BUDAPEST, Hungary — More than 1,200 Adventurers and Pathfinders from the Trans-European Division (TED) gathered at the Europa Congress Center in Budapest, from April 10 to 12, 2025, for the divisional finals of the Adventurer and Pathfinder Bible Experience, known by the acronym ABE/PBE. The information was released by the Adventist News Network (ANN), the Adventist Church's news agency, and by the TED itself.
The gathering is the high point of a Bible quiz that begins in the clubs and rises through stages up to the division level. In Budapest, according to ANN, 43 of the 46 qualified Adventurer teams took part in the assessment on Saturday morning, and two of them reached a perfect score. In the afternoon, 80 Pathfinder teams were tested on the biblical passages assigned for the cycle.
What the Bible Experience is and how you reach the finals
The Bible Experience — called ABE among the Adventurers and PBE among the Pathfinders — is a team Bible quiz. Each group studies a set of texts defined for the year and, on assessment day, answers questions that call for careful reading, memory, and understanding of the passages. It is a study activity, not an elimination competition: the focus stated by the organization is on the young people's deep engagement with the Bible.
The quiz is organized into levels. It begins in the local clubs and advances through regional and union stages until it reaches the division finals — in this case, the Trans-European Division, which brings together Adventist churches across much of Europe and other regions administratively linked to it. Reaching the divisional level, therefore, means having passed through several earlier rounds.
For the Pathfinder reader in Brazil, the comparison is worth making: here the equivalent activity is the Bible Experience conducted within the South American Division (DSA), with the same logic of team Bible study and qualifying stages. The Budapest event is the European version of that same concept.
The numbers from Budapest
According to the Adventist News Network, the Adventurers' assessment took place on Saturday morning, April 12, and brought together 43 of the 46 teams that had qualified. Two Adventurer teams finished with a perfect score. In the afternoon, it was the turn of the 80 Pathfinder teams to be assessed on the cycle's biblical texts.
Counting participants, leaders, and families, the gathering exceeded 1,200 people, according to the figures released by the division. The chosen venue was the Europa Congress Center, in the Hungarian capital, between April 10 and 12.
| Data | Number |
|---|---|
| Total participants | More than 1,200 |
| Adventurer teams assessed | 43 of 46 qualified |
| Adventurer teams with top score | 2 |
| Pathfinder teams assessed | 80 |
| Baptism requests at the event | 13 |
| Total baptisms tied to PBE in 2025 | 180 |
Clubs from all over Europe and guests from abroad
The event brought together Adventurer and Pathfinder clubs from several countries of the Trans-European Division. In addition to the European participants, the finals welcomed guest teams from outside the division: according to the Adventist News Network, guests from Romania and Kenya were present. The presence of an African group at a European finals gives a sense of the international reach the activity has acquired.
This multinational profile is nothing new for the TED. In previous editions, the divisional finals had already passed through Athens, Greece, in 2023, and through Schiedam, in the Netherlands, in 2024, always gathering clubs from different nations. Budapest, in 2025, continued that rotation of host cities across Europe.
The choice of the Hungarian capital also carries symbolic weight. Hungary lies in the heart of Central Europe and is a historic meeting point between peoples of the continent's east and west — a setting that helps explain the variety of languages and clubs seen in the convention center's hallways over the three days.
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Even before the assessment began, the visiting clubs took the message outside the convention center. According to the Adventist News Network, members distributed more than 100 copies of the book 'Steps to Christ,' by Ellen White, in Budapest and in other European cities along the way to Hungary.
'Steps to Christ' is one of the author's most widely distributed books and sums up, in short chapters, the central invitation of the Adventist faith. Handing out copies at stopping points during the trip turns the journey to the event into part of the missionary activity itself — a common practice among Adventist clubs, which tend to pair trips and camps with some kind of service to the community.
For the Brazilian Pathfinder, the gesture is familiar: distributing literature, collecting food, or providing community service are activities that go hand in hand with the recreational and study side of the movement, both here and in Europe.
Thirteen baptism requests and the 2025 tally
The most notable moment in the official accounts came at the close of Saturday's program. According to the Adventist News Network, thirteen young people responded to the day's message by requesting baptism. With that, the total number of baptisms tied to PBE activities throughout 2025 reached 180.
This figure helps explain why the organization insists that the Bible Experience is not just a knowledge quiz. Immersion in the biblical texts over months of preparation, combined with the atmosphere of the gathering, tends to result in personal decisions of faith — and the division makes a point of counting that spiritual effect alongside the competition's numbers.
Baptism, in the Adventist tradition, is a voluntary decision generally made in adolescence or later, after a period of study. Seeing teenagers request baptism in the context of a club activity is, for the leaders, confirmation that the Bible study required by the quiz serves a purpose that goes beyond the score.
What this says to the Brazilian Pathfinder
The Budapest finals show a Pathfinder movement with the same DNA on different continents. The ages, the uniforms, and the organizational details change from division to division, but the structure is recognizable: younger Adventurers and teenage Pathfinders, gathered in teams, studying the Bible and pairing the activity with community service and decisions of faith.
For those who take part in the Bible Experience in Brazil, the European news works as a mirror. The same quiz that leads clubs to study entire chapters of the Bible during the year here in the South American Division moves, on the other side of the Atlantic, more than a thousand young people to a convention center in Budapest. It is the same idea, adapted to each region.
With Athens in 2023, Schiedam in 2024, and Budapest in 2025, the Trans-European Division has established the Bible Experience finals as an annual traveling gathering. The expectation now is to watch where the next edition will take the European clubs — and how many new baptism requests the study of the Bible will bring with it.