Memorizing a Bible verse in a congregational setting

We’ve done some Scripture memory in chapel two times in the last two weeks. It’s been fun to learn the Bible together, which helps to reinforce our common language as worshipers. This week we had our congregation of worshipers learn Proverbs 8:17.

I had us say it out loud five or six times, each time in a different way:

• once or twice just to get it in our heads
• once standing
• once sitting
• once shouting (and, wow, did they shout!)
• once whispering

My hope was that the variety of recitations (and the amount of them) would help us all commit it to memory, potential cheese factor notwithstanding. It’s a short verse, so I think the five or six times we said it out loud together (with the text on the screen) was sufficient.

Here’s one other way we could have learned the same verse, a method we employed two weeks ago with another (longer) verse.

This slide shows up first. We say it together once or twice. Then we move to this slide, saying it together again:

Then this:

Finally this:

Each of these methods–the repetition at various volumes and in various postures, as well as the slides with diminishing amounts of texts–seemed to work well for the congregation. I’d imagine this could even work well for solo memorization of Scripture. And I’m looking forward to exploring additional methods for leading congregational memorization of the Bible in the future.