About Bearing Precious Seed
Long before a missionary can place a Bible into someone's hands, somebody has to produce it. Paper has to be purchased. Pages have to be printed, folded, assembled, bound, packed, and eventually shipped thousands of miles from the place where the process began.
At Bearing Precious Seed, that entire process is viewed as ministry.
Operating through First Baptist Church of Milford, Ohio, Bearing Precious Seed has spent more than five decades printing the Word of God for missionaries and national pastors around the world. The presses may be in Ohio, but the ministry's sights have always extended far beyond Milford. Every Bible leaving the building is meant to continue traveling until Scripture reaches someone who needs it.
It Began in a Basement
The vision began forming during the late 1960s.
Don Fraser shared an idea with Dr. Charles Keen, pastor of First Baptist Church of Milford. They were troubled by how difficult it remained for people in many parts of the world to obtain Scripture, even when the Bible had already been translated into their language.
They began considering whether Bible publishing should be something the local church actively participated in rather than simply leaving to commercial publishers.
By 1973, the church was ready to try.
There wasn't an impressive printing facility waiting for them.
Their equipment included an old Multigraph 1250 press and a hand-operated paper cutter. A few hundred dollars helped get things moving, and the earliest New Testament pages came from a basement stairwell closet normally used to store flannel graphs.
The equipment was inadequate for the size of the vision.
They started anyway.
From Thousands to Millions
The little print shop didn't remain little for long.
In its first full year of production, BPS printed and shipped 12,000 Scripture portions.
As churches and individuals began supporting the work, better equipment gradually became possible. Production increased from thousands of Scriptures to hundreds of thousands.
Then came millions.
In 1977, Bearing Precious Seed printed its first complete English Bible. By September 2010, its 100 millionth copy of Scripture came off the press.
A decade later, the ministry crossed 200 million.
Today, BPS says its printing reaches more than 65 languages, with Scripture distributed through missionaries and churches across more than 130 countries.
The scale has changed enormously from that basement press, but the basic purpose hasn't.
Print God's Word and get it to people who need it.
The Bible Isn't the Product
One distinction matters deeply to Bearing Precious Seed.
It doesn't consider itself a bookstore.
BPS describes itself as a missionary-support printing ministry, and more than 95 percent of its printing capacity is devoted to ministry efforts abroad.
Scriptures produced for missionaries and national pastors are provided without charge.
That changes the economics of everything happening inside the print shop.
Millions of copies require enormous quantities of paper. Machinery has to operate and shipments eventually need to reach their destinations, yet the missionary receiving the Scriptures isn't supposed to receive an invoice along with them.
Christians and churches make that possible through financial support.
Someone can sponsor paper.
A church can participate in National Bible Publishing Month.
Even a folder filled with quarters becomes part of putting another Bible into someone's hands.
The giving happens here so the Scripture can be given away somewhere else.
You Can Put Your Hands on the Mission
Supporting Bible publishing doesn't only mean sending money.
Through Seedline, Bearing Precious Seed brings the work directly into local churches.
Printed Scripture pages are transported to participating congregations, where volunteers help collate, staple, trim, and prepare them for distribution.
That creates an unusually tangible missions experience.
A child can help assemble Scripture alongside a parent. Teenagers can participate with their church group. Retirees and families can sit together preparing copies of God's Word that may eventually be carried into another country.
They aren't watching missions happen from the sidelines.
Their fingerprints are literally part of the process.
What Happens After the Box Leaves Ohio?
Printing is only useful if the Scripture reaches someone.
BPS works with missionaries and churches that already have relationships within the communities receiving the materials.
Its El Paso ministry makes that connection especially visible.
Mission teams can participate in assembling Scripture and then travel into Mexico to help distribute God's Word directly.
The experience completes the journey.
Pages that began moving through printing equipment eventually become a Bible held by an individual.
Elsewhere, that same process happens through missionaries and national pastors who know the language and understand where Scripture is needed.
BPS doesn't need its name to be the important one at the end of that journey.
The Bible is what matters.
Reaching Languages That Still Need Scripture
Printing an existing translation solves only part of the world's Scripture-access problem.
Some languages still don't have the Bible.
That led BPS into another dimension of ministry through firstBible International, its Bible translation and publishing work.
The goal reaches toward people groups that have historically lacked access to Scripture in their own language.
Translation makes the words understandable.
Publishing puts those words into a form people can actually receive.
Missionaries and churches then carry them the rest of the way.
Each part supports the next.
Bearing Precious Seed
The ministry's name comes from Psalm 126:6 and the image of someone going out carrying precious seed before eventually returning with a harvest.
It's an appropriate picture for what happens in Milford.
The ministry can't know the story of every Bible after it leaves the building.
One may be read by a new believer.
Another might become a pastor's primary copy of Scripture.
A missionary could hand one to someone hearing the Gospel for the first time.
The people operating the presses may never meet those readers.
They don't have to.
Their responsibility is to keep sowing.
At the heart of Bearing Precious Seed is the conviction that publishing God's Word belongs within the missionary work of the Church. What started with an outdated press in a basement has grown into millions of Scriptures traveling across languages and borders, supported and assembled by Christians who believe everyone should have access to the Bible. The presses may run in Milford, but every page is printed with somewhere—and someone—far beyond Ohio in mind.
Mike Carruthers
