We have recently eclipsed 10,000,000 Wordless Books that have been mailed out through our ministry at Starkey Road.
Our current ministry was started in the summer of 1992 by Jim Hiatt. He had used the Wordless Book while a missionary with Child Evangelism Fellowship in the 1960s. Back in the 60’s all of the Wordless Books were large enough to use in a classroom setting as a teaching tool. Jim had the idea of making them small enough to fit inside a small explanatory tract, allowing them to be handed out. With the blessing of Starkey Road Baptist Church leadership, the ministry was created, and during the first 6 months, they produced 2,830 Wordless Books.
At that time making the booklets was very time-consuming. Paper was cut with a manual paper cutter; the pages were stacked in the proper order and glued together. Then the tract was printed and folded, and the little booklet was inserted inside. As you can imagine, the whole process was very time-consuming.
Over time a better gluing method was developed. In 1997, the electric paper shearer was purchased for our ministry. Both items increased production speed tremendously. By 1997, the ministry had shipped out 816,309 Wordless Books. By the turn of the century, weekly production reached 30,000 books. By the end of July 2000, the number shipped had reached 2,482,952.
As of the end of August 2023, the number of Wordless Books shipped out has reached 9,953,129 (a big thank you to those of the past generations of workers who kept the count so well).