There really are two ways to memorize the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments.
The most common way is to pick a verse and memorize it. John 3:16 is probably the most popular. After John 3:16, one memorizes another verse from another book, like Romans 3:10, then on to another. Kids who go to Sunday School get a hand full of these. Kids who are homeschooled or go to a private Christian schools generally get more.
The second way to memorize, which I think is rare, is to memorize whole books of the Bible. I prefer this for the reasons I am about to explain.
THE PROBLEM WITH MEMORIZING INDIVIDUAL VERSES - CREATING NEW CONTEXT
Scripture is meant to be memorized, studied and pulled apart in order to understand it better. Unfortuneately, memorizing key verses is not the best way to understand the Bible. In fact, it can be misleading at times.
I know a preacher who decided to memorize thousands of individual verses, pulling them out of the nest of each book they lie. In other words, he memorizes each verse without any concern for the rest of the book. He assumes that each verse has its own message apart from the rest of its context. Each verse for him stands alone.
As a result of his style of memorizing, he is able to make individual verses fit into his teachings a whole lot easier than letting them remain within their original surroundings, and because his focus is the end times, he is able to fit hundreds and thousands of verses into his "end times" framework. What he misses is that each verse he quotes belongs to a chapter which belongs to a book - all of which is called "context."
One cannot truely understand a verse without understanding its context; and to pull a verse out of its context, which this preacher does (as so many other people do), is to strip it away from its moorings. It fills the verse with other meaning it was never intended to have; and it strips the verse from meaning it had when the writer wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
People who memorize individual verses never intend to take them out of context. Actually, they assume the context of the verse supports the modern meaning they give to it, but in reality that verse is forced to say what the person assumes it means. Eventually that verse completely takes on the meaning the person has assigned to it. And in time, as that person shares that verse from the pulpit, with others, or on TV, the verse begins to come alive in its new context, no longer just for the preacher/teacher, but now for a whole group of Christians. No longer belonging to its original context, the verse now has found a new home in the context of some 21st Century issue or supporting some 21st Century doctrine, whether that issue or doctrine is good or bad.
Among the classes I teach, one of my favorites is one that teaches students how to study the Bible. In it we learn the importance of context, and we learn how to study each verse in relation to its context - its surrounding verses and its surrounding chapters. Most students love the class, because they learn how to read and how to study the Bible.
During the class each student chooses one small passage to study in context of its day and its context within the book it was written. They study the grammar and the words within their passage. At the end of the class, we get together and discuss what stood out in the class. For many, they learn that their life time's favorite verses had a different meaning than they gave it until that class. In other words, until that class, they read their own lives so much into the verses, that those verses took on a meaning they weren't designed to give.
I think a lot of the students are as disappointed as they are excited. Excited to learn the importance of context and grammar. They are excited to learn new depths to the verses they loved so much, but disappointed because the meaning they gave to the verses meant a lot to them.
THE PROBLEM WITH MEMORIZING INDIVIDUAL VERSES - CREATING NEW HIERARCHY
As I mentioned above, the purpuse of memorizing individual verses is to support a theological / emotional doctrine or to support some arguement in some 21st Century issue. But taking verses out of their nest and filling them with 21st Century meaning is not the only problem of memorizing individual verses. By picking certain verses, one gives the chosen verses more imortance than other scripture.
Now at this point I do have to clarify - Jesus himself said there are weightier matters of the Law; so, yes, there are some issues that are more important in the Bible than others. However, memorizing verses and not books focuses the importance on today's issues and on supporting today's group doctrines rather than the issues, problems and doctrines of the original writings. And once again, I admit that the issues of the 1st Century were different than today's. Sometimes this is okay, but sometimes we can neglect important issues because we are so wrapped up in our own group's focus of the day.
The weightier matters that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 23 are not the weightier matters of most of today's Christians. Faith was important to Jesus, and it is important to us today, but Jesus also said justice and mercy were on top of the list of what is important, and those are poorly defined if not neglected today, just as they were in Jesus' day.
In Jesus' day the religious focused on the details of tithing, keeping the Sabbath, keeping holy, and following the Law. But Jesus saw that by focusing on those things (which Jesus admitted needed not to be neglected), they neglected even more important things.
So there are some things in the Bible that are more important than others. Choosing individual verses does not reflect the importance that the writers of the Bible chose; choosing individual verses reflects what is important to us.
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