Matt Perman is the Director of Internet Strategies at Desiring God.

There has been a good discussion on my article “Make It Free” over at Joshua Blankenship’s blog. It inspired me to address some of the main objections I often hear against my perspective that media ministries should post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface.

Objection 1: People value what they pay for. Therefore, if you make all of your online sermon audio and other online content free, people won’t value it.

Response: This is the least powerful objection for a media ministry, in my opinion, simply because the gospel is free. Does that lead us to not value the gospel? Of course, some people will want to say, “Yes! Look around!” But surely God does not think so, because he is the one who made the gospel free. (As an aside, I would argue that when we don’t value the gospel properly, it’s because we’ve failed to recognize the depth of is freeness and have actually fallen into the mentality that we need to earn it “just a little bit.” When we truly begin to recognize that justification is completely apart from our works, that’s when we really begin to see the surpassing value of the gospel.)

Theological arguments aside, observation shows the premise to be false that “if it’s free, people won’t value it.” My favorite TV shows are 24 and Lost. They are all “free” to me—I watch them without paying a cent, and even skip the commercials. Yet I do not value them any less than if I had to pay for them. In fact, I have paid for episodes before on iTunes, and I didn’t value those any more than the ones that were free. Many other things in life are free and yet very valued.

The value that you place on something is often a reflection of the intrinsic worth of something or the cost someone else paid for it, rather than its cost to you. Further, in regard to resources like a sermon especially, the response we have to it may be costly to us in our actions. We may realize we need to start living this way or that, or do this or not to do that; or we may just be encouraged to stay a difficult course. Sermons bring this incredible after-the-fact cost; let’s not hinder that from happening by imposing a before-the-fact cost.

Objection 2: It dishonors the staff and volunteer hours and other work that went into producing the media, and the pastor’s time in preparing and preaching the sermon.

Response: You have the wrong people on your media team, and the wrong pastor in your pulpit.

Bottom line: When it comes to resources for edifying the church, the aim is not to preserve honor for the work in this way. The aim of the sermon is to edify and serve the church and the world. Christ calls us to sacrifice good things—in this case, the honor that comes from financial recompense for the work—for the sake of greater things. I wouldn’t deny that financial return for a resource bestows an honor on the work of all involved. But that’s not why they are doing the work; this is a good thing to sacrifice for the much greater goal of the work itself, which is to serve and spread. I would argue that, ironically, sermons and the creative efforts surrounding them are most honored when they are set free to spread and serve, without hindrance. This honors them most because it is most aligned with the purpose and nature of the sermons in the first place, which is to spread truth.

Objection 3: Do you think that making a profit is antithetical to serving others?

Absolutely not. Milton Friedman, the great Nobel Prize winning economist who brought capitalism back to life among academics in the latter part of the 20th century, is one of my heroes. I am fully on board with free market capitalism, for example, which has as one of its main implications that serving others in your work and making a profit are not at odds, but are ultimately the same pursuit. Further, I recognize that ministries that do charge are not doing so to make a profit per se, but to earn more money in order to produce more resources.

What I’m saying is that ministry work is in a different realm. While it is acceptable to charge for ministry resources, this also brings with it significant trade-offs that do not exist in the for-profit world. For example, it can create the appearance of peddling the word of God. It demonstrates God’s grace and generosity less fully, in exactly the realm where demonstrating generosity should be the fundamental guiding principle. And, as I argue in the original article, charging for online resources short-circuits the effectiveness of the work by creating a barrier to spreading.

The production of Christian resources is unique in that it is not mainly an artistic endeavor or profit-making service; it is a service per se, done for the good of others, at cost to oneself. The core of our message is that Christ gave of himself that through his sacrifice we might become rich; in ministry we imitate that best when we are willing to pursue the good of others at cost to ourselves—in this case, without receiving rightful remuneration.

But most vividly, this thinking cuts off creative thinking. The desire for security—often cloaked unintentionally in the mindset that “we have to charge so that we can keep making more resources”—covers up the flame of great thinking with the doldrums of boring, easy business models. As ministries, we are non-profit, and I think we mean that for real—it is not just a tax status to us. So let’s take advantage of that. Let’s do radical, risk-taking, great endeavors that simply could not be possible if we had to focus first on survival and the bottom line. If we go broke, fine. What a way to go out. Survival is not enough, anyway.

