‘God does good things here’ — and not just for kids
DALLAS — Leftover Chick-fil-A sauce packets sat in tiny stacks…
Building Bible knowledge and slamming buzzers
Miami Valley Bible Bowl celebrates 40 years and generations of Scriptural whizzes.
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WHEELING, W.VA. — This version of March Madness traded hoops for buzzers, ball skills for Bible knowledge and a basketball court for a church sanctuary.
Teams bearing names such as the Grateful Gleaners and the Tent Pegs — and wearing corresponding T-shirts — raced to answer questions about donkey jawbones and flaming foxes from the books of Judges and Ruth.
Seven teams competing in the Miami Valley Bible Bowl sport fox-themed shirts, referencing the story of Samson.
For the 40th Miami Valley Bible Bowl, 137 participants representing 11 Churches of Christ in West Virginia and Ohio converged on Wheeling for two days of competition and fellowship.
The Mountain State city of 27,000 lies on a once-bustling industrial corridor of the Ohio River. Tightly packed clusters of hillside homes built for coal and steel workers dot the nearby riverside.
A memorial on the National Road in Wheeling, W.Va., honors pioneer mothers.
The National Road Church of Christ, which hosted the Bible Bowl for the first time, lies on the first major federal highway, which reached Wheeling from Cumberland, Md., by 1818.
“It is a lot of work, but it has been a huge blessing,” said Ryan Parsons, who preaches for the 125-member church. “The unification that it’s brought for our congregation to rely on everybody’s strengths and … to use their talents and skills to really uplift the church has been phenomenal.”
“When many people read the book of Judges, their reaction is this: ‘This book is a dumpster fire,’” Ryan Parsons says in a sermon during the Miami Valley Bible Bowl. But “it’s actually something much, much more dangerous — like a wildfire.”
At the nearby Wheeling Park High School, 13 fourth through sixth grade teams and 19 seventh through 12th grade teams — along with a few adult teams — answered four rounds of 25 multiple choice questions from the two assigned Bible books on a recent Saturday.
They raised their answer cards in the air — A, B or C — and noisily flopped them around in celebration when they got it right.
Most of the teams went on to participate in tournament-style brackets of buzzer — or speed — rounds on Sunday at the National Road church after an overcast morning of worship that turned into a crisp, sunny afternoon.
For each age group, teams of three or four faced off until a champion was crowned, testing their reflexes and memory as they pounded the 39-year-old buzzer panels to respond to open-ended questions from Scripture.
Competition and community
While the annual event is competitive in nature, it’s as much about camaraderie in Christ and spiritual growth.
Opposing teams traditionally huddle together in prayer before each round, and players often cheer even when an opponent answers correctly.
Miami Valley Bible Bowl competitors hold up answer cards for a multiple choice question.
Many of the participants and organizers cited fellowship as one of the most important aspects of the Bible Bowl.
Hayden Baillie’s team, the Buff Barley Cakes from the Weirton Heights Church of Christ in Weirton, W.Va., emerged as champions of the upper grade level.
The 18-year-old senior has won the buzzer round tournament all but one of the nine years he’s competed — he was also the only youth to get a perfect score in the multiple choice rounds.
But Baillie’s favorite part is spending time with brothers and sisters in Christ.
Hayden Baillie celebrates his team’s buzzer tournament victory with his teammates and coaches.
“This is the only time that I see all these people from the other churches is when we’re at this competition,” he told The Christian Chronicle. “It means community, it means friendship, it means studying God’s words, having fun with friends. It’s just a big part of my life, and I enjoy it very much.”
Jennifer Spain, a 46-year-old mother of three from the Marysville Church of Christ in Ohio, has also participated 13 times — but the beginning of her Bible Bowl journey goes back much further.
Jennifer Spain poses for a photo outside the National Road Church of Christ.
She started as a fourth grader at the Southwestern Church of Christ in Grove City, Ohio, in the 1990s.
Three years ago, she started participating again with the Marysville church, along with her kids: Matthew, 14; Patrick, 13; and Katherine, 11.
Longtime director Bruce Adams presents Jennifer Spain with an award at the 1992 Miami Valley Bible Bowl.
Spain enjoys the competition — especially the buzzer rounds. But more than that, the Bible Bowl “means family and getting to see my friends and stuff that I only see like once a year, and just learning more about God’s Word,” she said.
“I can pull Scripture knowledge when I need it and use a lot of Bible references,” she added of the competition’s impact on her faith. “And then I have people in Bible class, when I’m speaking up during the Bible class, asking, ‘How do you know so much?’”
