The Challenge

As an educator working with youth and children, I was intrigued when one of my students mentioned The National Bible Bee.  Seeing it as an opportunity to memorize scripture verses, I considered accepting the memorization challenge as a personal project. 

I like scripture memorization, and in the past have memorized verses and sometimes chapters.  But my student and I were both surprised when we added up the Bible Bee verse count and found the total in Categories 1 through 3 is close to 1200 verses.  Adding Category 4 brings the total to around 1900.

(Note: The number of verses was modified in 2010.)

Doing some quick math, this meant memorizing 19 verses every day for 100 days.  And this is just one aspect of the challenge.

The Realization

This was way beyond anything I had ever attempted.  For example, I participated in a Bible Memory program when I was around 10 years of age.  If I remember correctly, the program gave me six verses a week.

Later attempts to memorize whole chapters did meet with some success, but never at a rate of 19 verses a day!

A Different Way of Thinking

So I started wondering and praying about this, as well as recalling some of the lessons I had learned in the past.  As a result, my student and I decided to follow a different way of thinking.

An Invitation

The rest of this page takes a little while to read, but I encourage you to look it over, because if some of these ideas resonate with you, you are invited to come along with us, employing or adapting these strategies in whatever way best fits your situation.

Concepts and Strategies

Concept One - “Rote Memorization”

First, I decided that “rote memorization,” (repeating verses over and over until I could recite them), was perhaps not the best way to go.  If the verse count had been 300, maybe.  But not 1200, or 1900.

Concept Two - “The Funnel Effect”

Second, I remembered an attempt to memorize song lyrics.  They were original songs, so I was familiar with the material.  While trying to commit the songs to memory, I found an interesting result.  For several days all seemed to proceed ahead smoothly.  But then there came a point when my mind sort of “balked” or “called a halt,” as if to say, “No more.  Not now.  I have enough to work on, and you are asking too much.”

Drawing an analogy, it was something like pouring liquid into a funnel.  At first, it goes well.  But if you try to pour more into the top than is flowing out the bottom, the funnel will fill up with liquid and eventually overflow.  Perhaps our brains, when memorizing or processing incoming information, also have “rates of flow” which are part of the picture.

Concept Three - “Don’t Even Try”

I have also been considering the concept of “trying to memorize.”  The phrase implies a kind of effort to be applied.  “Trying” also means to some degree that it isn’t natural, or at least not effortless.

For me, especially surveying a challenge of this magnitude, I sense that any approach which involves “trying” is going to require a lot of energy, possibly more than I can give.

Looking at it from another direction, “trying” sometimes carries with it the idea of reaching for or straining for something, some performance measure, which, if it isn’t reached, can also carry the feeling of not succeeding, not measuring up, or not accomplishing the goal or dream.  This feeling of being “behind schedule” or “out of the race” or “not good enough” adds inner questions and tension.  I sensed this would not help my student or me.

So we decided to look for a hopefully “more effortless” way to go about it.  One of our key phrases is “Don’t try to memorize.”

Concept Four - “Acceptable Negatives”

We also decided to embrace some phrases which were essentially the same as saying “I don’t know”--phrases like “I have no idea” and “I’m drawing a blank,” which we were allowed to use at any time.  And if either of us used one of our “not knowing” phrases, the other person was going to say, “That’s a good answer.”

This may at first seem counter-intuitive.  We all understand educational situations where students are quizzed or tested to see what they know.  In general, these situations reward “knowing” and have a cost associated with “not knowing.”  But in this case, in order to free our minds as much as possible from tension, we decided to “remove the cost of not knowing.”  Therefore “I don’t know” was considered to be a good answer.

Concept Five - “Trees In A Forest”

As we talked about the way things grow in nature, we realized no one would grow a forest by pulling up one tree at a time to its full height and then moving on to the next location and doing the same thing.  Trees in a forest can grow all at the same time; slowly, but simultaneously.

The same is true of a lawn.  No one grows one blade of grass at a time.  We began to sense there might be a way to “grow verses” into our thinking, so that whole sections of lawn could be growing at the same time.

Concept Six - “Flow With The River”

Imagine being in a canoe on a river.  You could paddle upstream, make some progress, and expend quite a lot of energy.  You could paddle downstream, make more progress than going upstream, and still spend a good deal of energy.  But there would be one way to spend very little energy--stay in the middle of the river, where the current flows fastest, and then allow the current to take you forward at whatever rate is most natural for the river.

Our question became “How can we cooperate with our brains and our minds so as to ride the river?”

