In a recent article on Wired.com, the following statement was made:

“Organizations that are founded to solve problems end up committed to the preservation of the problems.”

This gives rise to situations such as a bus company being more committed to solving transportation problems with buses than solving transportation problems, period (and suing other companies meeting transportation needs by car-pooling). Another example is of a traditional encyclopedia publisher being more committed to solving the problem of people having a lack of information by selling encyclopedias, than by solving the problem of people having a lack of information, period.

While there are obvious economic factors at work in these examples, the same sort of scenario also happens in missions and the advance of the Kingdom. It is easy to get priorities mis-aligned and become more focused on advancing the Kingdom with the name of our organization/denomination/church attached, rather than just being focused on the advance of the Kingdom, at any cost, no matter who gets the attention for it.

Something as simple as the license governing the use of discipleship content can be the difference between a commitment to ministry at any cost versus a commitment to ministry with strings attached. For instance, by releasing discipleship content under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License, anyone is legally pre-cleared to use the content on any website, in any ministry, for any discipleship purpose, as though it were their own, without any restrictions. That is, “free & open” promotes ministry at any cost, transcending the boundaries of organizations and names.

Time is short and there are millions who have yet to hear the Good News for the first time. It is encouraging to see a growing number of people and organizations embracing the "free & open" (or "free + freedom") approach to discipleship resources. This approach to removing restrictions that could hinder ministry (see this post for an example) is strategic and will contribute greatly to the advance of the Kingdom.

Photo credit: James Jordan