Discipline and faith
For Spain and many other participants, the Miami Valley Bible Bowl is a tradition that spans across families and generations.
Mike Hallabrin is a 64-year-old member of the Richland Road Church of Christ in Marion, Ohio, and fellow elder with the Bible Bowl’s director, Brian Driver. Hallabrin has brought eight kids, now ranging in age from 19 to 43 through the program.
Mike and Doni Hallabrin pose for a photo at the Wheeling Park High School during the Miami Valley Bible Bowl.
He and his wife, Doni, incorporated each year’s theme books into their children’s homeschooling studies.
“It just became part of what every generation did,” Hallabrin told the Chronicle. “Nobody even questioned whether they were going to do it or not.
Youths enter the National Road Church of Christ building for Bible Bowl.
“It was a discipline that each of them still carries on today,” he added. “Just an appreciation for the Bible. … Studying it is something that they love to do. “
Now Doni, 61, participates on an adult team from Richland Road.
Doni Hallabrin and other Bible Bowl competitors answer a multiple choice question.
“I feel like it’s the best chance I have to know who God is,” she said of her experience. “And because I’m forced to keep reading the same things over and over, I just never fail to learn something new. It makes me feel just close to God.”
A few congregations also attend Leadership Training for Christ, an annual youth convention that has its closest location in Noblesville, Ind. But for many of the kids who attend the Bible Bowl, it’s their biggest church youth event of the year.
Youths participate in a rock, paper, scissors competition at the Miami Valley Bible Bowl.
The preparation, consequently, is focused and intense.
Ethan Godby, youth minister for the Centerville Church of Christ in Ohio, spent about three hours per week studying and practicing for the competition with his youth group of 15 — starting all the way back in October.
Ethan Godby poses for a photo during the Miami Valley Bible Bowl.
After growing up in Noblesville and doing LTC with the Green Valley Church of Christ, Godby was “blown away” by how big the Miami Valley Bible Bowl was, expecting a small event.
“You want to be really good. You want to impress each other,” Godby said. “But in doing all of that, we’re also learning more about God. … It’s building a biblical foundation for them as they grow into making their faith their own.”
‘A labor of love’
The Miami Valley Bible Bowl began in 1987 as a ministry of the Riverdale Church of Christ in Dayton, Ohio — the region from where it got its name. Four churches participated that year.
Riverdale youth minister Ken Grizzelle started the event, but for most of the Bible Bowl’s existence, Bruce Adams served as its director until he retired in 2019.
Bruce Adams presents Hayden Baillie with the Bruce Adams Award. Bible Bowl director Brian Driver stands to the side.
He stepped away from it in 1996 as he moved his family to Kentucky for a new job, but Riverdale — which had changed its name to the Turner Road Church of Christ — made some poorly received changes to the event and was going to end it after 2001.
Adams convinced his new congregation, the Summit Church of Christ in Cold Spring, Ky., to take over the Bible Bowl and returned to his role as director.
Katherine Spain from the Marysville Church of Christ in Ohio reflects as Lilly Morris, Ansley Williams and Lucy Morris — from the Belpre Church of Christ in Ohio —celebrate a correct answer at the Miami Valley Bible Bowl in Wheeling, W.Va.
The Bible Bowl was a “way of life” for him, his wife, Joy, and their five children.
“It takes a lot of time — takes a lot of time and hard work, and it is a labor of love,” Adams said in a presentation on the event’s history, celebrating 40 years and his 71st birthday. “You can ask my kids that — especially my son Jacob — how many late nights I’d be in his bedroom typing away questions.”
But it’s brought him a lot of delight, too, from watching kids grow physically and spiritually — and from watching fellow Christians grow closer together.
“To see the kids when they pray together up front, you know from different congregations, don’t even really know each other … and I know that brethren can get along,” Adams said in a later interview with the Chronicle.
Members of the Baal on the Run team from the Cassel Hills Church of Christ in Vandalia, Ohio, and the Centerville Team 1 from the Centerville Church of Christ in Ohio huddle together in prayer before a Bible Bowl buzzer round.
As the Bible Bowl goes on for what Adams hopes is another 40 years, he’s thankful for its continued impact on the lives of young believers.
“I think the more seeds of faith we plant, the more faithful they will be down the road,” he said. “This creates so many of those little moments that, taken as a whole, it’s like so encouraging to everybody’s faith. … It just creates that bond of family.”
CALVIN COCKRELL is Managing Editor for The Christian Chronicle and serves as the young adult minister for the North Tuscaloosa Church of Christ in Alabama. Reach him at [email protected].
