What is the purpose of Distant Shores Media?

The purpose of Distant Shores Media is sometimes not easily understood, because it is focused on

• meeting a need that is often misunderstood
• by removing an obstacle that is often overlooked and
• by developing a new strategy to meet the need.

Meeting a need

The need that is often misunderstood is stated in a familiar passage:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” —Matthew 28:18-20 ESV

The objective of the church, as stated in this passage, has two parts:

1. make converts ("baptizing them") and
2. teach them to become disciples ("teaching them to obey all I have commanded you").

Distant Shores Media is focused on the second part which is sometimes forgotten or unintentionally excluded in some ministry strategies: enabling believers all over the world to grow in maturity as disciples of Christ.

Removing an obstacle

Copyright law is not inherently malicious or opposed to the advance of the Kingdom of God, but it can create an obstacle to the advance of the Kingdom that is often overlooked. The concept of copyright law as an obstacle to discipleship comes down to this:

• There are thousands of discipleship resources in existence today.
• New technology is making it possible to distribute discipleship resources to the most remote parts of the world, in any language, almost instantaneously and at virtually no cost.
• The nature of copyright law prevents the unhindered distribution of these resources by legally preventing them from being translated, adapted and redistributed for effective discipleship use by the people that need the resources most.

Developing a new strategy

Door43 (http://door43.org), a ministry project started by Distant Shores Media, is a platform specifically designed for the creation and distribution of a new generation of discipleship resources released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license (CC-BY-SA, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/). This makes it so that Door43 content — including Bible translations, study programs, Bible story-based audio resources, a Bible handbook, a Bible commentary, worship songs and other discipleship resources — can be legally used in any way for any ministry purpose. By releasing discipleship resources from the restrictions of copyright law, followers of Jesus Christ anywhere in the world can translate, adapt, improve, redistribute and use these resources for the equipping of the global church in any language and culture.

Summary

To summarize, the purpose of Distant Shores Media is to equip the global church to grow in maturity as disciples of Christ by facilitating the creation and distribution of discipleship resources that are released from copyright restrictions so that they can be translated, adapted, improved and distributed to anyone, anywhere, in any language, in text and multimedia formats, for any ministry purpose.

To put it more concisely still: the focus of Distant Shores Media is equipping the global church with open discipleship tools.