Celebrity Scriptures – a Family Activity

BibleGateway.com, perhaps the largest (and we feel the best) online site having all the major Bible translations, recently published some of its usage statistics for 2013.  The site was visited an incredible 456 million times and generated more than 1.5 billion views!

The top 10 Bible verses searched for on BibleGateway.com in 2013 were:

From the perspective of teaching children, these top ten scriptures can be called the  top “celebrities” of Bible verses during the past year – and given their celebrity status, they are perfect for some quality family time with the kids.  Here are a few ideas for “Celebrity Scripture” activities that can be selected or adjusted for different ages:

1) Know your Celebrities:  Allowing sufficient time, have the kids learn all ten of the scriptures. See who can memorize them first.

2) Celebrity Backgrounds: Read the chapter in which each celebrity scripture appears. Does the chapter help you understand the celebrity verse better?  In what ways?

3) Celebrity Rankings:  List the scriptures in the order you feel they are important to you.

4) Be a Fan: Select your own favorite top three scriptures and hide them somewhere (celebrities can be reclusive) like in your phone or notebook. Have other family members guess where you hid them.

5) Celebrity Spotting:   Offer a small prize for whoever spots one of the celebrity scriptures first in their own reading of Bible-related material.

6) Celebrity Sleuth:  Take a scripture each week and look at that verse in ten different translations on BibleGateway.com. What differences do you see? Which translation do you like best and why?

By working through these small activities, and making them games wherever possible, your children can learn ten important scriptures – and come to know them well.