in quizzing at the
beginning for one reason: to see teen’s lives impacted by the Word of God. I
believed and still do that having memorized scripture it will be in your head
the rest of your life. Not to that same extent, but sufficient to influence
your life and life’s decisions. I have seen it hundreds or times.
I have always believed that the
point of ministry is to equip others to use their gifts to serve the Lord. To
that end I have always tried to move myself to the side remaining only in an administrative
role. To that end, I like to work myself out of a job, so to speak. To that
end, no program I ever ran was more successful t doing that that in Bible
quizzing. I didn’t know when I began to step aside, but Andy tells me it was
1987. First we need more quizmasters. Second other responsibilities kept me
from taking the team to Internationals and several people clearly wanted to do
that job. I didn’t want to take that joy away from them, or more honestly, I
didn’t have the time. Another side of it was that I began in quizzing in high
school and had been at most every year thirty years and was getting a little
tired. Not enough to quit, but enough to want to step back. The wisdom of the
decision was more apparent when I knew I would need to leave the district, but
had no idea that was going to happen when I began including more and more
people.
Besides adding quizmasters and
encouraging several others to coach at Internationals, there was score keeping.
I hope I have this right, but I believe it was Mr. Beatty who approached me
about designing an automatic score-keeping program. I was very enthusiastic. It
took some time to get it right, but he did an absolutely fabulous job. It made
it so much easier to do that job and to determine the top quizzers and quickly
determine averages. That improved the program immensely.
NEXT: some of the fun, the
newsletters, and observations of others
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