“The Great Controversy” Comes to the Olympics

by Björn Karlman | 6 August 2024 |

Paris is secular, even for a European capital. People are generally repulsed by or at the very least indifferent to, religion. It’s notoriously difficult to evangelize the city. But that doesn’t stop Christian groups (including Adventists) from trying—especially with the 2024 Olympics in full swing.

I was intrigued by news of a large-scale Adventist mission campaign during the Paris Olympics, so I decided to go check it out.

Almost as soon as I stepped off my delayed and cramped July 31 flight from London, I was subjected to an audacious evangelizing attempt on the train from the airport into Paris. Over the span of about two minutes, at least three campaigners leapt onto the train and hastily gave out tracts, including one proclaiming “Le Seigneur Jesu Va Revenir” (The Lord Jesus Will Return).

They delivered loud evangelical-style proclamations and were about to disembark at the next station when, curious about their emphasis on the second coming, I managed to ask which church was behind their initiative. The Adventists, perhaps?

“No, we’re Christian,” came the response before they jumped off again. My stumbling French aside, this interaction highlighted the low brand awareness of Adventists in France.

IMAGE: My welcome gift to Paris

“The Whole World is Coming to Paris”

While Adventist outreach efforts during the Olympics don’t involve tactical train jumping, they are very much focused on distributing printed material.

Well in advance of my visit I’d been informed that over 100 international Adventist volunteers, including a group of about 40 students from Brazil, were taking part in the Adventist evangelism effort in Paris which had been organized mainly by Adventist Laymen’s Services Industries (ASI) France-Belgium with support from Adventist World Radio (AWR).

“Given that the ‘whole world’ is coming to Paris during the period of the Olympics, we want to take this opportunity to execute a major mission campaign,” stated the campaign website coordinating the July 21 to August 11 Adventist mission effort.

Base Camp

A large part of the ASI mission participants was based at a campsite in Bagneux-sur-Loing, a town about an hour south of Paris if you know what you are doing navigation-wise. I, on the other hand, had bad luck with a train cancellation in Paris and a subsequent ill-advised decision to walk to the campsite from a local train station. 

Long and sweaty story short, I got lost and what should have been a fairly picturesque walk turned into a 90-minute backpack and tent-laden slog under the blazing summer sun while mosquitos feasted on me. I stumbled into camp hours later than I’d predicted and was cheerfully greeted by one of the organizers who showed me a spot to pitch my tent before joining the group that was finishing dinner and about to debrief on the day’s experiences handing out literature in key spots around Paris.

IMAGE: There was little doubt I’d finally found the right camp plot.

The volunteers were upbeat and shared testimonies and words of encouragement during the debrief. They told stories of their interactions with people. Over the last several days the team had been distributing Ellen White’s The Great Controversy, as well as The Desire of Ages, and, more recently, a range of GLOW (short for Giving Light to Our World) evangelistic tracts. Predictably, most of those approached had refused the material but there were also success stories detailing what had worked. As I started to speak to the volunteers one-on-one and in small groups, it was clear that the crowd favorite as far as materials for distribution was The Great Controversy.

IMAGE: The volunteers debrief after a busy day of literature distribution.

The Great Controversy

Living in Western Europe (if post-Brexit Britain can still lay claim to being part of it) I’m used to quite a lot of Adventist member resistance to The Great Controversy distribution. The book is seen by many as divisive, anti-Catholic and poor PR for the denomination. This was not a view shared by the volunteers at the campsite. I was curious why they were so enthused by the book, so I asked them to share their views.

IMAGE: Organizer Hannah Dehelt on the train to Paris ahead of a day of GLOW tract distribution.

“We (Adventists) in Europe have a very ecumenical outlook and this book is anything but ecumenical,” said Belgian-born Hannah Dehelt, who studies at UNASP, the Adventist university in São Paulo, Brazil, and was instrumental in bringing the group of about 40 Brazilians to support the campaign. “It uses very cross language… specifically about the Catholic Church. If you want to be ecumenical, you can’t say that. If you are going to be distributing this book, you are obviously going to be associated with it. So you can’t be ecumenical.”

IMAGE: Max Suekert 

Max Suekert, who is based in Angrogna, Italy, but is originally from Vermont, is a veteran when it comes to literature distribution. He explained that in France The Great Controversy is much more readily accepted by people than The Desire of Ages, as the name and image of Jesus on the cover of the latter’s French version is not a crowdpleaser in secular France. A number of the volunteers I spoke to said the same thing. 

IMAGE: The French language versions of the Ellen White books distributed.

