Before Being Sent to Millions, Shouldn’t We Know Whether The Great Controversy Is Effective?
by Loren Seibold | 15 June 2023 |
If you were running a big company, would you spend a billion dollars on an advertising campaign for which there is no evidence that it works?
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is doing precisely that.
Let me be more precise. No one actually knows if cold-mailing The Great Controversy to millions of homes accomplishes anything, because no one has done market testing to find out.
There are several kinds of market research, but one simple way would be to see if a test campaign produces a change. A car company (or its advertising consultants) would run an ad campaign for the Wombat V-6 SUV in, say, Denver, and then check to see if more Wombats were sold in Denver after they advertised there.
For a church entity like ours, you could do something similar: you send out The Great Controversy to the Denver metro area, then you call all the churches in the city and surrounding suburbs and ask a few easy questions.
- Did new people begin coming to church recently, after The Great Controversy was mailed to your city?
- Did you have a spike in requests for Bible studies recently, after The Great Controversy was mailed to your city?
- Have you added more people to the church by baptism since The Great Controversy was mailed to your city?
As yet, no one has told us the answer to these questions. Why not?
Tell us, please, Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders who are promoting the The Great Controversy mailout: why haven’t you told us the results of the millions of these books mailed out so far?
Why is this a thing?
Here are some possible reasons why this ill-advised mailing is still going ahead; make of them what you will, or suggest your own:
- It makes people feel good. A lot of Adventists are convinced that forcing our Victorian anti-Catholic eschatology upon people is the right thing to do, so they’ll send money for it. It’s what should happen, they think, so people will give money for this that they wouldn’t for good, helpful, sensible projects.
- Our leaders believe it works, or at least that it’s supposed to. That may be the reason why they don’t market test to see if it actually does: they might have to admit that it doesn’t work very well, and that would put a damper on a pet project.
- Maybe the purpose isn’t to make churches grow. Maybe the purpose is just to reach every nation, kindred, tongue and people without actually winning them. Why? Because it hastens Jesus’ return! Yes, Jesus, we did contact everyone. We removed the excuse, “But I didn’t know!” (I have heard people say that at the judgment you will turn to the sad people in the lake of fire queue and say, “Remember that book you got in your mailbox, that you threw away without even looking at it? If you’d read it and joined my church, you’d be over on my side of the velvet rope in the line for the Pearly Gates, rather than where you’re going.”)
- Ellen White told us to share The Great Controversy with the world. So it may be a matter of simple obedience. “Teach me not to reason why/ teach me that to do or die/ is to be like Jesus” (Hymn #492 in the SDA Hymnal).
- It makes our leaders appear to be doing something important. The denomination is facing a lot of problems. Schools are closing, corruption is found in denominational offices around the world, in the West congregations are aging and shrinking, the youth are leaving, and many people are angry at the fundamentalist turn of the General Conference. But wow, isn’t Elder Ted Wilson an amazing leader for promoting this book? The church is doing something, so who cares if it works or not?
- God is going to make it work. This is the notion that sowed seeds will eventually grow—even if those seeds are infertile. So again, it’s really not up to us to decide.
- Related: “If we get even one convert, it will be worth it.” Seriously, I’ve heard people say this. They don’t want to find an approach more winsome, more attractive (like Steps to Christ, for example), or more effective to put our name to. One convert for a billion books would be all they’d need to satisfy their souls.
- It’s making money for someone, somewhere. This last is cynical, to be sure, but I wouldn’t write it off as impossible. The people printing and mailing and distributing this aren’t doing it for free, you know. A billion dollars is a lot of money, and some of it is going to find its way into pockets—which makes it worth promoting like crazy by leaders with pockets.
Here’s the truth
The millions and millions of copies mailed out so far should have resulted in, I dunno, 10,000 converts? 1,000? Even 100?
I have yet to hear of a single conversion solely because The Great Controversy arrived in someone’s mailbox.
Go ahead. Google it. Even those who are promoting this project don’t make that claim.
I’ll tell you right now what you will find in your search. You’ll find people who are freaked out that some crazy religious cult is filling their mailboxes with anti-Catholic propaganda. They can make no sense of the claim that, in the era of nuclear threats and climate change and culture wars, the main thing they need in order to be saved is to join the church that keeps the Saturday Sabbath. And then, of course, that everyone they know will persecute them for it.
So most people will throw the book away. This is a fact. Everyone knows it. And indeed, it’s the sensible thing for them to do. (I hope they throw it away without finding out that this embarrassing attempt at evangelism is perpetrated by the same denomination that runs Loma Linda University.)
What you’re doing, Elder Ted Wilson and fellow Adventist conservatives, is vaccinating people against the Seventh-day Adventist Church by forcing upon them something that 99 out of 100 will find either annoying or (if they read it) repulsive.
Heck, I know this book well; I grew up with it; I understand its historical context—and I find it repulsive! A fearful, speculative, prejudicial anti-Catholic narrative is not the gospel. I have no stomach for it.
As for eschatology, Jesus said he will return. I don’t know when. You don’t know when. All we need to be ready for that event is to trust Jesus.
Will you take my dare?
So go ahead, General Conference: I dare you to do some actual market testing. Let us know how this billion dollars is going to benefit the church—more than it would if we would use it for education or healthcare or relief work or even a more attractive form of evangelism. Please.
And if you find that the churches in the cities that have received The Great Controversy mailings report that they’re suddenly standing room only and need extra ushers to carry out the offerings, I will gladly apologize.
But I’d be really, really surprised if you’ll take my dare. I think you don’t want to know that you’re throwing a billion dollars (and 8 million trees) into the rubbish bin.
Loren Seibold is a retired pastor, and Executive Editor of Adventist Today.