Russell Philip Shedd was born November 10, 1929, in Aiquile, Bolivia, the son of Leslie Martin (1895-1979) and Della Johnston (1894-1959) Shedd, workers for the Bolivian Indian Mission. His father was a native of Massachusetts and his mother was from North Carolina. He was the third of four children, three of whom went into mission work: his brother Hudson became an executive with Gospel Mission of South America and his sister Helen served in Guatemala with CAM International. Another sister, Phyllis, settled with her husband in Massachusetts.

Russell Shedd was almost five before he saw the United States during his parents' furlough in 1934-35. Upon returning to Bolivia, the Shedds settled in Arani. Russell was enrolled in the B.I.M. "m.k." school and therefore lived away from his parents a good portion of the year. When the family returned to Bolivia after a second furlough, Russell remained in the United States for school, and graduated from Wheaton Academy in 1946. That same year he entered Wheaton College and earned a B.A. in 1949 and an M.A. in 1951. He received a B.D. degree from Faith Theological Seminary (Elkins Park, PA) in 1953 and a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1955. He was ordained in 1953 at the Hydewood Park Baptist Church, North Plainfield, New Jersey. During 1955-56, Shedd taught at Southeastern Bible College in Alabama, where he met Patricia Dunn, a native of Birmingham, Alabama. They were married June 22, 1957, following her graduation from Southeastern.

Shedd served the Hydewood Park Baptist Church as interim pastor, 1956-57, and was accepted in 1958 by the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society (CBFMS); he was appointed to the faculty of Leiria Seminary in Portugal. Delays in receipt of visas to enter Portugal forced their remaining in the United States until 1959, during which time Shedd helped found a church in a fast-growing suburb on Long Island. The Shedds also lived in Mississippi for a time during this period.

In 1959 the Shedds and their infant son sailed for Portugal where Russell joined the Leiria Seminary faculty. At the same time he became involved in a publishing ministry. In 1962, the publishing house was transferred to Brazil. "Edicoes Vida Nova" ("New Life Editions") of which Shedd was president, was operated by a primarily Brazilian staff, with input from CBFMS and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. It concentrated on producing books designed to train, teach, and nurture Christians in order to infuse biblical scholarship into the Brazilian church. In 1977 it published an important annotated topical reference Bible for use by pastors and lay-workers.

Russell and Patricia Shedd were the parents of five children: Timothy (1958), Nathaniel (1960), Peter (1962), Helen (1967), and Joy (1969). In 1981-82, the Shedds were on furlough in Wheaton, Illinois, while Russell taught a course at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. They made their permanent home in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where Russell headed the Bible Department of Facultad Teologica Batista and pastored the Metropolitan Chapel which he founded in 1977. He died in November 2016 in Sao Paulo Brazil of complications from cancer.