“The Great Controversy looks a little bit more neutral,” he said. Max tells people the book is about “the history of liberty of conscience, and if they have more time, I say it covers what’s been happening the last 2,000 years… and what the Bible says is coming soon, how liberty of conscience is being threatened.”

I asked Max if he gets pushback about the book being perceived as anti-Catholic, and he says he doesn’t. He said the French are generally anti-religion, anti-Catholic, and anti-Christian, and are not offended at the book’s contents. 

When, in a pre-event Zoom call I asked about the significance of distributing The Great Controversy, Vincent Dehelt, key organizer of the campaign and General VP for ASI France-Belgium, explained: “If people have questions, in what book are they going to find answers to the questions they have? Are they going to find them in The Desire of Ages, or are they going to find them in The Great Controversy? To me, the answer is obvious. I love The Desire of Ages. When I preach, most of the time it’s based on The Desire of Ages, but when it comes to mission work, when it comes to answering questions that are raised, then we need The Great Controversy. The questions they ask aren’t about Jesus; it’s about what’s going on (in the world). Why are things happening the way they are happening?”

The Campaigner mindset

I talked to Henk Muller who is originally from the Netherlands but lives in Romania. At 70 years of age, Henk is a man of action; he started an orphanage in Romania and is running other humanitarian projects there now. He’s very outgoing and expressive and had spontaneously led the group at the camp in song after their feedback session on my first evening with them.

While there are campaigners that push themselves to see how many pieces of literature they can distribute in an hour, Henk is far too social for this approach.

“It’s great to meet people. I pray sometimes with the people; I talk with them. I’m not just handing out flyers like a robot,” he said, mimicking the sound of what can only be described as a highly efficient pamphlet distribution machine. He said he wants what he gives to people to be relevant to them. 

“I cannot distribute thousands of [GLOW tracts]; I can only distribute 50 a day,” he confided. He had also composed a song to go with the health tract he’d been giving out so that he could entertain people at the same time. He said passersby smile when they hear the song and are more likely to take his tract. He added that kids sometimes come and play his guitar, something that parents “love,” prompting them to take pictures and, much to Henk’s amusement, the parents even give him money.

“We all have a good spirit here; it builds you up, it fills your batteries, you know,” said Henk, adding that he would encourage others to join similar efforts.

Henk’s approach to distributing The Great Controversy is disarmingly straightforward: “I say it’s a book about God and history, and it’s read by millions. And it’s free. I smile, and they take it.”

IMAGE: Henk and Hannah Muller

Henk’s 17-year-old daughter, Hannah, recently got baptized and was also working on the campaign.

“When I first came here and I didn’t know anybody, I was a bit nervous,” she admitted, quickly adding that she felt she had made friends for life through meeting and working with the rest of the crew.

“It was really exhausting, but I feel like it was really worth it because imagine saving people and when you get to heaven, they say, ‘You actually brought me to Jesus.’”

Hannah said that she distributed books and tracts “but also love and the character of Jesus.” She said that some people came back to her for books after they took one of her tracts and that they congratulated her for putting herself out there.

Generational Reservations 

 

IMAGE: L-R Lea Jelen, Noa Stanciu, and Lana Jelen

Noa Stanciu from Belgium said this was her first time distributing literature, and she felt thrown in the deep end. 

“It was very character-building because it was very much out of my comfort zone,” said Noa, who said she enjoyed the experience and met interesting people. She said the easiest GLOW tract to distribute had a picture of the Olympics on it.

“The original goal with this outreach was to have a lot of music and health expos,” said Noa, explaining that security risks over terrorism threats during the Olympics meant these activities had not been allowed by Paris authorities.

“I myself am a musician, so if I would choose to do outreach I would do it through music,” she said when I asked her what she would do differently if she were to do it all again.

Barring that, she feels having conversations with people alongside the distribution of literature is far better than speedy distribution that feels like “advertising” to her.

“I had a great experience even if it was just two days,” said Lea Jelen, Noa’s friend, who is originally Slovenian but lives in Austria. Lea said she had done book distribution before, both in Austria and Slovenia. What was less familiar was GLOW tract distribution. 

“I wasn’t used to this ‘Go, go, go,’ said Lea, describing the often faster pace of tract distribution during the Paris Olympics. She preferred having conversations and building relationships with those she gave material, something that was a lot less possible when you were rapidly distributing tracts to a crowd.

“I sometimes felt like I was part of an advertisement team, and some people would come to us because they thought we had valuable information about the Olympics,” Lea said, speaking of her experience distributing a tract with a cover depicting sport. “In a way, sometimes I felt I was misleading them as I was giving out spiritual literature.”