Concept Seven - “The Post Office and The Train Station”

One of our mental pictures was of a shelf on the wall with lots of rows and columns of small rectangular spaces, like you would see in a post office for sorting mail.  Imagine there was one rectangular opening for each Scripture passage under consideration.  For example, Bible Bee Category 1 has 100 short passages.  So we pictured a set of mail boxes with 10 columns and 10 rows.

Now let’s mix in another idea.  You know those small electric train sets people sometimes decorate with at Christmas?  We put one of those small locomotives into each of the rectangular spaces.  The locomotives are all facing out, so when you stand in front of the array of mail boxes, you see the front end of each locomotive.  Written on each locomotive is the reference for a passage.  For example, one locomotive would say Genesis 1:1-2.  Another would say Joshua 1:9, and so on.

But unlike a standard mail box, only a few inches deep, our imaginary mail box has many sets of tracks stretching backwards into the wall, with train cars attached in a line behind each locomotive.  And each of the train cars in this picture is carrying another phrase in the scripture passage.

The idea is that when someone says Genesis 1:1-2, it will be like placing a piece of track in front of the mail box at the Genesis 1:1-2 location, and then that locomotive begins to move forward, and one car at a time becomes visible, each car carrying the next phrase of the passage.

Quick Detour

Detour Story - “The Written Exam.”

While taking a World History class in college, a professor surprised me by telling the class exactly what was going to be on the first exam.  He explained that we would be handed a blank booklet, and we would be given 50 minutes to write in it.  Then he told us what the exam question was going to be.  It was only four words -- ”Discuss the Middle Ages.”  That was it.  We knew what the test would be in advance.

To prepare, I took my notes out and wrote an essay of about the right length.  I wrote it carefully, emphasizing the ideas and phrases the professor had taught in the lectures.  Because I was writing this in advance, I could take my time and edit it to say exactly what I wanted to say.  I then memorized the first line of each paragraph.  This was not too difficult--there were maybe ten paragraphs.  I also read what I had written until I became quite familiar with the flow of the lines.

The interesting thing was that by memorizing the first line of each paragraph, the rest of the lines in each paragraph flowed out just as naturally as a locomotive pulling a train.  I walked into class, sat down with the empty booklet, and phrase by phrase wrote out exactly what I had carefully written at home.

Back to the Concepts

Concept Eight - “Stop And Think About The Links”

Returning to the post office boxes and the trains, it’s easy to picture each Scripture reference written on the front of a locomotive, and it’s also easy to picture each of the phrases in the passage as a sequence of train cars, but there is one “very important” concept we haven’t discussed -- the connections or links between the cars.  (On a real train, they are called couplers.)

Everyone who has ever memorized Scripture knows that the phrases are not the problem.  We all know, or are at least familiar with, many Bible phrases.  The problem is linking them together, or, to put it another way, remembering which phrase comes next.

This is not a trivial question.  You might say this is one of the keys to the challenge.  Even if you have all the phrases somewhere in your mind, if the train becomes “unlinked,” it will pull out of the station with some of the cars not attached.

Concept Nine - “Finding Strong Links”

Looking for strong links, we decided to divide each passage into phrases, but not necessarily at the logical sentence breaks.  For example, Genesis 1:1-2 on the Bible Bee Quiz Card list, in the New American Standard Bible (NASB is the version we chose), reads...

Genesis 1:1–2

In the beginning God created the heavens

and the earth. The earth was formless and

void, and darkness was over the surface of

the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving

over the surface of the waters.

We divided up the phrases as follows...

Genesis 1:1–2

In the beginning God created

the heavens and the earth. The earth was

formless and void, and darkness

was over the surface of

the deep, and the Spirit of God was

moving over the surface of the waters.

We intentionally divided the phrases this way to create the natural inquisitiveness your mind feels when a phrase is leading up to something important and forces you to ask a question or wonder what the next idea is going to be.

For example, if I said, “I’m going to the grocery ______,” your mind immediately tries to guess what is in the blank space.  You don’t have to tell your mind to do this; it does it automatically.

In the same way, by choosing the phrase

In the beginning God created

your mind will automatically wonder what’s coming next.  Once your mind “catches the link” that what God created was

the heavens and the earth

you’ll have no trouble following the first phrase with the second one.

Notice that the second phrase continues on after the period. 

the heavens and the earth. The earth was

This causes your mind to ask another question, wondering what descriptive phrase will come after the words “The earth was”.

This choosing of “strong link locations” in the phrases doesn’t mean the verse is memorized, but it does mean that when after becoming familiar with all the phrases, they will tend to flow from one to another naturally.

