There isn’t much technologically that the Church, generally speaking, can say in terms of being a thought leader. In fact, from a strict web technology perspective, the Church has never really led anything.
And that’s fine. That’s not an issue with me.
But what we have we freely give, and it’s the “free” part that’s becoming much more powerful currency in our social web fabric than ever before, and that is where we will lead. In fact, we should be the experts at “free.”
Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, had a few things to say about “free” at the first business conference Disruptive by Design:
This law of gravity is un-fightable, because if you don’t do it, someone else will. Because they can. If it’s not zero today, it will be zero tomorrow.
What it says is that anything that becomes digital will become free — not to say that everything online will be free, but that everything will be available in a free version, so that fundamentally, you’re either going to be competing with free or you’re going to be making a product free and selling something else, because the marginal cost for these products is the same for everybody — which is to say zero.
Exactly, and the Church is excellently positioned to show the world how “free” really works; we’ve been doing it for years. Tying it together with some software and services, providing high value for people online, we can kick it into high gear.
It’s an exciting time to be a web technologist in the Church. I thank God for it.
John Saddington
I am the CEO of 8BIT and a Full Time Entrepreneur/a>. I like what I do.
If everything will be "free" (and by free, I'm assuming you mean financially without cost), what will be the main way of generating income for the work of ministry?
Or will we be looking at a completely different way of looking at ministry funding?
a new business model is in order. i've blogged my thoughts about this. 😉 i'm excited about this too.
Usher me into your thoughts. I can't remember what you said… But want to!
Perhaps i'll expand on it in a future blog post. 😉
I don't think that's the point. As churches we lead massive volunteer teams that give. We give life-inspiring messages. We give help to those who need. We give instructional care to kids and students. We give opportunities for people to connect in community with others. We should be the experts in "free" as we give to our communities through unpaid volunteers. It's a "free" and giving environment that drives the church and we should be the experts at this and other industries should be looking to us for how it's done.
I don't see churches changing the way they are funded. People don't give to the church to get a product, but out of obedience. The church uses that to serve the community. I don't anticipate that aspect changing although many churches do have some creative endeavors to bring in funding other ways, but it's usually not the majority.
Free (gratis) doesn't mean that no one gets paid.
There will always be scarcities (creation of new content, trust, authenticity, personalization, immediacy, membership, ownership, etc…).
In fact, Chris Anderson's book is entirely about the business models built around giving things away for free.
Curses! Foiled again… 🙂
i love free!
I agree. Most of what we do inside the church is free. But we want to sell products to one another (usually of limited value). I usually figure that the point when something is ineffective is when it starts having marketing products with it. We don't need mugs with the latest evangelism product or mints with bible verses.
I think the big problem with products is that there is still a history of the Christian tv and radio preachers that were always "selling" something to keep themselves in business.
I do think this is something different from for-profit businesses that market real products and devote their profits to ministry (lots of coffee shops and producers, some small book publishers, etc.) The idea of using for profit businesses (that compete with other for profit businesses) and still give their profits away is an innovation that is being used well in the church.
Free as in price is important, but so is free as in freedom.
I'm a huge believer in freely give freely receive, and open source, and so on. I'll admit I'm not well-versed in business models, and I find the most joy myself when I can do something for free. I'm kinda different like that.
I can't wait until Chris Anderson's new book, Free, gets released. And to be true to the message, there should be an online version for free.