Sid 'The Pin Man' Hopkins makes Christ known at the Olympics
By Adam Miller
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| North American Mission Board missionary Sid "The Pin Man" Hopkins has made pin trading an evangelistic opportunity at every Olympic Games since 1996. Photo by Adam Miller |
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With pins from all over the world adorning hat, jacket, vest and lanyard, Sid Hopkins approaches people with pins and the Gospel at the
Bridgeport SkyTrain station during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Photo by Adam Miller |
Barely noticeable on a lapel, a pin carries weight at the Olympic Games. This is why Sid “The Pin Man” Hopkins stands near an escalator at the Bridgeport SkyTrain station in downtown Vancouver—his vest, hat, coat and lanyard form a mosaic of pins from around the world.
“I have 150 pins on me and several thousand in a suitcase I keep back at the church,” said Hopkins, a North American Mission Board missionary and Director of Missions for Gwinnett Metro Baptist Association in Lawrenceville, Ga.
Olympic pins originated in Athens, Greece at the 1896 Summer Games as a way to identify the athletes, but for Sid “The Pin Man” Hopkins it began 100 years later during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta—his first Olympic games. Sid does not trade pins for profit. He has a much greater purpose.
At the Beijing Olympics, he says, his pins would attract hundreds of people a day.
“They’d come up to me three and four at a time, I would trade with them, give them a More Than Gold pin, and use it to share the Gospel,” he said. “I got to share the Gospel literally about a thousand times in eight days there.”
Over the course of the last week and a half pins have opened conversations with Olympic tourists and Vancouver residents on buses, trains and just walking down the street.
On a recent bus ride he used a pin to share the Gospel with a Hindu man.
“I gave him a pin and a New Testament. I marked the Gospel of John. He promised to read it,” said Hopkins. “He was so grateful.”
Including the 2010 Winter Olympics, Sid has made 14 Olympic Games, earning the nickname “Pin Man” from an Italian television station in Torino and making him a legend to Olympic enthusiasts worldwide.
“One reason I got so much traffic in Beijing was that people wanted a picture with the Pin Man,” said Hopkins.
Pin trading is a side business for some. The serious traders carry folios of them everywhere they go, unzipping and laying out their wares on street corners asking prices upwards of $20 for pins that were initially free.
To receive a pin that’s decades old, or even a brand new More Than Gold pin, seems like an immense gift.
As traffic picks up at the Bridgeport escalator, Hopkins approaches a man he’d seen earlier that day to follow up with him. “He’s a serious trader,” he says. Later he approaches a young girl in a wheelchair, pulls a pin off his jacket, and pins it on her. The lady pushing the wheelchair is elated.
“I’ve got pins from all over the world, and I’ve traded with people from everywhere,” said Hopkins. “You don’t always get to see the seed come to fruition, but whether it’s sharing a pin here or hospitality there, you’re sowing a lot of seeds and they’re going all over the world.”
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