I was pondering the same questions a few years ago.  As I looked back on my walk with God, I remembered that a lot of my scripture memory began in campus when I worked to remember the location of 100 useful scriptures.  I decided to do the same thing with the teens and youth workers.

The purpose of these 100 scriptures is not to memorize the actual verse, but to memorize the topic and its location in the new testament (Book & Chapter).  For example: Seek and Find (Matthew 7:7-11).  If the teen is talking with his friend at school about God and his friend asks how to find God, the teen can remember the phrase “seek and find” and know it is in Matthew Chapter 7.  He can then turn to Matthew, Chapter 7 and skim the chapter to find the specific verses.  It trains them to remember the location of key verses.  We also encouraged everyone to highlight the scriptures in your Bible so they would be easier to find.

In order to build unity amongst the teens and the youth workers, I had everyone learn the scriptures together during our Teen Discipleship Groups.  We would first read through 10 scriptures, discuss why they are useful, and then commit to learn them over the next 2 weeks. At the next group, we would start off by taking a written test on the previous 10, grade one another’s tests, and work on learning the next 10.  Each time we took a test, it included all of the scriptures we learned up to that point.  This allowed us to culminate 6 months later with a test on all 100 useful scriptures.  It was amazing to see their growth.

In the end, the teens and the youth workers were sharper students of the word and were able to use these scriptures while sharing their faith, in Bible Studies, and discipling one another.

I hope that this tool may be useful in building up your ministry.

Click Here to download the list of 100 Useful Scriptures for Teens!