Lea’s sister, Lena, said she had done door-to-door literature work before but that the distribution style at the Paris campaign was new to her. She said she preferred conversations and the “actual interest” of people she met this way. She concurred with her sister’s view that the sports cover of one of the GLOW tracts felt misleading.

“There was a young person who was like ‘What’s this about?’ and I said, ‘The Olympics and a little about life,’ and he turned it over and saw the Bible there and was like ‘and about God… but OK, I’ll take it.’”

All three of the friends felt that The Great Controversy was a good book for distribution. “It’s very relevant to the times we live in,” said Noa. 

“I think more and more there is a trend among the youth of people going to God,” added Noa, saying that a struggle between good and evil is depicted across popular media.

“The Great Controversy is exactly about this so it puts the finger on the wound,” she said.

Maxing Out

While nobody I spoke to pushed back on the importance of making a personal connection during literature distribution, there were definitely some that found it exciting and rewarding to maximize the amount of material distributed.

IMAGE: L-R Niko and I snap a selfie. We enjoyed the fact we were both wearing Philippines-inspired T-shirts.

Germany-based Nikola Gonda (he goes by Niko) said the Paris literature distribution had been the “best experience of his life.” Niko is an obvious extravert and said he never has problems approaching people. He does door-to-door work and even some street preaching. I pointed out that he was the opposite of his more reserved friend, Natanael Denbaes from Belgium, who was listening in to the interview. Natanael said he decided to make a contribution to the effort by helping to transport the books to the distribution points, as the actual distribution was not for him.

Niko said God saved him from a life on the streets and brought him to the Adventist Church, the “church prophesied by God in the Bible.” After the Bible, which he sees as foundational “light,” he considers the writings of Ellen White “more precious than gold or silver.”

Niko said it amazes him to meet some Adventists that are not as enthusiastic about Ellen White and prefer to see her as only being relevant to her time. “I say, ‘No, they are for all time; the principles are for all time.’”

Niko enjoys making connections with people but also gets a thrill out of speed distribution of tracts at large events like a soccer game. His eyes lit up as he told me about it. He’s a natural promoter.

Hitting the Pavement

While I took advantage of the down time at the camp and on the train into Paris to do my interviews with volunteers, I was also eager to see how the actual work took place. 

So on August 1, I joined the camp group bound for the central meeting point near the Paris Gare du Nord train station. Frustratingly, our group was immobilized as our metro train stopped mid-tunnel for an entire hour before having to reverse to our departure station. 

When we finally got to Gare du Nord, additional volunteers not staying at the camp joined the larger group there for a devotional thought and some distribution coaching by AWR’s Nelson Ernst. Before joining AWR, Nelson had been instrumental in coining the brand “GLOW” for short form tracts. His advice to the volunteers was aimed at maximizing the effectiveness of their efforts by careful positioning in large crowds and crowded entry points to popular venues across the city.

I tagged along with the group that was going to work the Arc de Triomphe area. When we got there, part of the group had already arrived and were experiencing some success.

IMAGE: An interested passerby picks up The Great Controversy.

Patience was definitely the name of the game though, as, for the most part, people said “No.” An optimistic summary of ‘yes’ vs. ‘no’ responses I heard was 20/80. To their credit, the volunteers persisted for hours (3 hours a day, generally).

Image: This volunteer joked that nobody took the literature when I was taking pictures.

I went looking for two other teams of volunteers at the Louvre and the commercial area of Montparnasse but completely struck out on finding them, as the areas were large and team leaders were authorized to move their teams to different locations if they made more sense.

There was an enormous amount of printed material on hand for distribution in this campaign. There were 150,000 Great Controversy books alone (all funded by private donations), and AWR had brought one million GLOW tracts.

As Vincent put it: “If God is making sure we have so many books and so many people are coming, it’s because something is going to happen.”

The volunteers delivered. Although organizers conceded that some material would be left over for future distribution, they expected about 500,000 GLOW tracts to be handed out by the end of the campaign on August 11. When I flew home on Friday, August 2, the team had surpassed the 350,000 mark a few days prior.

Where to next?

Whether or not you are a fan of literature distribution or The Great Controversy, it’s hard not to admire the faith and energy of this group of volunteers. At the camp team members were already inviting each other to join upcoming distribution campaigns. I overheard a conversation about an upcoming visit of Pope Francis to Belgium. An Adventist literature distribution campaign is being assembled to give printed content to those that come to see the Pope.

“Maybe he’ll read our material and convert,” said a volunteer. He was joking, but only just.

Björn Karlman is the Executive Director of Adventist Today.

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