Saturday, September 7 is the monthly day of prayer for Junior Bible Quiz.  Mark 1:41.  “Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!”  Let us pray for those in the JBQ community who are sick and need a touch from Jesus.  Jesus is able.  Jesus is willing.  Jesus wants you well.  Pray for divine health and protection for all involved in JBQ this season.   “Be healed!”

It is time to begin the 2024-2025 JBQ Season!   I’m super excited to get started and to see everyone.  If you know of a church that is interested in JBQ, please let me know or send this email to them.  We have some information for both new and established churches that will benefit all of our teams as we kick off this brand new season.   

First Meet:

The first meet of the season will be October 5, 2024.  Please email the coordinator for your area if you plan to attend.  Let the coordinator know how many teams you will have in each division and approximately how many people will be coming.  Remember that, if possible, we need two officials per team for the meet to run smoothly.   Please let the coordinators know ASAP but no later than September 29th.

The West Area Meet will be at Trinity Fellowship in Fayetteville and will start at 9:30AM.

Please contact  Brittany Raney:    BrittanyJuneGardner23@gmail.com

The Central Area location will be emailed next week. We are waiting for confirmation from the church.  It will start at 9:00AM.

Please contact Cylinda Spoon:  cylindaspoon79@gmail.com

Central Area Only 

If you are coming to the Central Area meet on October 5th, you need to know that our Candy Bar Verse will be question # 530.

QUOTATION QUESTION. What should be our greatest goal in life?

Matthew 6:33 “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”

Every quizzer who quotes the verse will get a Candy Bar.

New Churches: 

We have had a lot of contact from new churches in the state, so we are tentatively planning to have a JBQ meet on October 12, 2024.  This meet is for new churches only, provided that we have enough churches interested in participating in this special meet.  The day will include quizzing and a lot of training and information for new teams.  We will have activities for the kids during the training.  The meet will be from 1:00 to 4:00 at Crystal Hill Assembly of God in North Little Rock.  We planned it for the afternoon for the teams that are going to have to travel.  If you would be interested, please let me know by Thursday, September 19th, so we can plan to make this happen.  I will send more details to everyone who is interested, and I will let you know by September 20th if we get enough teams to host this event.  Please contact me at cylindaspoon79@gmail.com or 501-454-3906.

Something to Think About:

We have received the following proposal to consider a change in the way our grade levels are divided for Arkansas quizzers.  We are not going to change the age groups this year; however, we would like to receive feedback throughout the quizzing season so we can discuss it for next year.  Here is the proposal:

We currently quiz in three divisions–2nd and Under, 3rd & 4th Grade, and 5th & 6th Grade.  

The suggestion is to change the divisions to 1st and Under, 2nd & 3rd grade, and 4th, 5th & 6th Grade.  There are multiple reasons for this change.  First, we feel that this would encourage more quizzers in Arkansas to get their Bible Master Award because they would have three years in the older division to memorize and quiz over all the questions. Another concern is the level of retention among the younger quizzers, especially those who quiz on different point values from year to year.  Some of our little ones seem to struggle with retaining what they have learned, and the hope is that the changes could help with that.  A third reason is that we believe that there is a huge difference between quizzing as a kindergartner and quizzing as a second grader.  Kindergartners are often still learning to simply sit at the table and pay attention while those in second grade have longer attention spans and more physical control over the buzzer.  The changes would group the quizzers together in a more competitive manner.  

One suggestion for helping the quizzers learn the material is to teach the 4th Graders the 10’s, 5th Graders the 20’s, and 6th graders the 30’s.  A second suggestion encourages everyone to learn the 10 point questions and then alternate years teaching the whole team either the 20 or 30 point questions. The teams that are consistently making it to Regionals are moving their younger kids up already, so if we encouraged this for all the teams, then the Arkansas teams would be stronger and more competitive.  And while ultimately the goal is to teach children the Word of God, not winning, maintaining strong and fair competition throughout our program encourages children to keep quizzing through the years and gives us all many opportunities for ministry to them.

Again, no changes will be made this year, but we do want our churches to weigh in with some feedback.  Also, if any churches have some strong quizzers who happen to be younger, we want to remind everyone that quizzers can always quiz in the divisions above their grade level, just not the divisions below their grade level.

Please pray for Arkansas Junior Bible Quiz. We want to see the ministry grow and have more kids in the state learning God’s Word.

Cylinda Spoon

Chairperson for the Arkansas JBQ Committee

Wednesday, August 7 is the monthly day of prayer for JBQ.  Read the first few verses of 1 John.  Thank God that the Word of life has revealed Himself to us.  Thank Him for His life in our lives.  Pray we use our lives and ministry to proclaim and testify who Jesus is.  Pray we proclaim Jesus as the Word and receive and know Him more.  Praise God for fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus.  Amen.

It is July 8.   To all of you in the habit of praying for JBQ on the 7th of the month, thank you!  For those of us who need a prompt:  We always need more grace.  We always need more Jesus.  “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”  Hebrews 4:16 NLT.  Amen.

5th & 6th Grade	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb
10’s	145-205	206-262	116-288	58-288	1-288
20’s	385-423	424-462	365-480	327-480	289-480
30’s	529-548	549-567	519-576	500-576	481-576
3rd & 4th Grade	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb
10’s	145-173	174-202	203-231	232-260	261-288
20’s	385-403	404-422	423-441	442-460	461-480
30’s	529-540	541-549	550-558	559-567	568-576
2nd & Under	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb
10’s	145-173	174-202	203-231	232-260	261-288
20’s	385-403	404-422	423-441	442-460	461-480
30’s*	529-540	541-545	546-550	551-554	555-558