Permissions and Content Use

Effective: July 21, 2026

Athority Ministries creates original articles, ministry intelligence, research, frameworks, tools, and other resources to help ministry leaders, parents, mentors, chaplains, counselors, and communities understand the spiritual lives of the people they serve.

We want our publicly available work to be quoted, discussed, and shared responsibly. This page explains what you may use without requesting separate written permission, what requires permission, and how to submit a request.

These guidelines apply to content owned by Lifelong Building Curriculum Studies LLC, doing business as Athority Ministries (“Athority Ministries,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). They do not grant rights in material owned by another person or organization.

1. Uses That Do Not Require Written Permission

You may do the following without requesting separate written permission, provided that you follow the attribution and use requirements below:

link to any publicly available article or page on athority.org;
share an article title, a short description written in your own words, and a link to the original page;
quote up to 250 words from one publicly available Athority Ministries article in a single sermon, worship service, classroom presentation, academic paper, ministry training, slide deck, or noncommercial handout;
cite up to two individual Athority Ministries research findings or statistics in a single sermon, presentation, paper, or noncommercial ministry resource; and
refer to an Athority Ministries study or framework by name for purposes of discussion, teaching, criticism, commentary, scholarship, or ministry application.

These permissions apply only when:

the use is accurate, noncommercial, and does not substitute for the original article or resource;
the quoted material is not materially altered;
any shortening is clearly shown through ellipses, brackets, or another customary editorial method;
the use does not remove or obscure important qualifications, dates, sample sizes, source information, or methodological context;
the required attribution is displayed clearly;
the use does not imply that Athority Ministries endorses, sponsors, certifies, or is formally affiliated with you or your organization; and
the material is not used in a way that is unlawful, deceptive, harmful, or inconsistent with the Athority Ministries Terms and Conditions.

An ordinary worship service, free class, or free nonprofit ministry event is not treated as commercial solely because the organization accepts donations. A paid course, paid conference, client deliverable, subscription resource, product, book, or other fee-based use is commercial and requires written permission.

2. Required Attribution

For an article quotation, use an attribution substantially similar to:

Source: Athority Ministries®, “[Article Title],” [direct URL].

For an Athority Ministries research finding, use an attribution substantially similar to:

Source: Athority Ministries®, [Study Name™] ([year]), as reported in “[Article Title],” [direct URL].

For printed materials where a full link is impractical, include the article title, Athority Ministries®, and athority.org.

When an Athority Ministries article identifies a statistic, quotation, image, or finding as coming from an outside source, cite that original source. Athority Ministries cannot grant permission to use material owned by a third party.

3. Uses That Require Written Permission

You must receive written permission from Athority Ministries before you:

reproduce, republish, email, post, or distribute a complete article;
quote more than 250 words from one article in a single work, presentation, course, or resource;
combine excerpts from multiple articles into a compilation, anthology, curriculum, study guide, devotional, workbook, training program, or resource library;
reproduce more than two Athority Ministries research findings or statistics in one publication, presentation, course, or resource;
reproduce a chart, graphic, downloadable resource, research instrument, research report, substantial collection of findings, or methodology description;
translate, adapt, abridge, dramatize, annotate, or create a derivative version of Athority Ministries content;
use Athority Ministries content in a book, magazine, journal, newsletter, documentary, podcast script, video, paid course, conference package, client report, subscription, or other published or distributed resource;
sell, license, sublicense, monetize, or include the material in anything offered for a fee;
upload Athority Ministries content to a learning-management system, document library, membership portal, database, or other repository;
use an Athority Ministries logo, branded graphic, or visual identity element;
use the material in advertising, fundraising, product marketing, or an endorsement claim;
create a product, service, assessment, framework, or resource that substantially reproduces or is derived from Athority Ministries content; or
use the material in any manner outside the limited permissions described on this page.

Sharing a link to an article is always preferred to copying and distributing the complete article.

4. Research, Findings, and Frameworks

Athority Ministries publishes original research findings, interpretive models, named studies, and ministry frameworks. These include, among others, the Wounded Sovereign Paradox™, The Authority Loop™, The Control-Surrender Paradox™, The Felt Commons™, the Multi-Pathway Meaning-Making Model™, The Anonymous Pastor™, The Anonymous Congregation™, and Everyone’s Chaplain™.

