Plagiarism is the unattributed use of someone else’s efforts. It’s dishonest, and essentially a lie from the pulpit, which is deplorable. By clearly stating that material comes from another, a preacher exhibits an innate honesty of character that allows listeners to focus on the message, not it’s origins. While many congregants may not care, some do, so for preservation of his/her integrity a preacher needs to be open about sources whenever there is significant use of derivative material. Transparency also allows people access to sources which might be of benefit to them in furthering their own pursuit of deeper insights and personal growth.
Therefore, the use of a well-crafted outline and it’s key points seems reasonable, especially when a leader has strengths other than clarity of verbal presentation, but, for any number of reasons, is in a situation where preaching is a required element of the ministry. Not all churches are large enough to have separate pastoral roles tailored to individual giftedness. Having said this, however, the personalization (i.e., stories) need to be truly personal, or very clearly attributed to their source. You mention Ortberg, who frequently will go so far as to simply read someone else’s story when it’s the best way to emphasize a point he’s making. As far as I know, he’s always been quite clear about the author in those instances, and it has frequently led me personally to do a quick Amazon search and order placement, recognizing that a source that JO has found of value will likely be of benefit to me as well.

Thanks for the reminder. For me, your fifth point is most important. I hate preaching in a context I don’t know well because of how much the particular character, history, and recent experiences of the congregation influence the word.
Certainly, there’s different expectations for plagarism and the spoken word–King got “I have a dream” from a high schooler months before, and played with it and used it for weeks until it was perfected–but your points remain clear.
I’d also suggest a topical article in the Christian Century by Thomas Long: http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=3195
http://adamjcopeland.com

I don’t think we can look at why this is happening without looking at what is happening in society in general. In the Internet age the whole topic of information “sharing” is almost overwhelming. There is a general tolerance even approval, especially among young people, for taking things for free from the web. I work at a university and plagiarism among students is widespread. If you google any academic topic for research purposes you will be offered a cornucopia of with free and “for fee” ready-made research papers. Most professors now used internet-based services to “catch” plagiarized term papers. My husband has caught quite a number of cheaters by simply googling the first sentence in their term paper. At the same time, the penalties for this sort of cheating are generally less severe than they used to be. Cheating used to mean expulsion, now it typically means 0 on an assignment. Among students it is viewed with no more guilt than downloading music, an equality ubiquitous form of theft, which, I have to admit, I used to engage in myself before I had really considered the moral implications. In an age where the quantity of information available seems infinite and it “seems” free, we have lost our respect for the boundaries of intellectual property.
Secondly, the notion that there is no idea “new” under the sun is not an insignificant one, especially as it pertains to theology. I have often found myself grinding through a particular idea on my own, coming to an “aha” moment and writing here or elsewhere about it, only to discover that someone 1700 years ago said exactly the same thing. Sometimes I am very grateful I don’t have years of theological study under my belt. Otherwise I might never bother to try and think through these ideas on my own. To find something new to say about a topic when you have that awareness of all the literature out there must be quite frustrating. This leaves pastors to try and interpret topics in light of their own experience and observations but, quite frankly, some of them haven’t had that much “real-life” experience. Some have led very cosseted lives and they simply don’t have the understanding that comes from getting their hands dirty, from sinning and from suffering. The temptation to “borrow” even the experiences of others to add “credibility” to your sermon must be quite high for some young pastors. I’ve often thought preaching should never be a “first” career.
Finally, as members of a congregation we have to look at our own expectations. In a sense, plagiarism is a market-driven activity because many congregations do not care whether the pastor is “preaching his own sermon and not someone else’s”. They just want to be entertained. In many churches the sermon the sermon is the “main act”. When the sermon is the focus of the service, rather than collective worship, too much pressure is being put on the preacher. Preparing a 45 minute sermon week after week – no wonder preachers rely on the internet. One advantage of liturgical churches is that there is less reliance on the pastor to be the centre of everything. Scripture readings and the liturgy take the place of about 30 minutes worth of sermon – which is not a bad thing. To my mind a 10 or 15 minute sermon is ideal. If it draws you in, you are left hungering for more. (Often after a sermon that has particularly touched me I will go and do some more reading about the topic on my own.) If it leaves you cold, after least it is over with quickly.

Sorry. I guess that was too long again. I often wish there was an “after submit” edit button. Good thing I’m not a preacher.

Many times I have looked at sermon sources but have found that trying to use entire sermons “as is” will not work for me. My goal is to bring a passage of scripture to bear on the life of my congregation(s) and if I use someone elese sermon in total it doesn’t do that. It applies to someone elses congregation in another setting at another time. So, am I tempted to plagiaise – not really. It is not ethical and it does not help my congregation.

Mariam,
I couldn’t agree more with the following: “I have often found myself grinding through a particular idea on my own, coming to an ?aha? moment and writing here or elsewhere about it, only to discover that someone 1700 years ago said exactly the same thing. Sometimes I am very grateful I don?t have years of theological study under my belt. Otherwise I might never bother to try and think through these ideas on my own.”
There’s something intensely satisfying about figuring it out on your own, whatever “it” is, just you, the Bible and the holy spirit.
I agree with your other comments. Possibly too much borrowing from other sources is a flag to a pastor to take a look at his/her own life. It does undermine credibility when a 30-something pastor tells a story of “his” childhood, when the story obviously comes out of the Depression or earlier. I think most congregations are very forgiving though.

Great topic. Thanks. I recall what Bonhoeffer (I think) said in Life Together (I think) which was something like, “Before you can be a pastor you have to be a brother.” (or something like that – perhaps I don’t ‘recall’ after all). The point is that lack of transparency in the pulpit re: struggles/failures, etc really takes the meat out of a sermon. I think that ‘borrowing’ from others is reasonable, citing references when appropriate, but to not be able to convey what the message has meant to you personally is not what preaching is meant to be.

There is a popular theology at work in plagarizing sermons. A theology I reject. It goes like this: The Bible presents timeless, non-contextual truth principles. Good preachers (allegedly) have unearthed these golden timeless truths and preached them. If I am a lazy, unthinking, undisciplined pastor, all I need do is subscribe to a sermon resource, download and preach away. In this popular theology, am I preaching the Bible? Yes. ‘Nuff said. That’s all that counts.
Scot, this emphasizes the importance of your 5th point. Sermons are local, time-specific, congregation specific. The people in my congregation have specific names, stories, dreams and wounds and I must lead *them” to see how their stories mesh with God’s great Story. Being a just a mouth for another preacher’s stuff is really, really bad.

I like what has been said in this post and in the comments above so far. I can remember a specific incidence of someone plagiarizing a sermon for a chapel service when I was in college. The sermon was a smash-hit among the students because of its good insight combined with outrageous humor, but it was such a painful experience when it was revealed that just about the entire sermon was taken from another well-known preacher. We all felt a little bit cheated and fooled.
What I realize now, though, is that a large part of the reason the sermon could be such a success in the chapel was because, as Miriam said, we were so driven by entertainment that the need for the localization and contextualization of the sermon was surpassed by the entertaining humor therein.
I think that if a preacher takes the localization and contextualization of a sermon for his congregation seriously, then plagiarism will be less of an issue. If a pastor doesnt have the time to exegete a passage of Scripture and contextualize it for his congregation, how will he have time to exegete someone else’s sermon and contextualize all of that? In the end, I think it is much more fruitful to give your congregation what God’s word looks like for them rather than what someone else’s sermon looks like for them.
Needless to say, I love the fifth point Scot makes.

Church Products and Services: Helping You with the Business of Ministry
*pause*
*reflect*
*barf* *retch*
The word that comes to mind now is “banality.” qb will be among the first to admit that he has never had a strictly original thought; but what gives? This is just another evidence of the commoditization that the technology age makes possible. Countdown videos? At one point, those were a clever (but not really all that clever) new idea. Now, they’re everywhere, and they’re meaningless. Canned sermons, and all the rest…I can hardly stomach it.
Banality. All of it. One supposes Qoholeth might have a sardonic thing or two to say about this whole mess.
qb

In this day and age plagarizing sermons is a dangerous thing to do. In my area a few members took it upon themselves to write down sermons and check the stories and quotes online. After a few months a clear pattern of plagarizing sermons was discovered, the evidence was presented to the churches and two area pastors were fired. Pastors beware!

A couple of thoughts ran through my head when reading this. First, this line: “It shames the preacher not to be who he or she is in the pulpit, and to pretend to be someone else.” Is it just me, or don’t we all struggle with this, and pastors in the pulpit especially? Many pastors I know were trained to be “X” in the pulpit, or in front of their congregation in general (and “X” isn’t themselves). And the training isn’t the only force in that direction.
Secondly, and relatedly, I may sound like a broken record on this, but isn’t part of the problem here our general practice of saddling one man to do essentially all the teaching for a whole congregation week after week, year after year? I honestly don’t see this plan as intended by the NT. We’ve all seen the statistics for “head pastors”. Stealing sermons is just one way (and not even close to the worst) that this enormous pressure on one man plays itself out. It’s a job for a group, not a solo; yet we persist.

Of course, using someone else’s entire sermon or not adapting illustrations to your context (1st person to 3rd person…) are examples of desperation and defeatism in a pastor.
But what about using sermon series topics from other churches? If a pastor determines that the people in his community really need to hear/learn/be encouraged about topic *?*, then it seems useful to take a structure and proven theme from another ministry about topic *?* and frame your own sermons around them. The pastor should still engage the texts, but having a structure & theme to start with certainly could encourage a harried pastor…

This is about illustrations, not entire sermons, but I can’t help venting a little:
I grew up in the Church; my dad was in ministry though not a full-time pastor. I heard many sermons from many pastors/preachers. I could sniff out a “preacher story” from a mile away. For example, a preacher might tell a story about a farmer, but put his own lingo, inflection, and expressions into the farmer’s mouth, while supposedly relating some spontaneous expression of farmer wisdom and retelling the farmer’s own words. As a kid, I would shut that preacher off and not take anything else he said seriously. I think pastors have an obligation to be honest when they tell a supposedly first-person story or present an anecdote as a known true story.

I was wondering about a slightly different variant of this which I saw at a meeting of Brazilian pastors here in London.
The preacher, who had been called in at short notice to substitute the original speaker, essentially preached his version of someone else’s sermon, yet made it clear that he was doing this because he had been particularly inspired by that sermon, and acknowledged the original preacher and when it had been originally delivered.

I’ve found that even on the odd occasion when I’ve re-preached one of my old sermons, they are never as good as the first time they were preached. There is something about grappling with the text fresh each time, with a specific congregation or aim in mind that brings it to life.
Good illustrations are always difficult to find, so it is natural to go to the internet or to other preachers for them – but we cannot lie in the pulpit. If it didn’t happen to us, we must not make out that it did. A good illustration will not lose its power if told in the 3rd person.

The preacher, who had been called in at short notice to substitute the original speaker, essentially preached his version of someone else?s sermon, yet made it clear that he was doing this because he had been particularly inspired by that sermon, and acknowledged the original preacher and when it had been originally delivered.
I can’t see anything wrong with this, anymore than reading a piece of poetry as long as it is clearly attributed to the person who originated it. In fact if there were a series of of “sermons” that were available for use and the preacher simply said “Today, I am going to read Joe Smith’s sermon on such-and-such because I think it is particularly pertinent to such current or local issue” , I don’t think that would be wrong either. It might, in fact, be a good idea and would help out young preachers. Often we can read something and feel it speak to us and for and even wish we had written it because we could never say what we believe so well. I often feel this about the liturgy and common prayer – not as if I am so much using the words of others but that someone has given me the tools to express what I would otherwise struggle with.

Daniel #13,
If the fill-in preacher truly was inspired by that sermon and was passing it along, I personally would have no trouble at all with that. Actually, I would think it would add a little bit of intrigue, wondering what about this sermon so struck the presenter that he desired to pass it on.
Some years back, at a time when I felt very discouraged, our preacher at the time (we now live in a different state) re-preached a “It’s Friday, But Sunday’s Coming!” sermon. I think it was Campolo that he credited for it. It was great! I needed that message. It spoke to me at just the right time. The sermon was credited back to the source and was preached with sincerity. It was a blessing to me.

I personally take this idea even further to manuscript preaching in general. I think the pastor does a disservice to the congregation through plagiarizing even himself. I read a news article where a reporter for a Houston newspaper visited all 5 or 6 services one weekend at Lakewood and noted how even the laughter and facial expression of the pastors wife was uniform when he joked of her spending habits.
As our family prepares to move to Swaziland to work in orphan care, I have been preaching the same sermon at a series of churches. Though the outline is the same the context and presentation changes each time.
So since you are correct about the sermon being the, “individual preacher engaging God and Bible and congregation, in that specific location, for that time” how can even a canned presentation by the pastor himself attain that goal?
The consumerist drive to engage and entertain is the worst enemy of even the best speakers.

Oops. The first paragraph above is meant to be in italics (used the wrong tag) and attributed to Daniel #13. Maybe plagiarism is sometimes just carelessness (LOL).

Myself, while I don’t want my pastor “ripping off” other people’s sermons, I actually see some value in a little occasional and honest plagiarism.
I’m thinking mostly about small churches who don’t have an army of assistant and associate pastors. When the pastor takes a well-deserved vacation, they have to pay a fill-in, or the pastor has to prepare a sermon while on vacation.
What if a couple of weeks a year, instead of preparing a new sermon, a pastor preached a classic sermon from Augustine or Chrysostom or Luther or Wesley? It might be necessary to do a little editing for time and vocabulary, but it would allow the pastor to have a break, give the congregation solid preaching, and (re-)introduce the folks in the pews to some of the great preachers of old.

ChrisB,
Since plagiarism is defined as stealing someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own there is really such a thing as “honest” plagiarism. However, I agree with you that the practise you describe is acceptable, even desirable. It isn’t plagiarism though – it is quoting, reading or attributed paraphrasing. There is no attempt to pass the ideas off as your own.

It’s too bad that we’ve created a culture in which this thing is necessary…the pressure to perform and draw people and increase numbers and compete with the guy down the block is immense. I started teaching in our gathering off and on this year through my internship with John Frye in a church that is in the orbit of Mars Hill with Rob Bell, so I sorta understand what its like to feel that pressure to perform and keep peoples attention and send them away with some juicy ‘ahh-ha’ moment.
But like John said ‘Being a just a mouth for another preacher?s stuff is really, really bad.’ Pastors have the responsibility to teach, shepherd, and equip the Body of Christ to be Jesus to the world around them. Part of that responsibility as teachers is to teach hyperlocally, to radically relate the teachings and way of Jesus to a local context, not simply overlay another pastor?s generic vision. Isn’t this type of practice grossly inauthentic? Paul talks about us being an open letter of Christ to be read by others, and as a shepherd who is charged with the task of caring for the letters and stories of others, what better way to do so than to share the story and particular narrative of the pastor?s self? How can a pastor pastor without authentically laying bare the story and letter of his or her life? That certainly does not happen with ?Made In Saddleback? stamped sermons.
-jeremy

I’ve used Sermon Central in the past. I’ve even contributed some of my old sermons there. Mostly, I used their illustrations. I always made a point to say something like, “That reminds me of a story I heard…” or, “I recently read about…”.
I’ve borrowed paragraphs from others here and there. If I used a long paragraph, or if what they said was unique and not a common idea from the commentaries, then I would say, “[Name] says [or wrote]“.
One time, I used an outline that some posted. I didn’t know how to attribute the “skeleton” to the writer, and I put all my own meat on those bones (with my own life’s illustrations).
I haven’t used that source in years. I’m in my first pastorate. In my first year and a half, I found myself relying on those sources for help. I found that reading other sermons helped me prepare my own. But, as I grew and became more accustomed to preparing a message, I no longer needed these helps.
My question is this, what defines plagiarism? If an idea is common from many sermons, commentaries and common sense, but you use a particular phrasing, is that plagiarism? If you borrow one sentence, is that plagiarism? If not, how much can you borrow before you must attribute? Are we talking about phrasing? Or are we talking concepts?
What about commentary usage? I was in a discussion with someone who made several great points. I later found that ALL of his posts were comments straight from Matthew Henry’s commentary!
I could go on and on (and have!), but I’m now wrestling with this idea of how do I know if I said/thought this or not. My FINAL example, I wrote a song in college. I loved it, particularly the third verse. One day I was listening to AC/DC and realized that my third verse (and much of the rest of the song!) was the same as theirs! Is that plagiarism? Was it before I remembered? How do I stop subliminal plagiarism from the volumes I’ve read over the years?

Like any act of communication, for a sermon to truly be great it must be contextualized for its audience. Simple plagiarism denies relationship building through the sermon.
The main reason I think most pastors copy sermons is because they get caught up in other aspects of ministry and don’t have time to prepare a diatribe. . . at least that’s my hope. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people plagiarize when trying to attract more people to the church by using the same data that caused another church to be successful rather than being missional.

I am currently between sermon series (my habit has been to preach through books of the Bible, and I’m between 2 Corinthians and a Fall series on Exodus), so I decided to re-preach some old sermons of mine from years back. But I find I can’t even do that! The texts may be the same, but I am a different person today than I was 5 years ago, my people are different, and the times are different. So even when I start with my old sermon, I consistently end up with a new “product,” sometimes even radically new. So the thought of trying to use someone else’s sermon as if it were mine is simply unthinkable.
On the other hand years ago I came across a treatment of a particular passage that I thought was particularly brilliant, and so I preached a message based on that sermon — but I told my people what I was doing! “So and so has done a particularly good job of explaining this passage, and so I am borrowing his ideas and main points for my message this morning.” But even there I fleshed it out with my own experiences and ideas.
It’s true that if I verbally “footnoted” every idea that I use, I’d never get through a sermon; but my rule of thumb is that if I find myself working really hard to paraphrase someone else’s idea, I simply quote him or her with attribution. I have no idea how many times over the years I have said, “John Stott puts it this way….”

