Interview
My friend Adam Robinson has interviewed me. It starts off with questions about Zizek and Theology, then gets more general.
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Interesting interview. I was big into Bible Quizzing in high school. Won the national quote off thing…back when I was awesome.
What’s your fascination with it?
Comment by Chad | June 15, 2009
I was a participant in it all through junior high and high school. I’m not personally fascinated with it, I just notice that other people find it extremely weird — everything from the jump seats (rather than buzzers) to the bizarrely literalistic way questions are formulated (i.e., everything has to be backed up by a literal quote from the verse — you wouldn’t get a question even as general as, “How many times did Jesus visit Jerusalem according to the Gospel of John?”). Seriously, sit down and explain it to someone who’s never heard of it, and you’ll see what I mean.
Comment by Adam Kotsko | June 15, 2009
Oh I know it’s weird, and plenty of weird people involved. What was funny about my team was the extraordiary number of attractive girls we had. Other teams were smitten and distracted. The quizzers were not generally part of the cool crowd.
Comment by Chad | June 15, 2009
The only teams on Eastern Michigan District with attractive girls really, really sucked. The same pattern repeated itself at the regional level.
I was always really good in the EMD context, but not hardcore enough to do much at the Olivet level. The closest I ever got to progressing beyond that level was 11th place in the initial round — the 10th place person was the perennial guy from the Wisconsin district (which sucked and therefore included a hot girl), who had to choose that year to become all hardcore about it.
My proudest moment was when I “pre-jumped” and all the quizmaster had said was, “Situation question….” By some kind of miracle, I randomly chose the right situation and the right questions (of the type “who said it, to whom, and why,” etc.). That was one of the few rounds where I didn’t error out that year.
Comment by Adam Kotsko | June 15, 2009
Nice. I remember a similar situation when a kid pre-jumped a quote question and randomly guessed Philippians 4:8 and got it.
It sounds like your quizzes were a little bit different than ours. Our questions didn’t have conditions or anything. 20 questions, 4 of which were quote/finish a verse. The other 16 were simply, “Question number 5…question (no ‘test’ jumping after this)…When did Nicadomas see Jesus?” Or “According to 1 Corinthians 5:12, what did blah blah blah…” I was the quote specialist.
I met Eric and Leah this way…I was new to the church and joined the team right away. I wonder why Richard wasn’t involved. He was in that youth group and it seemed like it would’ve been right up his alley.
Comment by Chad | June 15, 2009
“Situation questions” were only introduced the last couple years I was in it — after your time, I assume. For most of my career, they were using the format you describe, and the “situation questions” were among the 16 non-memory verse questions. (I assume there was only one per round.)
Comment by Adam Kotsko | June 15, 2009
I mean once they were introduced, they still fit into the framework you describe.
Comment by Adam Kotsko | June 15, 2009
I’m not sure why I wasn’t involved. I actually don’t remember it being something that was advertised as something you could join up with. It was kind of just the thing you guys did. I know I probably would have been horrible at jump seats because I can’t sit still.
Comment by Richard McElroy | June 16, 2009
It’s a small world — I just ordered Zizek and Theology with some graduation money I was given. I thought your name looked familiar, but I didn’t know where to place it. When I googled it, I found your blog and just now figured out you graduated from CTS. The small world part of this is that I sat next to you at the graduation as one of the lowly D.Min. grads…I had just heard Zizek at the Religion and Postmodernism conference at Syracuse in April — if I would have known you were a Zizek scholar, I would have asked you questions all the way from CTS to Hyde Park Union Church…
Comment by Phil | June 16, 2009