Why are your studies free ?

It does seem odd, that anyone can select what they pay for our studies, really there’s nothing stopping anyone from downloading all of our material for free. We could try to hide all of our content away in “airtight” Digital Rights Management “DRM” but seeing as google auto-completes DRM to “DRM removal software” there’s probably not much point in trying.

However, aside from the technical limitations of DRM, I have benefited massively from Christian content that has been shared without cost by the likes of Humble Beast and the iTunesU lectures from Reformed Theological Seminary. As someone who has benefited from resources that have (as Humble beast puts it) been freely given, it didn’t seem right to jealously keep the resources that How Can This Happen created behind a paywall.

One of the reasons I am creating resources through How Can This Happen is that when I was searching for children's Bible Studies, I found some fantastic resources, but they were simply out of our budget. It seemed like there were no studies that I would be happy to use that our ministry could afford.  If affordability was bugging me, it seemed a little hypocritical for How Can this Happen to start dictating pricing to other ministries.

I believe that we are creating studies worth paying for and that "The worker deserves his pay" (1 Tim 5:18). But that, as Christians, we should be willing to give freely and trust that the people who use our resources will see that value and willingly chose to support us, which is why you can purchase our studies or support our work.

Any support will keep How Can This Happen viable and able to keep producing affordable, attractive and thoroughly Biblical resources for years to come.

 

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash