I read this morning another good post by the people at Desiring God. I apologize for writing back to back responses to their blog, but Matt Perman has some great ideas about how ministries should post their material online. He says to make it free. And after all shouldn’t it all be free? If our desire is to reach people, our Internet offering to these people should be available and accessible.
Case in point. When I was younger, I subscribed to the Insight for Living study guides by Chuch Swindoll. These guide were mailed to me for several years. Now the cost of postage and preparation of these books did prohibit them to continue this as a free service (but you can still get the subscription for a very nominal price), but the guides where encouraging to be a helped me develop as a christian and then a preacher. Dr. Swindoll doesn’t know me–never will, I suspect, but his ministry touched me because the were available to me. Now, with the technology available, the costs are down–we can and must do a better job at providing these resources to people via the Internet.
Bottom line; I plan to look for ways through my “family of websites” to provide nearly every product I produce online. Granted OPSEC will always prohibit, but the more that is out there there more we can affect the world.