A Bible Quiz for the AP Class

Thanks to Michael Kruse at the Kruse Kronicle for alerting me to an article in Christianity Today about biblical literacy: Why Johnny Can't Read the Bible.

Now this is a topic near and dear to my heart! I've led several groups through the Bible in 90 Days program and firmly believe that the church needs to ramp up the biblical literacy of its members.

Since many of my Gentle Readers are wonderfully well-versed in scripture, here is a Bible Quiz for the AP Class from the Christianity Today article so you can test yourself. The answers are at the end of the article and are linked here.

NO PEEKING! Tell me how you did in the comments. I have to admit that I barely passed. This is really tough.

A Different Kind of Bible Literacy Quiz

So you can name the 12 disciples, the 10 Commandments, and the 7 days of Creation. But do you know how they fit together?

1. What lesson from the life of Jonah did Jesus talk about?

(a) Jonah learned to obey God, because disobedience is punished.
(b) God forgives the repentant as he forgave Nineveh.
(c) God rescues us as he rescued Jonah when he was cast overboard.
(d) Jonah spent three days in the fish as Jesus would spend three days in the tomb.
(e) People are as wicked today as they were in ancient Nineveh.

2. Melchizedek, king of Salem, met with which biblical figure? How is Jesus like Melchizedek?

3. Besides Jesus, name five biblical figures who rose from the dead.How were these incidents different from Jesus' resurrection?

4. Name four biblical instances where the number 40 is important.

5. Whose faithfulness is contrasted with the Israelites' grumbling in Exodus 16-18?

6. Name the four women besides Mary who are included in Jesus' genealogy (Matt. 1:1-17), and describe their circumstances.

7. "No prophet is accepted in his hometown," Jesus said after his inaugural sermon (Luke 4:14-30). He then gave examples from the lives of two other prophets. What were they?

Bible In a Minute

Old Testament Trail Mix, Anyone?

Today marked the halfway point in our journey through the Bible in 90 Days at church, so I planned a little celebration for my class. I set up an "Old Testament Snack Bar" featuring foods of from the OT for everyone to munch on.

Here's a picture of the OT Snack Bar:
Here's the menu, complete with scriptural citations--

OLD TESTAMENT TRAIL MIX

2 SAMUEL 6:19; GENESIS 43:11; JEREMIAH 24:2-7
(dates,raisins,figs, almonds and pistachios)

EZEKIEL BREAD WITH ALMOND BUTTER AND HONEY

EZEKIEL 4:9

UNLEAVENED BREAD AND KHAROSET

2 CHRONICLES 35:17

AARON'S DONUTS

LEVITICUS 7:12
Leviticus 7:12 (King James Version)
"If he offer it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer
with the sacrifice of thanksgiving... "
cakes mingled with oil, of fine flour, fried.(King James Version)
Sounds like donuts to me!

GRAPE JUICE

Isaiah 65:8

The class is doing very well--no one is seriously behind in their reading and we are having great discussions. The "snack bar" was well-received. I think we should definitely do it again.

BIND Redux

Sunday I led the first session of Bible in 90 Days at my church. We're having two classes--one during each of the Sunday School hours and I'm facilitating the early one. The church offered BIND a couple of years ago when it was still in the developmental stage, but now we are using the curriculum published by Zondervan.

This will be the fourth time I've read the Bible in 90 Days and facilitated a class. It's interesting to see the difference between doing it at a mid-size church and at a very large church:

• Almost everyone registered online through the church website. I didn't have to handle lots of registration forms myself.
• Lists of all registrants and their contact info was forwarded to me from the church's secretary for Discipleship. I didn't have to try to collect it from several sources.
  
• An audio-visual tech guy actually shows the DVD--I didn't have to set up the TV/DVD and fool with the controls and cables and haul it around. Cool!
• Publicity for the classes was handled by the church's communication director. I didn't have to write my own articles for the newsletter, beg the powers-that-be to include notices in the bulletin, or create my own banner for outside use.
  
• Instead of knowing everyone in the class, I only know a few people.
• The class is large enough to require several small groups for discussion instead of just one. That meant recruiting small group leaders to assist but I had help with that.
  
• Yesterday morning I actually had someone I don't know email and volunteer to be a small group leader exactly at the time I realized we would have to form one more group. Amazing. Providential. Yippee!
  
• People I don't know ask me how things are going at presbytery.
  

The first of the year is a great time to start, especially this year since Lent and Easter come early so we will be reading the Bible all through Lent. A couple of weeks ago I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and thinking maybe I had over-extended myself, what with the unbloggable happenings at presbytery that keep me busy along with some personal stuff. Now, though, I'm really glad I am doing this again because it keeps me grounded and connected to scripture as well as to my congregation --both of which are really important to me in this year of the Momderator.

(ASIDE: I've blogged a number of times in the past about Bible in 90 Days so I'm not repeating the details of the program in this post. If you're interested in learning more about it check out the website:Bible in 90 Days.)