Ministry Commons

Why I Tossed All My Music CD's

I just tossed 200 Christian music CD's into a dumpster under a bridge. My whole music collection is gone. Why would I do this?

This isn't the first time I've rid myself of some music. When I began building my music collection as a teenager I was able to purchase a cd or two or three a month with the hard earned money from my paper route. From the start I was convicted to only purchase and listen to "Christian" music which pretty much meant what I could find on the shelf at my local Christian bookstore.

Though my growing collection of music cd's included many albums by respected Christian artists I must admit I had some rather rochous "Christian" bands in the collection too.

The time eventually came when I had grown spiritually (and perhaps musically) and felt I needed to rid myself of the more questionable cd's in my collection. I remember trying to sell them to a store trading in used music cd's. They bought one cd, not the twenty plus I had pulled from my larger collection. The rest I eventually gave to an acquaintance at church.

After sacrificing the worst of my "Christian Rock" music I found a new breath of life through worship music. I was growing closer to Jesus and it was like why sing about God when you can sing to him? Needless to say the collection replaced those old cd's and grew larger as I added various worship cd's for a number of years. Though my spending habits slowed down considerably over the years, buying a worship album from time to time remained my pattern through college.

By the time I had graduated from college I had about 150 Christian music cd's, about half of which were branded as worship cd's. While in college I had purchased my first laptop computer and fell in love with the form factor. I had always thought the screen would be too small, but it worked great and I lost all desire to ever haul around and take desk space with a large monitor and computer case.

Several years after graduating college I felt a call to fulltime work for Jesus with the specific task of learning the correct order of the books of the Bible using the Bible itself. My work flow suddenly changed from being on my feet all day with young men and woman at an emotional-growth boarding school in the countryside to toggling between the computer screen and my Bible all day long at a desk as I studied the question of how the Bible is best organized.

With the change in work environment and the possibility of being somewhat more mobile then I was used to I wanted to add some mood music to the laptop that I could play in the background while I worked. So I added a second hard drive to my laptop and began the long process of "ripping" my whole music collection.

Shortly after adding my cd collection to my computer I realized how simple it was to create song playlists from the larger collection. I also learned how simple it is to run music from your laptop through your home stereo system if everyone wants to hear or sing along to the music. In a house church/home fellowship scenario this has some interesting implications if your are without a live musician and still want to sing to music.

With responsibility over my own schedule and a focus on the Bible, and regular visits to several home fellowships I began to filter everything I was doing from the standpoint of ministry. How does what I'm doing effect or help someone else for the better if possible?

However, it is questionable whether it's legal to play these music cd's for group sing along situations like a worship service.

Secondly, there's now a guy being taken to court for putting his 2000 music cd's onto his computer, so the possibility that the law may change and retroactively threaten my collection gives me no peace.

So I deleted from my hard drive and tossed them. Why did I toss them when I simply could have removed the copies from my hard drive?

The tipping point...

The move to toss all these cds began...

The fundamental problem is the inability to use various ministry materials or media to fulfill the Great Commission.

Much of my perspective on the issues of copyright law as it pertains to ministry materials is pulled directly from my experience with Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) such as the Linux operating system and the Firefox web browser. Really nothing in the church world or Bible college covered or probably yet understand the moral and spiritual issues with not sharing.

In summary, the basic point of the Great Commission is to make disciples, and part of that process includes things like printed Bibles, books, software, music and the like. These items must be able to be copied and distributed without breaking the laws of the land and without fear of reprisal from the creators. It should also be possible to remix, improve or adapt someone else' work to make it more useful for your specific circumstances.

To read about the sharing chain go here...

So the latest round of conviction, which lead to the demise of my collection, was the process of beginning to publish myself. I'm both working on publishing Bibles and eventually audio pod casts as tools for ministry.

Now the problem has at least two obvious layers...

First, someone who downloads an audio clip I've published on the web must have the right to make and distribute copies. If they are blessed by what they hear and know someone else who may benefit they can simply send a copy to their friend or family member without having to return to me. In fact they can make as many copies as they want. They could give one to every member of their family, home Bible study or congregation at church. There's no limit. They could even record their own intro to preface the speech, perhaps they blatantly disagree with me and simply want

The TOOLCHAIN (read more here)

Can't share the music... Why bother learning the lyrics if they can't be sung in a group... Can't give the discs away because next person is stuck with the same problem... where's the anointed, licensed, worship music? write me if you have a lead...

Ryan Eaton
January 8, 2008