Seventh-day Adventists in Germany are planning a year-long effort to hand out 3 million invitations to study the Bible—part of a global effort by the world church to distribute 1 billion similar invitations before mid-2004. Günther Machel, president of the church in south Germany, reports that they will launch the nationwide campaign in March, under the motto “Win people for Jesus Christ and the Bible.”

The church’s International Bible Study Institute, in Darmstadt, will play a key role in following up responses to these 3 million invitations. For more than 50 years, the IBSI has offered free correspondence courses to study the Bible. The basic course, “Start ins Leben” (“Start to live”) has been translated into eight languages and is used in 15 countries.

According to Dr. Rolf Pöhler, president of the church in north Germany, the goal of 3 million means that each church member will have to personally distribute about 100 invitation cards. He says the effort will be supported by newspaper ads “advertising openly and directly for Jesus and the Bible.”

Past experience in Germany has shown that advertising in the national media can play an important part in attracting people to study the Bible. Matthias Müller, the recently appointed manager of the Seventh-day Adventist Media Center in Darmstadt, says advertising will complement distribution effort for the invitations. “Since we began advertising openly and directly for Jesus through newspaper ads, the number of students of the Bible correspondence school has markedly increased,” he says, citing a 20 percent increase in the number of active students last year. 

The IBSI operates from the Adventist Media Center in Darmstadt. It currently offers 10 different Bible study courses; three of these also available online, and one in the Russian language.