You may accurately name and discuss these studies and frameworks with appropriate attribution. You may not:

present Athority Ministries research as your own research;
remove the Athority Ministries attribution from a finding or framework;
alter a finding, statistic, label, or framework in a way that changes its meaning;
use a study or framework name as the name of your own program, assessment, product, course, or service;
reproduce a substantial portion of a framework, methodology, dataset, coding structure, instrument, or research report without written permission; or
imply that Athority Ministries has reviewed, approved, or validated your use.

Copyright does not ordinarily protect facts or ideas by themselves. These guidelines govern the use of Athority Ministries’ original expression, selection, arrangement, presentation, compilations, instruments, graphics, branded names, and other protected materials. They do not claim ownership of Scripture, public facts, outside research, or ideas belonging to others.

5. Spiritual Pathway Finder

The Spiritual Pathway Finder is excluded from the general quotation permissions above. You may link to pathway.athority.org and describe the Pathway in your own words. Any broader use requires prior written permission.

Without written permission, you may not reproduce, distribute, display, adapt, extract, or use:

Pathway questions or answer choices;
scoring, classification, branching, or decision logic;
pathway names, descriptions, confidence language, or result language;
care-plan language, recommendations, or report templates;
interface elements, product graphics, screenshots, or downloadable reports;
software, source code, structured data, or technical documentation; or
any substantial portion or derivative version of the Pathway.

You may not reverse engineer the Pathway or use it to create, train, evaluate, populate, or improve another assessment, application, dataset, model, or competing product.

An official promotional image may be used only when Athority Ministries has expressly identified that image as available for sharing and the image is used without alteration, with attribution, and solely to direct people to the official Pathway.

6. Artificial Intelligence, Automated Systems, and Data Collection

No permission is granted to scrape, crawl, harvest, download in bulk, index, extract, or reproduce substantial portions of Athority Ministries content through automated means.

Athority Ministries content, research, Pathway materials, and other resources may not be used without prior written permission to train, fine-tune, evaluate, ground, populate, or improve:

an artificial-intelligence or machine-learning system;
a chatbot, answer engine, or retrieval system;
a commercial or nonprofit dataset;
an automated assessment or recommendation system; or
a competing product, service, research library, or content platform.

These restrictions do not prevent ordinary search-engine indexing that follows our technical instructions and is used to direct people to the original public pages.

7. Third-Party Material

Athority Ministries articles may quote, cite, discuss, display, or link to material owned by other people or organizations. This can include Scripture translations, research findings, books, articles, trademarks, photographs, graphics, and other resources.

Permission from Athority Ministries does not include permission to use third-party material. You are responsible for identifying the owner and obtaining any separate permission that your use requires. Citation alone does not replace permission when permission is legally required.

8. How to Request Permission

Submit permission requests through the Athority Ministries Contact page and begin your message with “Permissions request.”

Please include:

your name, role, organization, and contact information;
the title and direct URL of each Athority Ministries item you want to use;
the exact quotation, finding, image, framework material, or other content requested;
a clear description of the proposed use;
whether the use will be free, nonprofit, commercial, paid, or connected to fundraising;
the format in which the material will appear;
the expected audience, number of copies, circulation, views, or participants;
the language, territory, and expected duration of the use;
the date by which you need a response; and
a draft, sample, or surrounding context showing how the material will appear, when available.

Please allow at least ten business days for review. Submitting a request does not grant permission. Permission is granted only through a written response from an authorized Athority Ministries representative.

Permission may be limited by purpose, format, duration, audience, territory, number of copies, attribution requirements, or other conditions. Some commercial or extensive uses may require a licensing fee. Permission applies only to the requester and use identified in the written approval and may not be transferred or sublicensed.

9. Copyright or Attribution Concerns

If you believe material on an Athority Ministries service infringes your copyright, misattributes your work, or uses your material without appropriate permission, contact us through the Athority Ministries Contact page and begin the message with “Copyright concern.”

Include enough information for us to identify the original work, the material at issue, your relationship to the work, your contact information, and the basis for your concern.

10. Reservation of Rights

Except for the limited permissions expressly stated on this page or rights independently provided by applicable law, Athority Ministries reserves all rights in its content, research, frameworks, products, software, trademarks, and other materials.

These voluntary permissions do not limit fair use or another use independently permitted by law. They also do not create an ownership interest, partnership, endorsement, agency relationship, or continuing license.

If a written permission issued by Athority Ministries conflicts with this page, the written permission controls for the specific approved use. The Athority Ministries Terms and Conditions continue to apply in all other respects.