To the Bible Quizzing Family,

This was one amazing weekend, the culmination of a lot of work for a very long time.  I’m thankful for all of you who were able to be at the banquet on Friday evening, and who came for the Saturday morning activities before the normal quiz day began.  And if you enjoyed the weekend even only half as much as I did, you still probably had a really good time. 

25th Anniversary Celebration:  It was a real treat to have Dave & Jeannette Cooke with us for the weekend.  They started this program 25 years ago, and when we started talking with them a long time ago about coming to the 25th anniversary celebration, they were excited about, and that just added to the energy and enthusiasm for the celebration.  It was pretty fun for them to see how “their baby has grown up”.  It was also very special to have other guests with us, some people formerly associated with the program, and some from other programs with whom we have made connections over the years.  Some of the highlights that stand out in my mind are:

•    Stories/testimonies shared by former quizzers, parents, coaches, and quizmasters.
•    Dave telling the story of the Minnesota Milk Duds.
•    The fact that when the banquet was over on Friday night, nobody wanted to go home.
•    Dave’s challenges to us both on Friday night and during our devotional time on Saturday, to plan and live intentionally to be of service to God.
•    The prayer time we all participated in during the Pizza Party after the quizzing was over on Saturday.
•    Dave & Jeannette’s advice regarding how to move the program forward in the future.

I hope you were able in some way to see this Bible Quizzing program as much bigger than our individual participation in it.  We’re very thankful for the lives that it has touched over the past 25 years.  In case you haven’t heard yet, our records indicate in excess of 930 quizzers have been involved since the program began.

Devotions and Worship: Thanks again to Jeremy Marquez for leading us in worship at our quiz meet, and for Dave Cooke bringing us a devotional challenge.  An immediate need is for someone to volunteer to lead worship and someone else to lead devotions for our November quiz, and there are openings for each of the months after that as well.  Please step up and volunteer.  It is good for us to encourage each other this way.

Setup & Cleanup: We’re thankful for the church we’re able to quiz in, and that they don’t charge us anything to be there.  We are responsible, however, to clean up after ourselves, and that takes quite a bit of work.  Several people, particularly Grace & Harold Mally stuck around afterwards to help us, and we greatly appreciated it.  Again, an immediate need is for some people to volunteer to come early in November to set up and for others to stay afterwards to help with the cleanup.  And there are openings for each of the other months as well.  Please lend a hand to help with this if you can.

If you can bring a vacuum cleaner to the quiz meets that would be helpful.  We need to sweep all of the rooms (including the Fellowship Hall and the Sanctuary) and hallways we use, but with an army of vacuum cleaners and people to use them, this wouldn’t take very long at all.   Quiz rooms could be swept immediately when we’re done with the last quiz, probably before we’d be ready to present the awards, so that would speed up rest of the cleanup after we’re all done.

Next Month: We will resume our normal quiz meet schedule, starting at 1:00 on November 14 at Emmanuel Baptist Church.  The Little League will quiz over 1 Corinthians chapters 3, 6, and 8, and the A/B League will quiz over 1 Corinthians 6:12 - 11:16.  Points earned that day will be multiplied by 120% when accumulated for the year.

Crown College Tournament: This is coming January 15-16 and is a very good tournament.  We’d like to encourage as many A/B League quizzers to go as possible.  We’ll need to sign up at our December quiz, so this will give you some time to think and consider it.  In particular, we’d like to invite Little League quizzers to consider going to this tournament, to participate in the B Division.  It will cover much more material than our Little League will have studied at that point, but for some who might be up for the extra challenge, this would be a good time to start thinking about it and preparing for it. 

Looking ahead: The Quiz Committee had some very good discussions with Dave & Jeannette Cooke while they were here, regarding the future of the quizzing program.  It is obvious that we need to start doing things differently to get a lot more new families and churches involved.  We have not started our committee discussions about this yet, but we will soon.  It is time to start thinking more “outside the box” than we have been able to in the past.  We are going to be very open to that, and invite your suggestions.  Think and pray about whether you should be involved in helping us with this.  If God stirs up a desire for that in you, please contact me about it.  You may be one of the people we need to help make the next step forward.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.  And, thank you for your support of Bible Quizzing.

Karl Kirkman, Bible Quizzing Director