Pastor Wayne Sehmish, senior pastor of Good Shepherd Baptist Church from 1995-2006, is a man of great vision and leadership.  God gave him a vision that location-relevant and cultural-sensitive Gospel literature in native languages was greatly needed in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he developed a burden for the printed word through an association with the late Bro Sid Hunter of Evangelistic Literature Enterprise (ELE) and Fellowship Tract League.

In 1999, Pastor Sehmish realised this vision when Good Shepherd Baptist Church procured a second-hand printing press and Southland Baptist Press was born.  A second printing press was soon later. As the ministry grew, the Lord provided equipment such as a guillotine and paper folding machines.

Early endeavours include printing spot colour gospel tracts for our “Jerusalem”, i.e. for Good Shepherd Baptist Church and other churches of like faith in our area.  Several thousand artboard covers were printed and then stapled to imported John & Romans signatures before being cut and trimmed into booklets.  We also tried our hand at printing purpose-designed full-colour (CMYK) church flyers and booklets.

We soon found our niche in printing and shipping out simple Gospel tracts.  Our library of 1-colour and 2-colour English tracts are joined by a growing collection of foreign language tracts we designed for the mission field.  Languages include Pidgin (Papua New Guinea), Cebuano (The Philippines), Tetum (East Timor), Bembe (Zambia), Romanian (Romania) and Japanese (Japan).

At the time of writing (August 2010), some 40million tracts have been printed and sent out since our inception.  We’re thrilled that the Lord has blessed us with an increase each year (with an exception for 2008).

Pastor Sehmish’s burden for the Asian region eventually resulted in the Lord moving him to Thailand as a missionary in 2006.  You may catch up with Pastor Sehmish at The Simple Truth.

Our current Senior Pastor, Pastor Nathan Lloyd, is equally passionate about seeing this ministry grow to meet the current demand for tracts.  Although most of us live in an electronic world, people in parts of the Asia-Pacific are still best reached through the printed word.  Tracts still work!  We currently have plans to procure another printing press, and additional equipment for our finishing department.  We pray the Lord will allow us to expand our operations for His glory.