The Ministry I Work with Requires Me to Sell Jesus

The other day we got an email from somebody named Kathy who had a question for us and she's in a little bit of a dilemma.

So, she gave us permission to share her message with you. And so, we're going to try our best to respond to that question and then maybe everyone can learn together from her question.

She writes, I am so thankful for your content. You have helped me to understand why I have felt so wary of all the things being pushed by the big business of evangelicalism.

I was especially turned off by Christian movies that produced a broad range of licensed books, study guides,

Bible studies, and gifts. Something just seemed off. I'm wondering how to apply this new perspective to the course that I teach.

And she teaches a course that helps people understand God's heart for the nations basically. I'm a trained coordinator for this course.

The content is life -changing. I have coordinated three classes in the past and four people out of those classes are now full -time missionaries.

It would be great to have many, many more people experience this course. Yet, the organization behind this course guards their content rigidly.

My idea was to seek supporters of the course, alumni who would be willing to co -labor to present the class.

I wanted to offer a class where students only paid for the few supplies used in the class, but the organization told me that I must set my tuition at a minimum of $220.

Their reasoning was that people won't value the content if they don't pay for it.

Right now, I am trying to figure out a way to offer the course where students pay none of the cost of the instructors.

This would involve having partners cover the cost, which will be about $3 ,500, then using scholarships and discounts to reduce the list price of $220.

So this would fulfill the requirement of having a list price of $220.

But I'm not sure about working around the organization's guidelines because that feels a little shady.

Do you have suggestions for implementing the Dorian principle when partnering with ministries who do not?

So I'm going to let John jump in here and respond, and then I'll give a little response of my own that may overlap with his.

Hi Kathy, thank you for your question, and I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I had a similar experience when my church wanted to use training material that is popular in my city.

It's for training everyday believers in the basics of exegesis and theology. It was developed by a parachurch organization which charges licensing fees for anyone else that wants to use it.

Even worse, some churches created their own material to avoid the fees, but they then ended up charging fees as well themselves.

And so when my church requested to use such training for free, the response was, like in your situation, that people wouldn't value it unless they pay for it.

The assumption that people won't value free content can be true in some industries when the free stuff is usually of low quality.

But that says more about Christian teachers than it does about the legitimacy of such a view.

It perpetuates a negative culture assuming that free content is of low quality.

However, this perspective can change, and we've seen this very clearly in the software industry, where companies like Google started releasing very high quality free products.

And free is no longer associated with low quality in software, but often with high quality.

And in truth, charging for trainings and using that line that they won't value it unless they pay for it, it's really a cover for greed.

Organizations want income and growth, and the fear of losing money pushes them to enforce their fees.

This attitude is insulting to believers, really. It assumes that they won't value teachings or trainings unless they pay for them.

And if that's really true, that people won't value free teaching, then someone forgot to tell

Jesus and Paul and all the other disciples who were teaching and ministering for free.

And it was highly valued, obviously. And there's also a sense of pride among these organizations, unfortunately, that they believe they alone know how to use and teach the content, and they can't trust anyone else to improve it or modify it, enhance it in any way.

They alone know what's best. So what I did in my situation, instead of paying fees or raising money to pay these organizations,

I chose to create my own training. And it was time consuming and costly, but it allowed me to offer it for free.

And it also allowed me to improve it and customize it and allow others to as well.

And so that is what I would recommend. Rather than propping up these organizations that commercialize their ministry,

I would create high quality free alternatives. It's totally legal to borrow concepts and ideas from existing trainings, as long as everything you produce is written by you.

And the best way to ensure that happens is to think of how the material could be improved and don't copy anything directly from it.

Go off the ideas and concepts you've already learned and get other people trained in the material to help you do that.

If you'd like to see an example of this, you can check out the training I created at training .freely

.giving. Pete So my own response to Kathy is, first of all, just thank you so much for your insightful question and for sharing your heart.

And it's wonderful to hear how our content has resonated with you. And your dilemma is one that many encounter when partnering with organizations whose practices don't fully align with their own values, their own stated values.

And maybe sometimes they're unstated, but I think most people in Christian organization would say that we want to reach as many people as possible with the truth.

We want to inspire as many missionaries as possible, etc. And so, it's so ironic that they then practice something that does not align with their own value of reaching people.

So, this ministry isn't unique in its hypocrisy. And when I was with Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL, I saw the same hypocrisy and deception.

And for any missions organization, I'll say this, for any missions organization to entertain the notion that people don't value what they don't pay for is a symptom of profound confusion, lack of biblical foundations, and worldly secular thinking.

This is one of the reasons I resigned from Wycliffe in 2020 after 10 years.

And it was one of the best decisions I ever made. And I've seen

God's extravagant blessing on that decision ever since. And for those who haven't heard it, we have responded at length to the lie that people don't value what they don't pay for on the podcast episode about typical objections.

There's also a video on our YouTube channel that's called The Elephant in the Sanctuary, something to that effect where I address this objection as well.

So, here are a couple things you can consider. And the first one is just, this is an opportunity to talk to the leaders of the organization and introduce them to the

Dorian principle at length. Introduce them to sellingjesus .org. And you could even list out the same kinds of responses that we've given to that objection of people won't value what they don't pay for.

Many of them have probably never even thought about these things. And so, I think one of the important things in these kinds of dilemmas is to realize there are a lot of people who are open -minded and this never has crossed their radar.

And if you bring it up humbly and winsomely, oftentimes they will be very struck by that or they'll want to know more or they'll be inspired to actually consider these things and changing.

Obviously, there's no guarantee that they will change their policy, but if we open respectful communication, it could spark something, it could plant a seed for future change and lead to a more flexible solution in your specific situation.

And I would also echo what John said. Another option is to just develop your own independent course.

It could be even better and leverage your expertise as a coordinator and all this life -changing content that you've experienced to create a unique educational opportunity for people.

And this will obviously allow you to have full control over making it free. Anyway, we hope that is helpful and if anyone else has a similar question, you can feel free to email us at sellingjesus .org

at gmail .com. We can't guarantee that we'll be able to answer everyone's question, but we'll definitely consider it.