Resourcing the Global Church through Indigenous Publishing

the Global Church Through INDIGENOUS PUBLISHING

THE NEED FOR INDIGENOUS PUBLISHING

Unlike the United States, most countries around the world have an extreme lack of sound biblical resources in their native tongue. While resources that advance the prosperity gospel and charismatic theology are surprisingly common, believers are hard-pressed to find theological resources that help them rightly understand and interpret the word. Many of our member schools have launched their own indigenous publishing ministries to address these needs, but when they began to run into licensing, publishing, and printing hurdles that took valuable time away from training, TMAI’s home office looked for a way to get involved.

In 2020, we established the Global Publications Department (GPD) to relieve our schools of their burdens and still make sure they get great books. Led by Rick Kress, the GPD now streamlines the publication and distribution of indigenous biblical resources for all our schools around the world. Training men for ministry requires solid biblical resources, and the GPD aims to get more of them into the hands of Christians wherever they worship.

COVER Students in class at Evangelical Ministries of the Americas (MEDA) in Honduras

BELOW Arabic translation of the Philippians MacArthur New Testament Commentary

Student from Christ Seminary in South Africa studies for class

TMAI'S GLOBAL PUBLISHING OUR MISSION

To help our schools and students publish the biblical resources needed to better serve their pastors, churches and communities.

GLOBAL PUBLISHING OBJECTIVES

Streamline the process of acquiring translation rights for biblical resources for our member schools and partners.

Steward

the translation rights for resources written by John MacArthur.

Prioritize exegetical resources preachers

Prioritize exegetical and theological resources for pastors and preachers

Cultivate indigenous authors and publishers who generate Christian resources in their own contexts.

Refine the nature of Christian publishing to be driven primarily by the Great Commission rather than by profit.

EQUIPPING

INDIGENOUS AUTHORS

The goal of TMAI Training Centers around the world is to train up indigenous believers to serve as the next generation of church leaders and teachers. One aspect of that is to equip men to write theologically sound resources in their native languages for the benefit of their own indigenous communities. One example of this is Dr. Benedikt Peters, a German national who is currently teaching students at an extension site of the European Bible Training Center (EBTC) based in Berlin.

Dr. Peters studied Greek, Hebrew, and General Linguistics at the University of Zurich, and went on to earn his Ph.D from The Master's Seminary in Los Angeles, California. After working for a Christian publishing house for several years, Dr. Peters now serves a local church in Arbon, Switzerland, teaches classes for EBTC's Master of Divinity program, and continues to author numerous theological books.

Dr. Peters embodies the kind of writing ministry that many of our students could join him in. And because disciples become like their teachers (Matt 10:25), we're excited to see what kinds

of authors the Lord could raise up through Dr. Peters and the many other professors around the world who are helping to lead His Church into the future through writing.

Publications by Benedikt Peters

Peacemaker: What We Can Learn from George Whitefield and John Wesley

The Unsearchable Riches of Christ

The Holy Spirit

Commentaries on John, Zechariah, Job, Romans, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, Jude, and Psalms and more.

Dr. Benedikt Peters speaks to a local congregation

GLOBAL PUBLISHING

KEY INITIATIVES

Translating the Essential MacArthur Library—42 Volumes

This series includes resources that are specifically designed to help believers understand and teach Scripture, the most important resource for any pastor or layperson. Our current goal is to translate this into German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Croatian, Albanian, Chinese, Hebrew, Portuguese, French, Armenian, Malay, Farsi, and Burmese.

MacArthur Study Bible & MacArthur Bible Commentary

MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series—33 Vols.

Biblical Doctrine & Essential Christian Doctrine

The Master’s Plan for the Church

MacArthur Pastoral Library—4 Vols.

Preaching . Pastoral Ministry . Counseling . Evangelism

Achieving Widespread Print-on-Demand Capabilities

When our schools acquire print systems and establish a publishing presence, sound resources become far more accessible for pastors and congregations in their regions.

Harnessing Advanced Technology

We aim to implement advanced translation software, construct digital libraries, and utilize other technologies to streamline publishing efforts and make biblical resources more accessible to the global Church.

Streamlining Licensing Requests

It's vital that we work directly with US publishers so that our TMAI partners on the field can focus on translating and training, rather than managing logistics and contracts.

Exploring Fundraising Opportunities

To help our teams most, we want to continue seeking opportunities for the body of Christ to fund future translation projects and cover costs for licensing, translating, publishing, printing, and distributing these resources.

Spanish translations of Biblical Doctrine and the MacArthur Pastoral Library, which are some of the key resources in the Essential MacArthur Library

MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS & UPCOMING PROJECTS

Looking Forward

Since its inception in 2020, the GPD has signed 149 contracts to begin translation work in 29 different languages, including:

Knowing God, J.I. Packer

Vietnamese

Preaching the Psalms, Steve Lawson

Armenian

MacArthur Bible Commentary—OT

Polish

Romans Commentary, Thomas Schreiner

Russian

Essential Christian Doctrine, John MacArthur

Burmese

Grasping God's Word, J. Scott Duvall & J. Daniel Hayes

Arabic &

Biblical Doctrine

11 Completed Translations

French, Korean, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, Czech, German, Italian, Arabic, Polish, Russian

Recently Completed Arabic, Polish, Russian

In-Progress Translations

Albanian

Recently Published

Expository Studying, Joel James Italian

Only Jesus, John MacArthur Armenian

When There Are No Easy Answers, John Feinberg

Russian

Twelve Ordinary Men, John MacArthur

Indonesian

Keeping Your Balance, Pam Hardy Italian

Basics of Biblical Greek Workbook, Robert Mounce Russian

COLLABORATION GLOBAL

TMAI collaborates with like-minded ministries around the world who all desire to provide the global Church with solid, biblical resources. These partner ministries seek to share lessons learned from their experience in foreign publishing, and connect each other with trusted translators and workers in the field. TMAI is networking with 20+ partner ministries, each of which have a unique ability to reach and resource the global church. Within this network, TMAI is working to provide students, graduates, pastors, and church members with resources that help them live out the truth of the gospel.

A selection of the Biblical Doctrine translations. In total, Biblical Doctrine has been translated into 11 different languages through publishing ministries around the world

THROUGH GLOBAL PUBLISHING PARTNER WITH TMAI

Intercede

Jesus, after telling His disciples that the fields are ripe for harvest, told them to “beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.” Prayer is still the greatest need today. We invite you to join us in praying for our publishing and translation efforts as we seek to put solid biblical resources in the hands of believers around the world.

Introduce

You can play a significant role in TMAI’s publishing ministry by introducing us to others who might have expertise in publishing, or who are interested in translation work.

Invest

Financial gifts are a tangible way to participate in this exciting ministry. If you are interested in supporting a specific translation project, or the work of the GPD, contact us at:

TMAI is committed to fulfilling the Great Commission by training indigenous church leaders to be approved pastor-teachers, able to equip their churches to make biblically sound disciples. Our strategic initiative into global publishing aims to fill one of the largest gaps in training the global Church by providing sound biblical resources for pastors and church leaders in their own languages.

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