What, why?
Why freely give?
Jesus says in Mat 10:8, “Freely you received; freely give.” We freely receive so much, including our own salvation, so Jesus calls us to freely give too. The rest of the Bible never tells us we should commercialize ministry or restrict it (2 Cor 2:17), it tells us the opposite (1 Peter 5:2). Jesus freely gives his gift of salvation, Paul always freely gave (1 Cor 9:18), and the Bible warns against serving money so many times (Luk 16:13).
The problem
Paywalls and copyright affect how the gospel can be spread. So many Christian resources have paywalls or copyright restrictions, including some huge popular Bible translations, books, devotionals, songs, all restricted under copyright or paywalls, so either you have to pay, or get restricted permission to worship and spread the gospel, and if you can’t, too bad.
More problems
- The Bible (popular translations or niche language translations) belong to a group of big companies who heavily restrict its use
- While most of the world has a Bible translation, less than half of the world has one they can legally share
- Other languages cannot translate popular copyrighted English resources
- Churches cannot sing to God without paying music royalties or getting permission first
- Lot’s of popular authors, pastors, and organizations put a paywall or copyright on their Christian resources
And this sucks, especially for digital intellectual property (like a Bible translation, or book), where freely giving it would cost nothing to the organization or person, yet most resources are still copyrighted/paid.
Paywalls block potential users
Christian resources are meant to benefit God's kingdom, so we should freely give it to the entire kingdom of God, and consider other methods of funding or publishing.
10% pay
10% have access
10% donate
100% have access
Learn more & free your resource
Dedicate your work to the public domain, so anyone can use or share it in any way. If you need money to produce, or run your resource, rely on donations, or only charge for the production cost. Learn more about freeing your resources or funding at copy.church.
The copy.church website was the main inspiration of this page. You can learn way more about this topic, and get answers to some of your questions there.