What Is a Healthy Church Member?
by Thabiti M. Anyabwile

This is a small but powerful book that I recommended to our church recently. It is packed with truth for those who wish to effectively fulfill their role in God’s church.

Matt Perman writes at the Desiring God Blog, sharing their vision for making resources available online for free and challenges other Christian ministries to do the same:

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.

Here’s a quote from the end of the piece linked to above that summarizes but you should go read the whole thing.

Ministry websites exist to be a major avenue for spreading your message. Your website will do this most effectively if you “make it free”–that is, if you maximize ease of access to all of your content and remove all barriers that get in the way of using and sharing your content.

This may not be feasible for ministries with fewer resources but as much as possible I believe this should be true of all ministries.

Update (10/30/07): Matt speaks to Objections to Making It Free

Update (11/5/07): The Value of Making It Free

From Power Through Prayer by Edward M. Bounds, chapter 4, Tendencies to be Avoided.

It is impossible for the preacher to keep his spirit in harmony with the divine nature of his high calling without much prayer. That the preacher by dint of duty and laborious fidelity to the work and routine of the ministry can keep himself in trim and fitness is a serious mistake. Even sermon-making, incessant and taxing as an art, as a duty, as a work, or as a pleasure, will engross and harden, will estrange the heart, by neglect of prayer, from God. The scientist loses God in nature. The preacher may lose God in his sermon.