Winning others to Christ

I still have a fond attachment to a pocket-sized, burgundy-coloured Bible given to me and my classmates by the Gideons when I was at secondary school. Countless other people have found encouragement, inspiration and comfort from a Gideons Scripture, picked up and read for whatever reason in a hotel, hospital, or even the dentist's waiting room. But who are the people behind the Bibles? Sally Jarman tracked down Stephen Page, chairman of the South Oxfordshire branch of Gideons International, to find out what it means to be a modern day Gideon.

Asking Stephen Page about his introduction to the Gideons, I somehow didn't expect his answer to be 'through school, when I was 11, just like you'.  But it is from brief encounters like these, in places as diverse as schools, to prisons to cruise liners, that he says many thousands of people have come to know God. And it is this that inspires him still in his work with the association. 

The story of the Gideons began in Wisconsin in 1898, where two travelling salesmen were asked to share a room because their hotel was overbooked. One saw the other reading his Bible and soon they were reading and praying together and decided to start an association of Christian travelling businessmen.  Not surprisingly, given the origin of the association, the first Bibles were placed in hotels to which the men travelled.  They were left, then as now, without fanfare, in the belief that men and women should be able to find God in a non-confrontational way, when they were ready and want to take time to hear God for themselves. 

Today Gideons place scriptures all over the world - 2.1 every second of every day to be precise! In the UK alone each year more than 847,833 Bibles are distributed. And although they are left anonymously, inside each one are contact details of the national office. 

Stephen says: 'We get lots of messages from people telling how they have been blessed by a Gideon Bible, and some requesting help. They bear testimony to the way His love and care are revealed to people'. 

He recalls one email from a man who wrote: 'Although a Christian for 23 years, I went through a very bad patch a while ago and one night, having given up on God, he came to me to bring me back to him. I was on a cruise liner. Fortunately there was one of your Bibles in the side locker. I took it, held it to me for all I was worth, and then God took me through some Scriptures.' 

He is touched, also, by the effect on many young people when the association visits schools and colleges, just as he himself experienced. Already a Christian since exactly June 18, 1969, in Weston-super-Mare when he was six, and in a committed Brethren Assembly family (later Baptist as it had more activities to offer a growing family), the Gideon visit nevertheless had an effect on him: 'It made a great impact on my life...  over time quite a number of my friends gave their lives to the Lord and the Gideon Testaments really did play a part in opening the door to their conversions.' 

Later, as an adult working away from home and family he felt called to become involved: ‘In my previous job as a Machine Vision Engineer, too many weeks of the year were spent working in the United States. Having left a young family at home, feeling sad and downcast, on many occasions my heart was lifted on finding and reading from the Gideons Bibles found in my hotel room. The experience on many occasions of God's word touching my life in this way, convinced me of the value of this ministry. It's about scattering the seeds of God's word through the world, to change lives and communities for the better.'

Employed now as a Principal Engineer for a healthcare company based in Witney, with three teenage children, Stephen is actively involved at Faringdon Baptist Church as a Deacon (officer), worship leader and Youth Worship Band leader.  But he says also being a Gideon helps take his view of life beyond the local challenges of family, church and town, to a much larger world view:

'The image of footprints in the sand, of God carrying us during the time when we needed him, paints a beautiful picture of the God we love to serve, who reaches out and cares for people where they are struggling.

'For me it's important that as Gideons we go to places of mainstream life and place God's word for people to find help in times of need, in places such as schools, hospitals, cruise ships, prisons, and with nurses, doctors and the armed and emergency services.... It's a joy being in fellowship with and working together with a quarter of a million other Gideons and their wives across the world, in giving more than 65 million scriptures a year to achieve the Great Commission and our stated Mission of reaching men, women, boys and girls with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'

So how does his ministry fit into the family's week? He says: 'Practically it requires having evenings free for the monthly branch meeting and prayer meetings, and time for carrying out the duties of the post we hold, which could be anything from website officer, monitoring our websites, to International Officer preparing summary information for prayer in relation to our regular City Bible Blitz where hundreds of thousands of Bibles are distributed over a couple of weeks.'

As with any voluntary association, members can choose how far to be involved, but Stephen says his own experience has been that ‘the more we gives, in terms of time and energy, the more rewards we experience’. 

Uppermost though, he concludes, 'the greatest blessing comes in hearing testimonies of lives touched and changed as a result of reading God's word.

‘No other book on our planet can offer hope of eternal life and forgiveness of sin as demonstrated in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

To learn more about the Gideons International, or to enquire about having a speaker visit your church, please contact our National Office through our website at www.gideons.org.uk.