Our policies

Our 10 commandments

(The conditions governing your GoThereFor paid membership)

Ten seemed like the appropriately biblical number of terms to have in a ‘covenant’ between us. However, they’re not written on stone tablets—we may need to change them from time to time to clarify things.

Here they are:

1. The first thing to say: the original ten commandments were an expression of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God, and we want those characteristics to mark our relationship with you as well, as a member of GoThereFor. We have sought to be generous in the following conditions because we want GoThereFor resources to be used as widely and helpfully as possible. And we will seek to be faithful in serving you according to everything that we have promised to do on this site.  Likewise, we ask that you be both gracious and faithful as a member—gracious to us when we slip up or something goes wrong, and faithful in putting the following guidelines into practice.

2. The basic principle of your use of the resources on GoThereFor is that you don’t own them. As a member you’ve been given a licence to use them in your personal ministry, and only while your membership is current and paid. This is regardless of how many copies have been printed, distributed via email, and so on. Once your membership expires, the resources may no longer be used.

3. Your paid membership licenses you to use the resources personally yourself and in groups that you lead or attend (see point 4 for what a ‘group’ is). You may distribute resources to members of your group/s (e.g. by print or email or file server), and members of the group may print out copies of these resources for their own use in the group time. However, members of your group/s are not licensed to share the resources with others outside the group.

4. What is a group? For the purpose of this license, a ‘group’ is two or more people who are meeting together, either physically or virtually (live), either occasionally or regularly. Examples would include: a one-to-one Bible reading meeting, a regular Bible study group, an elders meeting, a Sunday School class, a one-off seminar or training event, a family devotional, a work-based prayer triplet, and so on. Your membership entitles you to use GoThereFor resources in any group that you yourself are part of, but not in groups that you are not personally a member of. So, for example, if you are pastorally responsible for a number of Bible study groups or Sunday School classes at your church, but only attend/lead (say) two of those groups/classes yourself, you could only use the resources in the two groups you’re part of, not in all the others. Note that GoThereFor resources are for use only in group time. So, for example, if your group is reading and discussing a Little Black Book in the group time, you can distribute the ebook to the group members. However, if the ebook is not for use in the actual group time but for private reading, it should not be provided to group members.

5. In order to use or distribute resources in groups that you are not personally part of, the best value solution is get the leaders of those groups to purchase their own memberships, and get access to the large range of useful resources on GoThereFor. One of the reasons we’ve priced individual memberships so reasonably is to make it easy for that to happen.

6. You can print, email and digitally distribute as much as you like, but not outside the members of the group/s you are part of. Resources must not be placed on a server or file sharing service open to the public or non-group members. If you don’t want to print resources, you may purchase discounted hard copies from Matthias Media.

7. You can’t re-sell the resources you download to other people. All distribution of resources must be on a non-commercial basis. However, it is fine to collect a reasonable fee from group members to help cover the cost of printing and/or the cost of the GoThereFor.com membership (e.g. you might ask the members of your small group to contribute something to the cost of your membership, since it will provide many resources for group use throughout the year). 

8. Don’t forget the copyright notice. All printed or otherwise distributed copies of a resource must include the appropriate copyright notice that refers to the terms of the licence. 

9. Some resources are supplied as Microsoft Word files. You can make changes to the Word files, but be sensible.  Minor modifications may be made to these files in order to suit a particular purpose or context (e.g. reformatting, adding a church logo or an extra application question relating to an aspect of church life, changing the order of the studies, etc.), but no changes are permitted that alter the theological content and integrity of the material. The copyright and licence information must also always be retained in any modified file.

10. If you’re not sure what to do (e.g. in a situation you think is ambiguous or not covered by these ‘commandments’), just apply the Golden Rule: do what you think you would say is fair and reasonable if you were in our shoes. And of course, always feel free just to get in touch and ask.

[Last updated 13 November, 2015]

Privacy Policy

GoThereFor respects, and is committed to protecting, your privacy. Information submitted to us through our online store or other websites will only be used lawfully by GoThereFor, and will not be disclosed or provided to any other party except with your explicit written consent.

Our online store order form requires the submission of some mandatory information (name, address, email, phone number, payment details), and some voluntary information, for the purpose of placing an online order with us. The online store (and order form) has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information as it is submitted and under our control. The online store also uses cookies to enable the functionality of the shopping cart, giving you a unique identification number so that it can track what you have added to your cart.

We require you to register an account at GoThereFor.com, to verify that you have access to the available resources (and to determine which resources you have the rights to access). We require some of the above mandatory information for this account, but will never sell or pass on that information to anyone else.

Matthias Media may use your data to send you promotional material regarding new or existing products and special offers via post or email. All emails sent have an easy ‘unsubscribe’ link to allow you to indicate that you no longer wish to receive such emails. If you do not wish to receive promotional material by post, simply contact our office and we will remove you from any future mailings.