Objection 4: Do you disagree that ministries should be financially healthy?

Again, no. Usually. There are cases where we must sacrifice to our harm when there is a compelling reason of service that cannot be accomplished any other way. But as a usual course, it is best for ministries to be financially healthy. One of the things I’m saying is that charging online for resources is not very effective at doing this, and that if you make them free you spread your message further and will likely see more funding.

Also, keep in mind that I am speaking very specifically about the resource side of things, and in particular online resources. There are missions organizations, for example, that consist of running full-fledged businesses that sell commercial goods. Those ministries should not sacrifice financial strength in those areas. I am talking about the very specific matter of Christian resources, which are a unique case because of their unique nature and aim.

Objection 5: Most ministries don’t have the financial backing to offer things for free.

Offering things for free is a great place to start when seeking financial backing. It gives donors a compelling vision to give to. In other words, I think this objection has the order wrong. Second, this objection seems to assume that a ministry would make decent money from selling content online. I have my doubts that this will ever happen, although I grant that I could be wrong. The biggest obstacle, then, is finding the money to post the content. For that, see the first sentence of this paragraph.

Objection 6: Are you saying that charging is sinful?

No, I’m saying that it’s not a good idea for online media ministry resources. It undercuts effectiveness. This is not about right or wrong—do what you want. It’s about what will be most effective, what serves, and what is great.

Objection 7: But isn’t it good for the profits from one sermon to fund the cost of creating another resource?

I’m not against the concept of seeing content generate revenue so you can produce more content. I’m saying that there is a much better model for this than charging. Offering it free, no strings attached, will result in more funds if people that want to go deeper with the ministry are given the option to get involved. And it avoids the appearance of peddling the gospel and is an acted parable of the grace of God that is proclaimed in the sermons.

In the end, what I want to say is: “Who cares if we’re making money from sermons when such an intention seems by its very nature to reduce creativity and effectiveness?”

The vision that we follow for our website is this: Post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface. I've just written an article setting forth this vision in more detail. It is called Make it Free: Improving Online Effectiveness by Removing All Barriers to Accessing and Sharing Content.

We love the way this vision serves others through the internet and commend it to all media ministries. We make no claims to have everything figured out. We offer this article as a service to any other organizations that think the same or are considering whether to pursue a similar approach.

Update: Read answers to some common objections. 

Justin Taylor has graciously agreed to do some guest posts for us this week and next. Justin is ESV Study Bible Project Director and an Associate Publisher at Crossway Books. Before that, he worked here at Desiring God for several years. Most of you probably know him from his blog, Between Two Worlds.

Justin is incredibly gifted and a good friend. I know that you will find his posts very helpful.  

It was one year ago today that we released our new website and completed the posting of all 27 years of John Piper's sermon audio. By God's grace, the results have been wonderful to see—for example, each month more than 6.5 million pages are viewed on the site and more than 600,000 audio messages are streamed and downloaded. And these numbers continue to go up.

We are continually striving to make the site more helpful to you and to fill it with even more content. Here are some of the improvements from the last year that you might be most interested in:

• All seminar audio has been posted.
• Hundreds of additional conference audio messages have been posted, including the audio for all of John Piper's pastor's conference biographies.
• Ask Pastor John, a new 3-minute Q&A program, has launched.
• Online books now has an easier interface.
• Downloading audio and video is now easier.
• All sermon manuscripts are now edited for grammar and have been given headings. (The hundreds of sermon manuscripts from before the Internet era had not yet been proofed or given headings.) Many thanks to Dan Brendsel for this incredible labor.

If you are interested in ideas for helping make the most of the site, you might be interested in the site tour that we wrote last summer to introduce what was new on the site (or the abbreviated version). More recently, you may also be interested in:

• What You Will Find on Our Site
• The Website Tips blog category

Thank you to everyone who is using the site, and we hope it is serving you well. Please let us know anything we can do to serve you better in any way.

We have a new podcast coming in August that you might enjoy.

Many who listen to our radio program tell us that their favorite part is the question and answer time between John Piper and the co-host, Bob Allen. So we have begun turning these questions and answers into short, stand-alone segments.

This new feature will be called "Ask Pastor John." A new question and answer will be posted three times per week, beginning in August.