Concept Ten - “The Process Unfolds”

Now that a strategy was becoming clear, the first thing we did was print  the Bible Memory Quiz Cards for Category 1 (NASB) and begin highlighting the phrases, looking for “strong link locations”.  We then adopted some “Positive Actions” which we felt would begin to bring us into an environment where “the river would flow naturally” and “the trees in the forest” (the passages in Category 1) would begin growing up together.

Positive Actions

(for Category 1 - NASB)

Positive Action One

We divided Category 1 into four “quadrants” of 25 passages each.  We called these four quadrants Category 1-1, Category 1-2, Category 1-3, and Category 1-4.

Positive Action Two

Recognizing that the most difficult link was going to be the link between the reference and the first phrase of the passage, we printed out a collection of cards with the references printed in the upper half of each card, and the first phrases in the lower half. 

Two sets of cards were printed.  One set was meant to be carried around as a stack of cards (more about that later).  The cards in the second set were each folded in half at about a 60 degree angle (like a picture frame leaning back).  This set of folded cards was placed so that the reference (printed in the upper half of the card) was visible, while the first phrase (printed on the lower half of the card) was face down against the tabletop, as in the picture below.

After placing all 100 cards on the tabletop, we began asking questions like, “Do you know what this one is?”  At first the answer was almost always, “I have no idea.”  Then we would smile (or laugh) and say, “That’s a good answer.”  Finally we would pick it up and look at it before setting it back down.

We intentionally kept the process fun and a little unstructured.  This was not homework--it was more like a game with no rules.  If someone walked by we would ask them to pick a reference for us.  We would look at that one and set it back down.

We then realized there were some first phrases which we already knew.  We had seen and heard them before.  (John 3:16, for example, or Genesis 1:1-2)  These cards we moved to the left edge of the group.

This “game” of asking each other what was on the cards and looking at the first phrases began to click in our minds.  Cards we didn’t know a few minutes before started to make a connection.  Although we might not have been able to quote the first phrase perfectly, we were able to remember what it was about.  We would say things like, “Oh, that’s the one that has the...” and we would fill in the blank with what we remembered.  As those cards became more recognizable, we moved them toward the left also.

This whole process of asking questions and moving cards was fun, and we were learning in an atmosphere similar to what a child would experience while “playing.”

(Our collection of First Phrase cards in the NASB version is freely available.  Look in the upper left column for Category1FirstPhrases.) 

Positive Action Three

The first set of cards, the one meant to be carried around in a stack, was eventually sorted into four working groups.  We labelled these groups to keep track of what was happening.  The labels were “Yes,” “Almost There,” “Sort of Recognize It,” and “Still Learning.”  As cards became more familiar, they could be moved to the appropriate stack.

Positive Action Four

To provide another way of reviewing and interacting with first phrases, the references were entered into this website.  (See 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, and 1-4 at the very top of this page.)  When hovering the mouse just underneath a reference, the first phrase pops into view.

Positive Action Five

Next we “lined up the trains”--first as something you can see, and then (in Positive Action Six) as something you can hear.

The idea behind the “seeing” is to click through a sequence of slides, each slide showing you the reference, then the reference with phrase one visible, then the reference with phrases one and two, and so on.  By hiding the next phrase from view, your brain naturally asks what comes next.  When you click or advance to the next slide, the phrase you are wondering about comes into view.

This process, allowing time enough for the brain to become curious before clicking to the next slide, is another important concept.  A tremendous amount of information is caught by our brains as a result of childlike curiosity.  Wondering what comes next and then seeing it is cooperating with one of the natural ways our minds process information.

The slide shows which were created for Categories 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, and 1-4 are also available. You will find them in the upper left column.  The ones labelled Slides can be saved and opened as PowerPoint or Keynote presentations.  The ones labelled Flash can be opened and viewed online.  (The online Flash versions move to the next slide when you click on the slide itself.)

Positive Action Six

One of our next projects is to record mp3’s of the passages, leaving space between each phrase allowing the listener to repeat or “echo” each phrase after it is spoken.  The idea is that, after a while, the listener will know the passages so well that he or she can speak each phrase in the silent space before the phrase is read rather than echoing the phrase in the silent space after it has been read.

(Note: We did not complete this action, but the idea is interesting.)

Positive Action Seven

The online tools may be helpful as long as you are near your computer, but what happens if you are riding somewhere or spending some time outdoors, or reviewing verses before you fall asleep?  One possible idea would be to put these verses, with the strong link locations dividing up the phrases, into a “print-on-demand” book which could be carried from place to place.

(Note: A book like this would be helpful, but we did not accomplish this action.)

Continued at the Top of the Next Page

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®,

© Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995

by The Lockman Foundation.  Used by permission.   (www.Lockman.org)

               Copyright 2009 Steve Mugglin