The biggest hurdle for new quiz programs is initial, one-time investment in purchasing quizzing equipment.

Why is quizzing equipment needed? Bible quizzing awards the opportunity to answer a question that the quizmaster reads to only the first quizzer to jump off of their seat. This means that there needs to be some way (device) that can detect who jumped first.

Please do not let the price of equipment discourage you from starting your own quiz program. In the future, TeenBibleQuiz.com hopes to provide assistance in lowering this barrier-to-entry for buying quizzing equipment.

To hold practices for Bible quizzing, answering the question “How do we practice for quizzing?" means acquiring the needed quizzing equipment.

Here are some ways to obtain quiz equipment:

1. Borrow a set of quiz equipment from a district director, if available. Sometimes quiz directors have extra sets of quiz equipment that they are able to loan out to a church for a set amount of time. This can be a great option for churches that may become eventual investors in the purchase of quizzing equipment a year or two after gaining more experience with Bible quizzing. Reach out to your district’s quiz director to see if such assistance can be provided!

2. Purchase quiz equipment for your church. This can be either with your own funds, or from the church’s budget set aside for the program, or from a GoFundMe fundraiser, or any countless other ways of raising funds for church programs.

As far as sets of quiz equipment go, there are generally 2 (you could say 3) options for Nazarene-style quizzing. The common factor between these 3 options is that they all use the QuizTime, 8-pin connector, allowing for the same jump seats to be used with any of these 3 options:

• Blue box, quiz round setup (*most popular for churches and some competitions):

  • 1 x distraction-free room

  • 2 x strings of Jump Seats/Pads (5 jump pads per string, 1 string per team) (store: QuizStuff.com)

  • 1 x Blue box (store: QuizEquipment.com)

    • 2-team and 3-team options are offered; we recommend purchasing the 3-team version

  • 1 x Power cord for Blue box

  • Electrical outlet access

  • 1 x Chair for each quizzer: 2 teams = 8 to 10 chairs; hard-top preferred (for jump pads); metal folding chairs are used most often but any hard-top chair will do

  • 1 x Table: for quizmaster and content judge if applicable

  • Chairs for non-quizzers: for quiz master, +1 if content judge, coaches (usually 1 per team), spectators

• Red box, quiz round setup = same as Blue box option, just replace Blue box with Red box of the two options, unless there is a specific reason to get Red box

  • Store: QuizTime.com

  • We recommend against purchasing Red box. It is very comparable to Blue box, however, Blue box is made entirely out of metal, making it more durable. Out top recommendation which we believe every program should look into getting is the QuizMachine program:

• QuizMachine + Qbox, quiz round setup (*most popular for most competitions):

• 1 x distraction-free room

• 2 x strings of Jump Seats/Pads (5 jump pads per string, 1 string per team) (store: QuizStuff.com)

• 1 x Windows computer, preferably Windows 10 or Windows 11

• 1 x QuizMachine software program plus software license (in this case, version 5; store: QuizStuff.com) installed on Windows 10 or 11 computer

• 1 x Qbox with USB cable (store: QuizStuff.com)

  • *Qbox connects and communicates jump seat data to your computer’s QuizMachine software. Qbox is required to use your jump seats/pads with QuizMachine.

• 1 x Power cord for computer (if using desktop and not laptop add monitor, VGA or HDMI cable, and monitor power cable)

• Electrical outlet access

• 1 x Chair for each quizzer: 2 teams = 8 to 10 chairs; hard-top preferred (for jump pads); metal folding chairs are used most often but any hard-top chair will do

• 1 x Table: for quizmaster and content judge if applicable

• Chairs for non-quizzers: for quiz master, +1 if content judge, coaches (usually 1 per team), spectators

• Optional: 1 x monitor (plus power cord) facing quizzer contestants connected to computer by VGA or HDMI cable (depending on computer and monitor compatibility) so that contestants can see where they are exactly on their seats when getting settled for the next question. This is a very common set up for competitions.

• Optional: same concept as the monitor only projecting the visual interface to a projection screen or connected to a large LED screen of box TV for purpose of bringing the audience into the gameplay by presenting them with what the quizmaster and potentially the quizzers can see; this eliminates the need for any other apparatus for displaying the current round’s team scores

You can still hold quiz practice without equipment, using some manual version of quizzing, but it would be best only as a temporary solution. Quizzing equipment really makes the quizzer feel like it is more fair and therefore more fun as a result.

Other than quiz equipment, the only thing missing is study materials and tools. We recommend checking out what The Foundry Publishing (link) currently offers for this season of teen Bible quizzing.

The Foundry Publishing has a great packet for coaches that you should check out. We recommend beginning quizzers start with the simple quizzer Scripture portion (which costs less), and if a quizzer finds that they would really like to step-up their game in quizzing, then we recommend that they purchase the spiral-bound Scripture portion. In addition to two copies of this season’s Scripture (paragraph form and verse-by-verse), the spiral-bound Scripture portion contains many useful tools.

For more resources and links including the resources mentioned above, go ahead and check out our page on Resources (link). There is a section near the bottom related to Coach and Quizmaster resources for your benefit. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out for some answers by connecting with me, Collyn Brenner, the author and maintainer of this website (link).