Jim's Note on High Gear

Jim sent this out by e-mail yesterday, and I thought it was worth posting to the Blog as well.

There have been at least two who have asked questions specifically about the change in format concerning what we previously knew as High Gear. Let me try to address the questions...

First by way of background information. Trumbull is in the New England District of the EFCA which spans from CT to the Canadian border. As far as I know, except for one year, since we restarted our team ... there have been no other quiz teams in our district. Because there are no other quiz teams in our district we requested and were invited to participate with the Eastern District. The Eastern District includes NJ, NY, PA, etc.

When I was a teen the District Round Up was a yearly youth conference. The Round Up was a great way for teens to perfect and show their talents and to be evaluated by knowledgeable adults. The N.E. District has not held this event for probably ten years now. Although it was mostly about the Arts it also included other things like extemporaneous speaking, homiletics, and of course our favorite Bible Quizzing. It has changed over the last several decades and most of you know that recently has been called High Gear... This year they have decided to change High Gear again and to the best I can tell it has become a worship band clinic. The leadership has decided that this is what most teens are interested in.

Last year the youth committee of the Eastern District had asked the leadership of Bible Quizzing if we would like to continue as part of this new format or to host our own event. The quizzing leadership voted to host our own event on a different weekend and location. The final event for quizzing this year on the entire book of Acts is in Lancaster, PA on Saturday April 28'th. The Lancaster church family has agreed to house us for Friday and Saturday nights. We plan to leave on Friday the 27'th, quiz all day on Saturday, attend church on Sunday and then return home by the afternoon.

I hope this has clarified that this year's final event, which we are referring to as Round Up, will be only about quizzing...

This may answer many of the questions and confusion that has been out there about High Gear.