In my career as a business leader responsible for the development and performance of those who work for me, I have learned and tried to emulate leadership principles that seem to be the most effective. In my experience, there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Leaders must keep their ego in check. They must embrace simplicity and communicate the mission with clarity. To be effective, leaders must not only prioritize various activities, but also execute each of them well.

I have also learned that leadership is not always one thing or another. There is a spectrum and sometimes contradictions. While leaders do lead, they must also be willing to follow. They must remain calm when under stress, but not be robotic. Aggressive, but not overbearing. They must be brave, but not reckless. Successful leaders have a competitive spirit, but are also gracious losers. There are times leaders must be quiet, but never completely silent. Additionally, leaders should be humble, but not passive.

After all, if no one is following you, are you really a leader?
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Not surprisingly, these leadership principles in business are also effective for me as a leader in Youth Bible Quizzing.

Have you ever wondered how some churches – regardless of the size of their youth group – continually bring in new Quizzers every year while other churches have not had a Teen Bible Quizzer in several years, decades, or ever? Though a minority regrettably cannot participate for legitimate reasons, I find that the majority of adults and students decline to participate due in part to an inaccurate or incomplete perception of what it entails – despite multiple attempts to highlight the program in newsletters and at Teen Camps, Retreats, Children Quizzes, and Conventions.
 
For them, Teen Bible Quizzing is simply not a part of their church’s culture – and that may be just fine for their unique situation. On the other hand, they could be so much more fruitful if they offered this highly effective youth leadership and discipleship program to their teens. They just don’t know that they don’t know what they are missing.
 
Alternatively, why do some quiz programs regularly produce quizzers who excel in competition while other similarly mature quiz programs do not? The answer is the same: it is their culture.

​Culture is simply the beliefs and values that determine how someone acts. Culture is developed by what we do – or do not do – regularly. When you hear things like, “My church just doesn’t do that”, that is culture.
 
Jesus, too, sought to change the church’s culture of His day. His message was radically different from what they were accustomed:

​Though this topic was recommended to me by a subscriber to this blog, I am writing it as much as a reminder to myself as I am writing it to share with all of you.
 
After our November quiz, the weekends get very busy. First up is Thanksgiving. A week later, my District participates in the St. Louis Top 10 quiz tournament. Not too long after that is Christmas followed one week later by New Year’s Day. So, like many of you, our District does not have a December quiz. For our small District, the St. Louis Top 10 quiz is our December quiz. But as God continues to bless our ministry, we continue to grow in numbers. So much so in fact that for the first time ever we will have more teens not quizzing at the St. Louis tournament than those who will be quizzing.

Having been involved with Teen Bible Quizzing for two decades now *shudder*, I thought I had a firm understanding of the fundamental structure and shifting trends within this wonderful ministry.

But what I have since discovered is that - for some things – I simply didn’t know that I didn’t know. 

Earlier this year, I invited subscribers to this blog to participate in a survey about their local Bible Quizzing ministry. As an amateur statistician, even I knew this would not be a scientific study and it would have a large margin of error. Of the estimated 3,000 Teen Bible Quizzers and Quiz Leaders in the U.S., my sampling method would only capture those Quizzers and Quiz Leaders who are subscribers of this blog.

“So, what is the margin of error?”, your inner geek asks. “16%”, my inner geek replies. But I wasn't necessarily looking for precision of values. Rather, I was looking for patterns of evidence.

​Here are the results to the survey questions and how they either fundamentally changed or affirmed my assumptions:

Are you the kind of person who believes that you are either good or bad at something and there isn’t anything you can do about it? Do you avoid challenges to preserve your dignity from failure? Are you tired of being stuck with whatever virtues and habits you have now? Want to improve in weak areas of your life and quizzing?

Then you need the Renewed Mindset® from the Apostle Paul!

(Your mileage may vary. Conditions apply. Operators are standing by. Batteries not included.)

Your Mindset is one of the most significant factors that determines success or failure in anything you try to do. According to Paul in Romans 12:1-2, there are two basic Mindsets: the World Mindset and the Renewed Mindset®.

By setting your mind to follow these 5 simple steps of the Renewed Mindset® methodology, you will learn that you can not only grow in character and abilities, but that God expects that you will! He designed you that way!

When a task becomes routine, sometimes you need to change it up to keep everyone motivated and engaged. And unfortunately, about midway through the season, quiz practice becomes – dare I say it? – boring. Boring for the coach and boring for the quizzers.

If you are like me, you look for games to play to make mundane jobs exciting again. Jogging? Pretend there is a pack of wild dogs chasing you. Cleaning up your room? Set a timer and try to break your previous record. (The key to this one is to not play with the stuff you find!). For quiz practice, sometimes we’ll play “King of the Hill” or “Bible Baseball”. But even those get repetitive after a while. So I thought: what could we play every week that would encourage every quizzer to be actively involved, provide a different experience each time we play, cover a lot of questions, and use the quiz equipment so we can improve our jumping techniques?

Our answer? A card game designed specifically for Teen Bible Quizzing. 

​I’ve been around quizzing virtually my entire life, and the most common problem I see with my fellow quizzers is mid-season burnout. For some reason, after all the holidays, quizzers start to drop out one by one. And for those of us who don’t drop out completely, mostly our averages drop because we don’t study as much.

​If I were to ask all the quizzers who experienced the infamous burnout what happened, I imagine the majority of them would say either, “I don’t have the time anymore!” or, “I got bored.” If you really want to be involved in this program and excel in it, then you need to do something about this burnout. There’s only so much your coach can do for you!

We’ve all heard it or said it: “I don’t have time to study for quizzing.” But if we don’t have time to pray and read Scriptures, we are busier than God ever intended us to be.

If you are like me, you have a lot going on. Email, phone calls, meetings, classes, conversations, driving, planning, cleaning, answering questions, and whatever else you have to accomplish fill up the most productive hours of your day.

And when interruptions are the norm, productivity drops. Your day is spent playing keep-up or catch-up on a million other tasks as you try to get your to-do list down to nothing, which rarely – if ever – happens.

So when Bible Quiz season comes around, how can you spend time studying and still have time for everything else?

Answer: Time blocking.

Congratulations! You are in charge of a quiz team. This is part 2 of a two-part series designed to help you get your program off the ground. If you haven't checked out the first post in this series, you can find it here.

As you read your job description you will see one reoccurring word: MOTIVATOR.  Without a doubt, your most important task is to always be a motivator.  You need to be a motivator in three areas:

1. Teens
   
2. Coaches/Volunteers
   
3. Your Church
   

In the last post, we focused on how you can motivate your teens. In this post, we will focus on motivating your Coaches/Volunteers and your church.

First, let me tell you congratulations!  God has entrusted you to help young people write His Word on their hearts, even in the midst of today's busy, trying times. With that in mind, this is not a job to be taken lightly.  Let's take a look at what this job entails. 

As you read your job description you will see one reoccurring word: MOTIVATOR.  Without a doubt, your most important task is to constantly find ways to motivate others.  You need to be a motivator in the following three areas:

1. Teens
2. Coaches/Volunteers
3. Your Church

This post - and the next - will take a more in-depth look at how you can be successful in these key areas.  In this post we will focus on motivating your Teens: