When Copies Are Free, What is Valuable?

Kevin Kel­ly, an influ­en­tial thinker about all things dig­i­tal, just post­ed an essay called Bet­ter than Free.

It’s quite good.

The gist is that tech­nol­o­gy is mak­ing copies eas­i­er and eas­i­er to cre­ate. In fact, copies of most things are so cheap that they’re essen­tial­ly free.

In his words:

When copies are super abun­dant, they become worth­less.
When copies are super abun­dant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valu­able

…

Well, what can’t be copied?

There are a num­ber of qual­i­ties that can’t be copied. Con­sid­er “trust.” Trust can­not be copied. You can’t pur­chase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It can­not be down­loaded. Or faked. Or coun­ter­feit­ed (at least for long). If every­thing else is equal, you’ll always pre­fer to deal with some­one you can trust. So trust is an intan­gi­ble that has increas­ing val­ue in a copy sat­u­rat­ed world.

Kel­ly iden­ti­fies 8 sim­i­lar dif­fi­cult-to-copy qual­i­ties which add val­ue to prod­ucts and ser­vices:

1. Imme­di­a­cy: get­ting it now (as it is pro­duced or cre­at­ed)
2. Per­son­al­iza­tion: get­ting it made just for you
3. Inter­pre­ta­tion: hav­ing it explained in a way that makes sense to you
4. Authen­tic­i­ty: know­ing it’s the real deal or a copy of the real deal (as opposed to a song being done by a cov­er band or some­thing)
5. Acces­si­bil­i­ty: it’s con­ve­nient to expe­ri­ence
6. Embod­i­ment: it’s some­thing you can expe­ri­ence on a unique­ly intense lev­el (you can shake the hand of the ath­lete who just scored the game-win­ning point, etc)
7. Patron­age: you believe that by con­sum­ing it you’re enabling more of it (what­ev­er it is you val­ue) to be pro­duced
8. Find­abil­i­ty: it gets on your radar some­how

Kel­ly is most­ly speak­ing about busi­ness in his essay, but it occurs to me that this is a pret­ty good check­list for min­istry.

A sea of min­istry copies is float­ing around your com­mu­ni­ty. There’s Chris­t­ian radio (car­ry­ing copies of some the best wor­ship music and preach­ing to be found), there’s Chris­t­ian tele­vi­sion (car­ry­ing copies), there are Chris­t­ian books and mag­a­zines (car­ry­ing copies of wise peo­ple’s opin­ions and Bible inter­pre­ta­tions), and there are blogs that give every­one the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act with any num­ber of oth­er esteemed Chris­t­ian lead­ers. On top of that, there’s the mul­ti-site church move­ment which at its heart is about copy­ing min­istry.

And this is to say noth­ing of the min­istry clones that abound in every com­mu­ni­ty. You know the ones I speak of. They are the Star­bucks of church­es, the McDon­ald’s of min­istry. Each of them looks and feels the same no mat­ter what com­mu­ni­ty they nom­i­nal­ly inhab­it. They could care less whether they are in El Paso or Austin. They will treat Boston and Spring­field, MO alike.

In this copy-laden con­text, what true val­ue does your min­istry offer?

There are cer­tain­ly oth­er things we need to con­sid­er than Kel­ly’s list. Some of them are of exceed­ing impor­tance, such as whether we’re pro­claim­ing the gospel clear­ly and faith­ful­ly.

But his list still nags at me. It seems to me to be a help­ful way to exam­ine our­selves from a pure­ly prag­mat­ic per­spec­tive.

I think min­istries do well by these stan­dards. For exam­ple, most min­istries I know are strong at

1. Imme­di­a­cy: peo­ple are there while we preach it — live. Our wor­ship team is per­form­ing — live. Our prayers are spon­ta­neous. Peo­ple are oper­at­ing in the gifts of the Spir­it — live and with­out rehearsal.
2. Per­son­al­iza­tion: peo­ple are meet­ing with men­tors who are show­ing them how to under­stand the Bible giv­en their par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion in life (although they’re not usu­al­ly called men­tors — they’re usu­al­ly called youth spon­sors, sun­day school teach­ers, next-door neigh­bors, friends, co-work­ers, or some­thing else that’s not very trendy to be cal­lled)
3. Inter­pre­ta­tion: peo­ple are not only giv­en a Bible, they’re giv­en a whole learn­ing envi­ron­ment with it — ser­mons, Bible stud­ies, Sun­day School, sem­i­nars, con­fer­ences, Chris­t­ian media, web­sites
4. Authen­tic­i­ty: it’s become cliche to knock around the estab­lished church for being inau­then­tic, but I just don’t see it. Most peo­ple love their pas­tor for a rea­son. Notable exam­ples aside, most min­is­ters aren’t hyp­ocrites and are serv­ing up the goods of a life lived in humilty before God.
5. Patron­age: giv­ing in the offer­ing pays the salary of the pas­toral team and allows the min­istries of the church to oper­ate. Giv­ing in offer­ings allows mis­sion­ar­ies to take the gospel around the world.

I think a lot of min­istries could use work on the oth­er parts of the list, how­ev­er.

1. Acces­si­bil­i­ty: we too often make min­istry incon­ve­nient for the peo­ple we say we’re try­ing to reach. Our ser­vice times are funky. Our dress code is off-putting. Our lin­go is dif­fi­cult to decode.
2. Embod­i­ment: too many church­es seem obsessed with mak­ing church as bland and palat­able as pos­si­ble. This is espe­cial­ly true of my Pen­te­costal com­rades: we’ve become embar­rassed about our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. To them, I can only quote Curt Har­low: don’t tone it down, sin­cere it up. Make com­ing to church sig­nif­i­cant­ly more live­ly and reward­ing than watch­ing a church ser­vice broad­cast on a big screen tv at home with sur­round-sound.
3. Find­abil­i­ty: not near­ly as many peo­ple know about your min­istry as you think. Exist­ing is not enough to pro­duce aware­ness.

So to my min­is­te­r­i­al friends, I pose this sim­ple ques­tion: in a world of copies, what makes your min­istry valu­able? Is it some­thing that can’t be copied out from under you?

The things I find myself obsess­ing over are all too often the things that are the most copy­able. Did my ser­mon sound like one of Rick Warren’s/John Ortberg’s/John Piper’s/etc? Does my wor­ship team sound like they just rolled off the Pas­sion Tour/IHOP Prayer Room/etc?

What I should be ask­ing is: if Rick War­ren set up on my cam­pus, would I still be adding val­ue to stu­dents’ lives? If Dave Crow­der decid­ed to lead wor­ship for anoth­er min­istry on my cam­pus, would I still be adding val­ue to stu­dents’ lives?

What’s not copy­able about what I’m doing?

Any­way, just some off-the-cuff thoughts inspired by his essay. Read the arti­cle ladykillers the down­load free .

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