For millions around the world, the quarantines imposed by the spread of COVID-19 have meant new and different ways of doing things, from remote working to “virtual” church services via video conferencing.
Young Seventh-day Adventists in the church’s East Dnieper Conference, headquartered in Dnipro, Ukraine, a city formerly known as Dnipropetrovsk, experienced this recently as a Bible competition normally held in person went online instead. The virtual event took place on May 30, 2020.
The competition follows six months of thematic Bible study using a manual prepared by the church’s Youth Ministries department. The local Bible quiz competitions are the culmination of the studies.
Because of pandemic restrictions on public gatherings, the East Dnieper Conference’s youth council proposed holding the event in an online format that had already become familiar during the quarantine.
Three youth teams took part: church members from Severodonetsk (team “Helpers”), Dnipro (“Ecologists”), and Melitopol (“Honey Five”).
And although online youth meetings have become familiar recently, the quiz required a special approach, both for the participants and for the organizers. Participants had to perform actions that would be visible and audible to the other teams via the videoconference.
Organizers needed to develop interactions that would allow the teams to show their knowledge and skills, being at a distance from each other.
Quiz leader Oleg Nazarov, observers, a jury, and youth pastors Oleg Karpinsky and Valentin Zagreba, along with the three teams, met on via the Zoom online platform. After describing their communities and what the groups did in ministry there, the competition began.
In the first section of the quiz, it was necessary to answer questions by quoting texts from the book of Proverbs. The team coped with this task quickly and almost without errors In the second block, the teams recalled the material of the manual, and also performed very well.
Next, it was time for a more creative exercise. Using pantomime, each team showed a plot from the book of Proverbs, and the other two had to determine what kind of plot it was. This task was both difficult and simple at the same time. Teams had only 10 minutes to scope out and perform their pantomime/ The participants of the online quiz also coped with this task perfectly.
After this were the most responsible and difficult parts of the quiz.
One of them is personal classification. In the blitz format, each team answered questions, while the participants could either answer in turn, or one of the teams took responsibility to represent the whole team.
The next task was designed for team interaction and required knowledge of the contents of the book of Proverbs and a quick search for answers in a crossword puzzle format. This task took longer than all the others.
At the end of the quiz, the teams again recalled the texts from Proverbs on a given topic. And while the jury summed up, the teams shared how they can apply the biblical knowledge gained.
After analyzing the performance of the teams, the jury came to the conclusion that young people from three cities prepared for the quiz at an equally good level. Despite the different ages, as well as the number of participants, the teams showed that the book of Proverbs became their reference book.
At the same time, the Honey Five team did a little better with several tasks, and, in particular, completely solved the crossword puzzle, which helped her to get the winner status in the quiz. However, following the meeting, all teams received prizes.
This article was originally published on the Euro-Asia Division’s news site
