From 1996 till 2003 we wore out two copiers printing gospel material and invitations to our church. This was not cost effective and the print quality was poor.
In 2003 I bought a new Risograph printer. This was much more cost effective and the print quality was very good. From 2003 to the beginning of 2014 we printed and distributed 1,089,165 pages of material that was both evangelistic and apologetic in nature.
From 2014 till July 20, 2016 I had about 200,000 tracts printed in color. The last batch of 60,000 tracts was printed in the spring of 2016.
By July 20, 2016 we had distributed more than 20,000. On that date the Russian Administration enacted a law stating that evangelism outside the church walls was an act of aggression and terrorism. This brought an end to my print ministry in Russia.
MORE ABOUT THE PRINT MINISTRY IN RUSSIA
GETTING STARTED
I moved my family to St Petersburg, Russia April 26, 1996. My goal was to plant and register a church. I began working with several men who also expressed interest in the same. The several dwindled to two, but my focus didn’t change.
A COPIER
We needed to make and distribute invitations to our Bible studies. To do this I bought a copy machine that promised to print 22 pages per minute. It actually printed 17 pages per minute.
At this point we decided to include our invitations into the new tracts we were printing. As of yet I was unable to read Russian. I found some tracts and asked my Russian friends if they were any good. These men were not Bible students. They had never seen quality, informative tracts, so they didn’t have any idea whether they were good or not. All we could do was start with what was available.
KEY VERSE
I would have to write and print my own material. My key verse in the print ministry was John 16:8. It says that when the Holy Spirit has come he will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and coming judgment.
FRUSTRATION
Russians are highly literate. They pride themselves on good literature.
I remember finding a tract I thought may be good and handed it to a man on a bus. He gladly accepted it and immediately began editing the material. He continued to work on the material until it was time for him to get off the bus. As he was leaving, he handed me the tract and explained that he had edited as much as he could in the timeframe given. And showed me all the grammatical mistakes that were in the tract.
I was dumbfounded. I am sure I did not thank him for his effort. My takeaway, there’s lots of room for improvement.
MORE FRUSTRATION
When the first copy machine wore out I bought another one exactly like it. The old one was used for spare parts. Our production had increased dramatically because we were writing and printing tracts according to the questions that were asked while doing evangelism. Our material was both evangelistic and apologetic in nature. By 2003 the second machine wore out. I was frustrated with the print quality and cost per copy.
WOO HOO!!!
So I bought a Risograph that printed 139 pages per minute. It was brand new and cost $3000. The quality was much better and production increased dramatically. The copy machines were no match for the Risograph. It was a sight!
By 2014 the Risograph was used less and less because we were having our material printed in color. We had printed 1,089,165 pages of material with that machine.
That sounds like a lot of paper. But we printed on both sides so that was only 50,000 sheets of paper per year. An average of 1000 printed sheets per week printed on both sides. There are 2500 sheets per box. So we printed well over 400 boxes of paper on the Risograph.
July 20, 2016
I do not know exactly how much printing was done in color. In the spring I had printed 60,000 new tracts and had distribute more than 20,000 by July 20, 2016. On that day President Putin declared any evangelism outside the walls of a church an act of aggression and terrorism. My evangelistic efforts immediately came to an end.