Biblical Theology Seeks to Take Russian-Speaking Churches by Storm

Outside the Box Strategy

Containing nine different time zones and nearly two times the size of the United States, the country of Russia is bigger than most of us can wrap our minds around. And yet, its population is less than half that of the U.S. Picture all the open land uninhabited by people in states like North Dakota, Nevada, and Alaska . . . and then multiply that many times over, and you’ll be getting close to imagining the landmass of Russia! Is it any wonder that Good News Publishing, based out of Samara, Russia, has trouble getting resources across the country to places of need?

Good News Publishing (GNP) was started in 2019 by two pastor friends, Arman Aubakirov and Roman Kuropatkin, and seeks to provide believers with biblically sound resources in the Russian language. But their strategy for distributing resources looks much different than the classic American marketing strategy. If GNP is to provide brothers and sisters in Christ with books, they have to think outside the box. As Arman says, “We think at the end of the day, the best marketing in Russia has to be at a local church level.”

Their strategy, therefore, is to focus on providing local churches with the highest quality Christian resources, in both content and design. Those churches then deploy those resources within their congregations. Crossway, through donor support to the Global Ministry Fund, has been blessed to partner with Good News Publishing to translate resources into Russian.

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The Key to a Reading Culture in Russia

Some of us in the West may be surprised to learn that, as a general rule, a majority of Russian pastors have some theological training and many have attended seminaries and Bible colleges. From these training experiences, they have access to many of the book resources they need to preach and care for their congregations. But while many pastors are equipped, Arman points out that they often don’t recognize that without pastoral leadership and prompting, their church members won’t start reading good books.

Unless the pastor himself is proactively working on developing a reading culture in his church, his flock is not going to be reading theologically sound books. They might not be reading anything, or they might be reading all kinds of things but the wrong things. In Russia, the culture of leadership is such that, overall, the level of respect to the pastors is very high. So having a pastor as a model, and even as a marketer in a way, is crucial if there is a chance for people to start picking books and reading them.

But pastors simply recommending books isn’t enough. Arman also realized that if he convinced pastors to encourage reading good books from the pulpit, congregants still likely wouldn’t be able to find them for purchase. In Russia, towns are often few and far between, which results in increased shipping costs that are often more expensive than the book itself.

By starting a program called Equip a Pastor, Good News Publishers has found the key to connecting with the congregation and getting key resources out to pastors and believers alike. Arman explains that “we’ve had close to 400 pastors go through this program. They join with us for 18 months and receive about 30 books. At the end of the program, we offer them help in starting bookshops within their local churches. I think we’ve, by now, helped about 130 to 150 churches start some kind of book ministry.”

The organization began this program before they even started publishing books. They did it to build a platform through which books could be provided in contexts where they would be most helpful. Several years into the ministry, Good News Publishers now releases 30 to 40 books per year, all either translated into or originally published in Russian. They’ve built their offerings to include titles covering many different theological topics, all carefully chosen by Arman and his team and based on the needs of Russian churches. One title covering a topic soon to appear on their list is a translation project in the works with Crossway for Thomas Schreiner’s Covenant and God’s Purpose for the World. Arman chose this title for a specific reason.

The Neglected Theological Topic

As he noted, “Of all theological topics, maybe biblical theology is the one that’s most neglected among the Russian speaking churches.” This is what originally drove Arman to invest in a series of translated biblical theology books for upcoming releases, along with his own personal introduction to biblical theology.

The first time I encountered biblical theology was through reading a book during an internship. . . . I could see that this is the way to read my Bible, but I had never heard this concept before from anybody. . . . And later on I saw how I could apply biblical theology to improve my preaching, especially from the Old Testament . . . . It’s one story—not separate stories—that culminates in Jesus Christ. I’m convinced that this is the best way to feed our flocks the gospel, to show from the text itself and to draw the connection to Jesus Christ.

Covenant and God’s Purpose for the World provides a biblical theological perspective through the lens of the covenants God makes with his people throughout Scripture. Arman chose this book as a way of helping brothers and sisters in Christ to understand the spectacular truths that God makes in each of the six covenants that connect directly to Jesus Christ.

Ultimately his goal, and the goal of Good News Publishers, is to provide the local church with resources to faithfully build up believers as they seek to know Jesus more every day. On their website, Arman and his colleague Roman Kuropatkin state, “We are deeply convinced that it pleases the Lord that his disciples of the present generation stand on the shoulders of the men of faith of past centuries, drawing from the treasury of books that have passed the test of time, as well as feeding on books of modern Christian authors.”¹

God has given Good News Publishers in Russia and Crossway in the United States a calling to proclaim the good news through the written word. He has led the two organizations to partner with one another and other like-minded publishers to take Bibles and book resources to those in need.

The Global Ministry Fund supports the translation work of other Crossway books, being published in diverse languages, such as Croatian, Marathi, and Bangla. We invite you to join us in this partnership to resource brothers and sisters around the world!

Please pray for the remainder of the translation project for Covenant and God’s Purpose for the World as it nears completion. Pray that the Lord would use this book to be a helpful guide to many pastors and lay believers throughout the Russian-speaking world.

Praise God for the opportunity for Good News Publishing to work on a new, essentially literal translation of the Bible, taken from the original Hebrew and Greek. And praise God for the opportunity for Crossway to partner in encouraging the team in this work. Pray for perseverance and joy for each of the translators as they faithfully do this work over the coming years.