Our weekly newsletter is only sent to those who have agreed to receive it. We hold your subscriber's name, email address, sometimes information that you give us explicitly (such as interests), and sometimes information that came from what you clicked on in order to sign up. We use this information to send you emails that are more likely to be relevant to you. Your information is stored securely in a GDPR compliant system.

You have the right to know how your personal data is being used, as well as the right to correct or delete your data. If you would like to see what information we hold about you, please contact sales@matthiasmedia.com.au. Please note that we will need you to prove that you are who you say you are in order to avoid giving personal information to an unauthorized person.

We may revise our Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do so, this document will be updated.

Last updated: 26 March 2018

Returns/Refunds Policy

Library Memberships

At GoThereFor we’re confident that you will be happy with the resources available via your membership. If you feel that the membership is not all that you were expecting (or were lead to believe), or if you have technical problems that significantly reduce the usefulness of the site such that you don’t wish to continue with your membership, please contact us and let us know—we will do our best to solve any problems, but if we can’t, we will happily cancel your membership and refund your current monthly payment. Remember that once your membership has been cancelled, you will no longer be allowed to use the resources you have downloaded.

Physical media

Guarantee (from Matthias Media)

At Matthias Media we hope that you will be happy with our resources when you receive them. If not, you are welcome to return them to us in good condition within 30 days for a full refund (less cost of postage and handling). Please contact us to let us know that you wish to return resources, so that we can know to expect them back and can process your refund without delay on their arrival. This guarantee is in addition to any statutory warranties and common law rights you may have as a consumer.

Sorry, but we do not accept returns of CDs or DVDs (unless they are faulty of course).

Damaged goods

Most of our resources are sent out by post, and, despite our best efforts to package them well, very occasionally they can be damaged in transit. If this happens to your order, please let us know and we will be happy to send you replacements for any damaged items. We may ask you to return the damaged items to us so that (a) we can take the matter up with Australia Post, and (b) we can sell the books at a discounted price or provide them to a ministry that needs support.

Delays/lost in transit

Most of our orders are sent out via post, and very occasionally there is a delay in delivery. Australia Post’s average delivery times are available on their website.

If you are concerned that your order has not arrived, we suggest you take the following steps:

(1) Check your order status online (you will need to be logged in to do this) or call our office. We try to advise at the time of ordering if we anticipate any delay in shipping your order, but we are always happy for you to check with us.

(2) Once you know when your order was shipped, check the expected delivery time according to Australia Post.

(3) Check with your local post office if a parcel has arrived. Sometimes we find that parcels are being held at your post office, even though a notification has not been provided advising you of this.

(4) If this doesn’t bear any fruit, and you can’t wait any longer, give us a call. We can resend your order. (Sure enough, Murphy’s Law applies and as soon as we resend, the first parcel will show up!! This is fine; all we ask is that you let us know and send us back the duplicate order.)

Last updated: 24 June 2015

Pricing Policy

We want to put on record that it is not our goal to make money. We are a not-for-profit company, and money is merely a means to an end—that is, providing quality evangelical resources for growing Christians.

We are also technically a non-profit company—that is, we cannot distribute profits to any person or organization by way of dividends.

However, this does not mean that we do not seek to make a ‘profit’ in the accounting sense—at least some of the time. We aim to be self-funding, and this means not only meeting today’s financial commitments, but also putting aside money to allow us to fund the production of new resources. Profitability is the main way that we can generate funds to do this.

As we are not here to make money, we are able to take some account of people’s inability to pay when requested to do so. We would prefer that money alone not be a barrier to any person benefiting from the resources we publish. However, whilst dealing with cases on their own merits, we do take into account some other principles, such as:

» Equity: That is, we try to treat customers fairly, and not give unjustified benefits to some customers over others.

» Need for support: Whilst we will consider supporting people in their ministries, and will aim to do so generously as we are able, it has to be remembered that just about all ministries we deal with are ‘worthy’, and almost all struggle for funds. Whilst we would love to support them all, it is important that ministries raise their own financial support to meet their ministry needs. We obviously can’t afford to offer discounts to every worthy ministry.

» Those being ministered to: Naturally, if the end-users of our resources are financially disadvantaged as a group, we will take that into account. People and organisations ministering to such groups clearly bear a greater financial burden than those who minister to people who can afford to buy the resources they benefit from.

Last updated: 15 September 2013

Copyright Policy

We have a document explaining our policies on copyright and permissions. Please read this before contacting us about related issues.

Recommended Books

Where we link to non-Matthias Media books that we recommend on this site, we will sometimes add an affiliate code to the link (e.g. to Amazon). That means that if you purchase the book at that supplier we may get a small commission.