The Real Reason Behind Bible Quizzing

What a surprising end to an exciting day - we were one of the finalists in the 2009 MCEC Youth Bible Quiz competition!

Hawkesville Mennonite Church has a long history of Bible quizzing. This year, with a number of new youth interested in quizzing, we formed two teams. I and one other experienced quizzer were on the B team with most of the younger youth who had never quizzed. This year would give the juniors experience.

We read Luke over and over, wrote and answered questions, and from January to April, got together once a week with our two coaches to deepen our knowledge of Luke. One of our coaches, Jon Hines, was not able to attend the competition, but we knew that with Laverne Martin, who had coached Hawkesville teams for over 20 years, we would be in good hands.

The week of the competition, we heard the sad news - Laverne's mother had died and visitation would be on Saturday. Laverne would not be able to attend the competition.

The day of the competition, we had a difficult start loosing our first two matches by a pretty large margin. "This is going to be a long day," I thought. In our third game, we faced the Hawkesville A team, who had won their first two matches. To our surprise, we beat them by five points! That must have given us some confidence, because we won our next three matches and moved on to the finals.

For the semi-final, we played the same Markham team that beat us so badly in our first match. It was a tight game and we waited anxiously as the final score was added up: 145 to 110 for Hawkesville! We were going to the finals!

To our delight, we discovered that Hawkesville A had also won their semi-final match. It would be an all-Hawkesville final! That was sweet!

The final match was close. With only seven questions to go, the score was tied. The final buzzer questions bounced between the two teams, but Hawkesville A finally answered a few in a row and won the match. But I was just happy with having an all-Hawkesville final. For the first time in Hawkesville's history, we had won the Bible Quiz competition.

As we travelled home, our thoughts turned to Laverne, who after many years of coaching, had missed the competition where his team won the finals. We decided to stop by the funeral home. In our white shirts and black pants (our quizzing "uniform"), we walked into the funeral home and gave Laverne a big huge. He later shared that our visit had meant the world to him and that we lightened the mood in the room.

Bible quizzing doesn't end with the competition. Our coaches have always told us that it's more than just a competition. During the months of studying you learn a whole lot about the Bible and some is bound to stick in your brain.

That night, while still on cloud nine, I was on facebook, chatting with one of my high school friends. I bragged about how good we did and she replied that she doesn't read her Bible anymore. She knew all the stories, but didn't believe because she had too many questions. I was able to share my faith with her and used a couple of very familiar stories from Luke. That conversation meant more to me than the Hawkesville final. It was a neat reminder from God about the real reason for Bible quizzing.

Jeremie Raimbault
Captain of Hawkesville B Bible Quiz Team