Images from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing remain indelibly etched in the minds of millions of people, who either attended the games or followed them closely on television.
Sid Hopkins, director of missions for Gwinnett Metro Baptist Association in Georgia, struck up conversations by wearing a vest filled with Olympic trading pins.There’s the grandeur of the opening ceremony and the quirkiness of the Bird’s Nest architecture. Michael Phelps winning an Olympic record eight gold medals. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt zooming to three gold medals and three world records.
As China extinguished the Olympic flame in the closing ceremony and handed off responsibility for the 2012 Olympics to the city of London, the 2008 Olympics were relegated to history. And history will most likely be kind to China for the way in which it hosted.
Some Southern Baptists who shared their faith in Christ during the Olympics, however, expect their efforts to echo not just throughout history, but throughout eternity.
“We began to remember how Lottie Moon left a legacy behind her in the areas she served, and that we now see that those areas are still the most heavily evangelized areas of China even today,” said Rhonda Boggs, director of global outreach at Immanuel Baptist Church in Highland, Calif. Boggs led a team of seven people from her church who spent a week in Beijing.
“So, then we thought, there are so many people here sharing Christ, that day may come that we will hear about Beijing turning to Christ and a revival sweeping the nation that they will pin to the fact of so many Christians sharing Christ during the Olympics,” she said.
Sid Hopkins, director of missions for Gwinnett Metro Baptist Association in Georgia, agreed.
“We’ll never know the impact of what can happen out of this kind of thing,” he said.
Hopkins was part of a team in Beijing working with the More than Gold ministry. One of the ministry’s leaders in Beijing, unnamed for security purposes, estimated more than 2,000 volunteers were on hand to share the gospel in China.
One of the ways they did that was through pin trading, a popular activity during the Olympics. Hopkins, for example, walked around wearing a vest that displayed dozens of Olympic pins. The Chinese people were not bashful about stopping him to examine the pins.
“The first day at the plaza area, I’ll bet I had my picture taken 500 times,” he said. “They just swarmed me.”
When handing out the More than Gold pins, volunteers used the colors to tell about Jesus.
Hopkins recalled one encounter he had with a young woman who served as an Olympic volunteer. The volunteers wore hats that Hopkins said were extremely difficult to acquire, because the volunteers to whom they were issued did not give them up easily.
“I shared with her, and she had tears in her eyes, and she was so thankful,” Hopkins said. “She took off her volunteer hat and gave it to me. I said, ‘No, I cannot take your hat. It’s too precious.’ She said, ‘But you have shared such good things with me. You must have my hat.’ And she gave me her hat. Then I had tears in my eyes.”