God is infinitely happy because he is infinitely glorious. And, the good news is that he invites us to enter into his happiness. Here is what Piper writes in The Pleasures of God (p. 26): "It is good news that God is gloriously happy. No one would want to spend eternity with an unhappy God. If God is unhappy then the goal of the gospel is not a happy goal, and that means it would be no gospel at all. But, in fact, Jesus invites us to spend eternity with a happy God when he says, ‘Enter into the joy of your master' (Matthew 25:23). Jesus lived and died that his joy-God's joy-might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11; 17:13). Therefore the gospel is ‘the gospel of the glory of the happy God.'"

For more on this, I recommend these sermons:

• Sustained by Sovereign Grace--Forever
• The Happiness of God: Foundation for Christian Hedonism
• The Pleasures of God sermon series

• 27 Years of Sermons. This is the central feature of our site. You will find all 27 years of John Piper's sermon audio (1980 to the present), with the manuscripts as well. Beginning in 2004, we also have the video. And all of this is free--you don't even have to register with your email address to access it.
• 3-Minute Sermon Excerpts. If you don't have the time to listen to a full sermon, you can listen to or watch a 3-minute excerpt of most of the more recent sermons. For example, you can watch a video excerpt from the sermon "God Strengthens Us by the Gospel."
• 20 Years of Conference Messages. We've given about 26 conferences over the years, and you can listen to all of the messages. You can also listen to the messages that Piper has given at non-DG speaking events.
• 10 Years of Taste & See Articles. These are short articles John Piper writes each week.
• 20 Online Books. More than 20 books are online here for free.
• A Topic Index. You can browse all of our content by topic.
• 10 Podcasts and Subscriptions. Receive the sermon each week automatically in iTunes, or subscribe to our content in other ways.
• Recommendations. See our lists of essential Piper resources (available free online) and essential Piper products (for purchase in the store).
• Much more, including information on upcoming (and past) conferences, our blog, information about us, and our store--where we are currently offering all books for $5 (June 27-28).

Next time you are reading a sermon or other item of content on our site, take a look at the right-hand panel. You will see some helpful links to related content, in ways you might not expect.

First, for all of our content, we list the topic that the resource is from in that right column. You can then click the topic to see everything we have on that subject. For example, for the resource "What is the Doctrine of the Trinity," you will see in the right panel that it says: "From the topic: The Trinity." You can then click on that topic to see everything we have on it.

Second, with sermons, we also put the series the sermon is from over there (if applicable). For example, in the sermon "The Happiness of God," in addition to seeing a link to the topic it is from (Christian Hedonism), you will also see the sermon series it is from (Desiring God). If you click on the series, you will then see a list of all the sermons in that series. Here is a screen shot that shows you what I am referring to:

Third, with conference messages the right column lists the conference that the message is from. If you click that link, you will then be taken to a page listing all of the messages from that conference. A good example is the conference message "The Supremacy of Christ and Joy in a Postmodern World." And here is a screen shot that shows what I am talking about:

Fourth and finally, for all resources you will also see a list of about 5 related resources and five related products in that right-hand column. These show up beneath the topic and sermon series or conference.

I find these features very helpful for finding related content. After encountering these features with the release of the new site last fall, one user commented: "There are no longer any dead ends on the site--every page points me to more related content." I hope that you are having the same experience as well.

Continuing my periodic series on helpful site features, this time I'd like to point you to the ability to browse our conference messages by conference. This is a new feature we added a few months ago to make browsing these messages easier for you.

Previously, you could only view conference messages by date or by title. Now, you can also see the full list of conferences we have had, and then click into a conference to see the messages given at the conference. For example, you can easily see all of the messages that were delivered at our 2006 national conference last fall, The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, where the speakers were Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, DA Carson, David Wells, Voddie Baucham, and John Piper. And you can do the same for 27 other conferences as well.

There is also a category where you can see all messages Piper has delivered at non-DG events.

If you aren't already subscribed to our weekly sermon podcast (you can subscribe in iTunes), you might find it to be a convenient way to receive the sermon automatically each week. (See my primer on podcasts if you aren't familiar with what podcasting is.)

You can also see the full list of all our podcasts for others you may be interested in as well. Recently we moved that list from the "About Us" section to our "Resource Library" to make it easier for you to find.

