First Annual National Bible Bee

Januário faced mental challenges due to the lifestyle he led before turning to Christ.  Friends recommended Scripture memory to address the problems, and he followed their advice.  When he took a job performing maintenance on machines, he resolved to meditate on God’s word rather than letting his mind wander during the mundane work.  One day, fellow church members told him of a Bible memorization contest that had been announced in a service he’d missed.  Interested, he called the phone number given on the list of verses they passed out, registered to compete, and began memorizing the 100 selected texts.

Inácio heard about the Bible bee from a local pastor at a Christian literature discussion group.  He disliked the thought of memorizing God’s word for the sake of the material benefit of the scholarship prize offered, but the pastor urged him to participate.  Ambivalent, he only began memorizing the designated passages on the day of the district contest, and by the provincial competition he had still memorized only two of the seven pages.  Advanced by mercy from each of these levels, he finally memorized the whole list to prepare for the national championship.

Cornélio had already participated in several Bible memory contests before he heard about ours.  He had even tried memorizing all of Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, which extols the value of Scripture.  The mental exercise of memorization gave him the satisfaction of productivity and the joy of knowing God’s word.  When he learned of our challenge from friends, his decision to accept was an easy one.

These Africans are among 98 who participated in sixteen district Bible memory meets across the country in May and June of 2024.  Sixty-six were approved to compete at the provincial level in August, and 33 of them actually did.  There, sixteen were named national finalists, and fifteen of them journeyed to our city last week for the national championship on Saturday.

The finalists arrived on Thursday and settled into their rooms at our organization’s headquarters.  On Friday, we performed two complete mock competitions with them as rehearsal for the big day on Saturday.  Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are reserved for studies of the memorized texts and touristic outings in reward for their hard work before they return home on Wednesday.

Saturday was a day to remember.  At 8:00 am, I brought the audiovisual team to the contest site, the largest church in our town, so I could arrange chairs and they could set up their equipment to livestream the event.  An hour later, Jeremias came with the finalists, dressed sharply for the occasion.  By 10:00, our president Telmito had arrived to begin the program with a message on the value of God’s word.

While Telmito spoke, Jeremias drew the finalists’ names at random to determine their contest order.  Then he called them to sit at the front, in chairs spaced a meter apart, with their phones and other belongings on seats opposite them where they would go upon being eliminated.  Volunteers carefully monitored them for any signs of cheating.

One by one, each finalist approached the jury table, selected a slip of folded paper from a cloth-covered bowl, and handed it to Jeremias.  Jeremias unfolded the paper and read aloud the question it contained, with its corresponding number.  The contestant proceeded to recite the Scripture text (generally one or two verses) that was paired with that question on the competition’s memory list.

Iracema and I sat beside Jeremias, scrutinizing the official list to catch any errors in recitation.  Many mistakes involved only a single word, and sometimes just one letter in a word.  Others consisted of phrases omitted or an incorrect reference.  Occasionally a contestant recited a text that corresponded to a different question, which we also treated as an error.  After each recitation, we announced whether it was correct, and if not, what was wrong.  Only once did a contestant dispute our determination, and in that case our technical team proved the mistake by replaying the audio of the recitation.  On Jeremias’ other side was Rosário with a stopwatch to call time-out if silence or repetition reached a cumulative total of 60 seconds during any given text.

On his tabulation sheet, Jeremias marked each recitation as correct or incorrect.  After two incorrect recitations, the contestant was eliminated.  Four participants made mistakes in both the first and the second round and were consequently dismissed.  Another was removed in the third round, and four more in the fourth.  One contestant each was excluded in the fifth and sixth rounds.

The four remaining contestants continued in the game through the seventh, eighth, and ninth rounds.  Two of them made their second mistake in the tenth round, but because removing them simultaneously would leave third place undefined, they both stayed in the contest.  All recitations in the eleventh round were perfect, so as the fifth consecutive round with no eliminations, it triggered a tiebreaker.

For the tiebreaker, our monitors led three of the remaining finalists out of earshot.  I handed the one who stayed a slip of paper containing five questions from the list and their corresponding numbers, and he recited all five texts with a stopwatch running continuously.  Iracema and I recorded any errors and Rosário registered the total recitation time.  Then the other three contestants entered one by one and we repeated the process, using the same slip of paper with the same questions, for each of them.

One of the tiebreaker participants made four mistakes in his recitation, and the other three made two mistakes each.  To determine the positions of those three winners, we used their total recitation time, giving first place to the fastest reciter, second place to the next fastest and third place to the slowest.  We were relieved to confirm that the whole contest procedure which we had established ahead of time was effective to clearly establish the winners.

And who were the winners?  Third place with its $150 scholarship went to Cornélio — the one who appreciated the mental and spiritual stimulation of Bible memory.  The recipient of the $400 second place scholarship was Inácio, who had disdained memorizing for a financial reward and only began learning the texts on the day of the district contest.  And our national champion with a $1000 scholarship was Januário, who first undertook Scripture memorization to reverse the damage that his pre-Christian lifestyle had done to his brain.  What a victory for someone who has come so far from darkness to light!

While I was touched by the emotion on Januário’s face as Telmito announced his victory, I was even more moved during the moment pictured here, when all the finalists sang as a choir at the end of the contest.  Though they came from eight provinces and few knew each other beforehand, they took the initiative to learn a song together and requested to present it at the event.  Blending in awesome harmony, they performed a musical rendition of one of the most important passages on their memory list, Ephesians 2:8-9:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”  Seeing in their eyes how this life-changing truth has reached the hearts of these fifteen African young people confirmed to me that the Bible bee truly is worth the immense effort it requires.

Won’t you pray with us that this program will similarly impact thousands more in 2025?