This year the first National Bible Bee is being launched. Hear the “buzz” on today’s Home School Heartbeat with host Mike Farris and his guest, Bible Bee director Mark Rasche.
Mike Farris:
Mark, what will the contest ask the students to do? What will they be memorizing; what will they have to know?
Mark Rasche:
What’s going to happen is, we’re going to have a downloadable curriculum—we’re calling it The Believer’s Handbook—that will be available on May 1, 2009, right off our website. Fifty percent of the questions are going to be scripture memorization, and the other 50% are going to be Bible knowledge facts. They’ll have all summer long to study for the contest that’s going to take place on September 12, 2009—that’s the local contest.
Mike:
Mark, as I understand it, there are four levels of difficulty for the memory verses and the Bible fact questions, and the further you go into the competition, the deeper you’ll go into the various levels of difficulty. Is that how it works?
Mark:
Yes it is. And essentially, as they progress, they will become more difficult. But we’ve established these four categories, with category four being the most difficult, and the allocation of questions will be determined by age. So the younger kids will have easier questions than the older kids.
Mike:
What are the top prizes for each of the age groups?
Mark:
Well, the top prize for the 15–18, which we’re calling the senior group, is $100,000—and I think that’s unprecedented. The grand prize for the junior group, 11–14, is $50,000, and the primary group, which is ages 7–10, is $25,000.
Mike:
Those amounts would make a tremendous difference in the lives of a young person, but the word of God itself will make a bigger difference in the lives of thousands of young people who will be involved in this contest. We’ll have more next time on the Bible Bee. I’m Mike Farris.