Here are some recommended resources on the death and resurrection of Christ.

On the death of Christ:

• The Greatest Event in History: Two Paradoxes in the Death of Christ
• The Pleasure of God in Bruising the Son
• For Whom Did Jesus Taste Death?
• He Made Purification of Sins
• God Did Not Spare His Own Son

On the resurrection of Christ:

• The Gladness of the Risen God
• But Christ Has Been Raised, You Are Not in Your Sins
• Jesus is Alive to Serve
• Eight Reasons Why I Believe Jesus Rose from the Dead
• Six Gifts of the Resurrection

On the resurrection of believers:

• Glorification: Conformed to Christ for the Supremacy of Christ
• We Shall be Like Him
• What Happens When You Die? The Dead Will be Raised Imperishable
• How God's Word Produces Our Work: The Mighty "Therefore" of 1 Corinthians 15:58

See also the sermon occasions "Good Friday" and "Easter Sunday," and the topics "Jesus Christ," "the Death of Christ," "the Resurrection of Christ," and "Glorification."

Since it is Holy Week, you might be especially interested in John Piper's Palm Sunday sermons, Maundy Thursday sermons, Good Friday sermons, and Easter sermons. These are three of the "occasions" you will find in our "browse sermons by occasion" section (which you can read more about in my previous blog post on that section).

One of my favorite Piper Easter sermons is "He Sat Down at the Right Hand of Majesty," which he preached in 1996 just after starting his series on Hebrews.

I posted previously on podcasts and RSS feeds as easy ways to keep up with new content on the site. I'll go ahead and round out that picture by mentioning a third approach you can take as well: subscribing to our email newsletters. The content you sign up to receive will then be automatically sent to you by email.

We offer four email newsletters: John Piper's weekly sermon (sent each Monday), John Piper's weekly Taste & See article (sent each Wednesday), our weekly question and answer (coming soon), and our general news, events, specials, and ministry updates list (sent periodically).

You can sign up for any or all of these lists on our mailing lists page.

RSS feeds are another convenient way to keep up with new content on a website. As with podcasts, there are probably many people that still aren’t quite familiar with them. For those people, here is a short primer on RSS feeds.

What is RSS?
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” It’s really just a way of “subscribing” to a site such that you are automatically notified when new content for the subscription has been posted. Further, you can access the content directly in your RSS reader, so you don’t even have to go to the site to view the content.

This is very similar to having a podcast subscription, except that podcasts are for audio and video whereas an RSS feed displays written content. But in both cases, there is one centralized spot where you can see all of your subscriptions from all of the sites you are subscribed to. This centralization is nice—it makes it easy to check what’s new on multiple different sites, all within one single, simple interface.

How do You Sign Up?
In order to subscribe to RSS feeds, you first need a feedreader program. Here is a list of popular feedreaders:

• Windows: SharpReader, Internet Explorer 7 (it is built right in, and I find that I actually prefer IE7 to Firefox), Firefox via Livebookmarks (built-in) or Sage (plugin).
• Mac: NetNewsWire Lite, NewsFire, Firefox (see above).
• Web-based: Google Reader, NewsGator (not free), Bloglines.

1. Blog. Updates several times a day. If you subscribe to the blog feed, you will also see the new sermons and taste & see when they post, so I recommend this feed most of all.
2. Sermons. Updates every Monday. Have the sermon automatically delivered to you and read it right from your RSS reader.
3. Taste & See Articles. Updates every Wednesday. Have John Piper’s weekly article automatically delivered and read it right from your RSS reader.
4. Radio Programs. Updates every day and tells you what program is airing.

Podcasting has become very common. Yet many people are still unfamiliar with what it is and how it can benefit them. For those people, I’m offering this short primer.

What is podcasting?
Podcasting is a way of distributing audio and video automatically to your computer. It is like a newspaper subscription, but instead of receiving a paper delivered to your door every morning, you receive audio or video programs delivered right to your computer as they are made available.

Why might podcasting be helpful to you?
You might find podcasting helpful because of the incredible convenience it offers. For example, instead of coming to the site to manually download the new sermon each week, your podcast reader will automatically download it for you. If you use iTunes, then when you sync your iPod the sermon will automatically be put onto your iPod for portable use.

