On March 23, 2019, we held our 5th National Bible Student Competition. Our kind host this year was the Evangelical Methodist Church in Sofia. We would like to thank Mikhail Stefanov for opening the doors of his church and for his cooperation in this event.

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7 teams from all over Bulgaria participated in the competition. These teams were composed of wonderful young people who love learning and reading the Book of all books - the Bible. All 28 players were extremely well prepared, played valiantly and showed their best.

 

This year, the competition had new elements and a whole new round, which brought variety to the game and new emotions for those who were returning to play in the Bible competition. All 7 teams had the opportunity to compete in the first 3 rounds.

 

According to the rules, the first round was played individually, with each participant answering 10 multiple choice questions. The second round was a collective game – teams searched for verses from the New Testament. In the third-round teams choose between two answers to question; if they answered correctly they were awarded points but points were taken away for wrong answers. After the 3rd round of the competition, the 5 teams with the most points continued and once again these 5 teams began with the same amount of points – giving each the same chance to win the race. The fourth round was entirely new for us. Again, we gave them 4 multiple choice answers to questions, however this time there was more than one possible correct answer. For each correct answer they found they were given points, but they got no points if they marked any incorrect answers. The fifth round was again a collective game with difficult open-ended questions. In this round the jury was also challenged as they needed to make important decisions about the validity of the answers. We thank the validation committee and the jury for the wonderful work done - Ventsislav Stoikov, Stanka Vladeva and Craig Weyrens.

 

The winners of this year's competition is the team "Anointed" from the Evangelical Pentecostal Church in Plovdiv, with coach Mugardich Kasapian. The honorable second place was the team "Leah" from the Evangelical Congregational Church in Assenovgrad, with coach Yordanka Zheleva. The third place with notable performance in the competition is the team "Marchers" from Pomorie, with coach Stoilka Chelibonova.

 

​The participants and their coaches received prizes provided by Veren Publisher – one of BCSU’s partners, as well as from BCSU. All contestants received Certificates for their participation. Additionally, the 7th to 4th place prizes were vouchers for a 5% discount for the 7-day inductive study "Trilogy" on the book of Genesis or participation in the European Student Conference “Revive”, in Karlsruhe, Germany. Teams from 1st to 3rd place received vouchers for 100%, 50% and 30% discounts respectively for the “Trilogy” or “Revive” conferences.

 

We all hope the competition was helpful and that it inspired many young people to read and study the Bible in the hope that the knowledge they received will help them make important life decisions.