How do you start receiving podcasts?
To start receiving podcasts, you first need to make sure that you have a podcast reader. You can download one from the internet. Two popular options are iTunes (Windows or Mac, free) and FireANT (Windows or Mac, free). iTunes is by far the easiest.

Once you have a podcast reader, just go to our full list of podcasts to sign up. If you use iTunes, simply click on the “subscribe in iTunes” link. If you use another podcast reader, you will see a link that says “feed link,” which you then put into your podcast reader.

What podcasts do you offer?
On the page with our full list of podcasts, you will see that we offer six podcasts: sermon audio, sermon audio excerpts, sermon video, sermon video excerpts, our daily online radio program, and our don’t waste your life video podcast.

How do people use podcasts?
Once you have subscribed to some podcasts, the fun starts. You can use them in many different ways. Here is what I do. First, I regularly sync my iPod to the iTunes program on my computer. Second, since you can’t tell right from your iPod what you’ve listened to and what you haven’t, I keep a “To Listen To” context on my task list. This makes it easy to review my options when it is time to determine what’s next. Third, I listen to my podcasts and other audio on my commute, when I jog, and on long car trips. (On plane trips the video becomes an option, but I find that I actually prefer to read instead.)

For my commute, I have helpful little iTrip device that turns what I’m playing on my iPod into an FM radio signal. I tune my car radio to the right frequency, and listen to the audio through that. I think that devices like this are becoming quite popular—a couple times a week I pick up someone else’s iPod, and it interferes with mine. Just yesterday, I was stuck listening to some odd 1940’s music from a nearby truck that I just couldn’t get away from.

Between jogging and commuting, I can get in about 1 hour and 20 minutes of listening on some days, simply in the midst of tasks I have to do anyway. It’s really nice to be able to “kill two birds with one stone” like this, and time in the car doesn’t seem like a waste.

For the third installment in my series on helpful site features, I'd like to point you to the ability to browse sermons by occasion. For example, you can see all Easter sermons, Good Friday sermons, funeral sermons, Racial Harmony Sunday sermons, and so forth.

"Occasion" is distinct from "topic" because, for example, sermons preached on a particular occasion, such as Easter Sunday, could be about all sorts of different topics--the resurrection of Christ, the deity of Christ, the gospel, faith, and so forth. We wanted to preserve both types of groupings for you.

Hence, we have both the topic index for grouping everything according to topic, and then also sermons by occasion to allow you to see all sermons given on a particular occassion, such as Easter, in one spot regardless of their topic.

Here is perhaps a little-known, but very helpful, resource on our site.

Shortly after our fall national conference, we divided each speaker's message into a series of short audio excerpts based on the topic discussed in that section of the message. These excerpts are a helpful way to listen to a lot of different audio, on lots of different topics, without having to spend a lot of time.

For example, you can listen to a short, four-minute or so clip from David Wells on how "Fear in the West is Not of Being Unsafe, but of Being Unsuccesful," or a short clip from Tim Keller on how "If You Think You Understand the Gospel, You Don't."

You can see the full list of all 42 such excerpts on the 2006 national conference review page. Just scroll down to the "conference audio highlights" section.

For those who haven't subscribed yet, I'd like to recommend our weekly sermon podcast.

We also offer several other podcasts that may be of interest to you: The daily radio program podcast, the sermon video podcast, the sermon video excerpt podcast, and the sermon audio excerpt podcast. You can subscribe in iTunes to any of these from our content subscriptions page.

It's time for the second installment in my series on "helpful site features." This next one is pretty simple and probably familiar to most: If you are looking for what John Piper has preached regarding a particular passage of Scripture, you can browse sermons by Scripture.

I've recently been doing some user testing on our site. These sessions are very helpful because they allow us to observe real people using the site. We can then identify snags and make improvements on the basis of how people actually use the site--rather than simply on the basis of how we think people use the site.

One thing that came to light in the testing is that people don't always know about some of the very helpful features on the site. So from time to time I'm going to blog about some of these features.

First up is a feature in our search results: Did you know that you can view your search results in tabs? If you do a search, on the results page you'll see these tabs just above the results: "All Results," "Resource Library," "Store," "Radio," "Events," "About Us," and "Help." These tabs organize the search results by site section. By clicking a tab, you limit the results displayed to that section of the site. This can be helpful when your search returns a lot of results.