Ish,
I have wondered something similar about using outlines from commentaries. If you are preaching through Galatians and you appreciate Scot’s outline and bridge and contemporary application as given in the NIV Application Commentary, how much do you use, and how much do you credit? If the outline and some key points come from the commentary, yet you have studied other sources, know some basic facts about the state of evangelical scholarship with regard to the text, and have spent time putting meat on the bones from your own study and experiences – how do you know what to credit? I think I have been guilty of being over-eager to credit on a couple occasions in the past and perhaps (unintentionally)put words back into someone else’s mouth – an ironic mistake in this context, particularly considering my complaint a few comments up-thread!

Jeremy #20 – Yes, exactly. I think there is somewhat of a “celebrity” mentality that both teachers and those being taught can fall into. It’s especially tough for someone like me who feels a certain passion/gifting for teaching to not compare my abilities with those of Rob Bell, John Ortberg, (fill in name of other prominent teacher here), etc. but rather to be the best teacher God is equipping ME to be.

I’ve been a pastor 7 years now and I’ve been shocked at just how lazy some pastors are. Coming in at 9, leaving at 3…some not even putting in 40 hours a week. Many pastors don’t work in structured work environments where consistent office hours are expected. It seems there’s an assumption behind many of the responses thus far: pastors are so busy. That doesn’t apply to every pastor; some are just flat lazy. Sermons are hard work. Many weeks I labor on a point, labor at trying to communicate it just so. Once in a while, sermons simply flow from my heart/mind onto the page, but not usually. Preparing sermons is a difficult task requiring energy from every part of who I am and that doesn’t sit well with the sluggard.

I wonder if this raises another issue? I realize this is a can of worms, but here it goes: do we put too much emphasis on the Sunday sermon? Alot of what I see is that the sermon is the focus, and the other things that happen on a Sunday are just a lead up to that. I could be mistaken, but didn’t the rise of the Sunday sermon tie in to Enlightenment rationalism and didactic learning styles? What if the sermon was only a part of the whole Sunday experience? I’m not sure what it would look like, but it may help to free pastors from spending hours and hours on material, the majority of which I think becomes too much for people to process week after week. Are we missing the essential? what does it look like for us as a community, me as an individual and us as a family to follow Jesus in our particular place? Everything that happens in a gathering should help to shape that essential discipline in our lives…not just the sermon.

I think that pastors who swipe sermons are either too busy or under pressue or ill-equipped for the task.
Everyone else has already pointed out the first two; I didn’t catch anyone saying that pastors are sometimes ill-equipped.
Those who are not theologically trained and have not been given the training or the time to develop their rhetoric and homiletics are going to be drawn in by the romantic sermon that is polished, accomplished, and completed.
Feelings of inadequacy may be involved, but perhaps it is more along the lines of this: “I don’t know what I am doing, but I am sure this guy (or gal) does, so I’ll just use what he (or she) concocted.”
In the auto world, there is no replacement for displacement. In the pastor world, there is no replacement for direct study. Preaching pastors need to study, engage, and reflect on the Word, and then present their efforts to the community.
If we do not engage the Word, then we disrespect it. Scripture calls for us to be intimate with it (as per Ellen Davis).

#21 Ish,
Using a common idea is not plagiarism – using a particular phrasing is and yes, borrowing one sentence. and not attributing it is plagiarism. Better to do your reading, mull it over, walk away from it for a day and then write your sermon WITHOUT referring to your sources. Then go back and take out or reword anything that is identical.
I think it is good you are asking and thinking about this. Fear of plagiarizing can be a bit paralyzing, so you don’t want to completely go off the deep-end. When my son (who is in high school) was writing term papers he wouldn’t even look at the internet until he had written a draft of ideas of his own. I thought he was being lazy, but he said that that way he couldn’t be accused of plagiarism. I still think it was a clever excuse for doing less work:) He also had the experience of writing a song that he quite liked, only to later realize that the tune was very close to one a somewhat obscure artist that he listens to a lot had written. He had the same experience as you. He didn’t know whether he had thought of the tune independently or whether it was just floating around in his memory brainwaves.

I tend to agree with Mariam. Even if you don’t go to a liturgical church, short is often better. One doesn’t need five illustrations and three anecdotes and a joke or every word and nuance explained to the nth degree. It not only adds to the pressure on the pastor, the temptation to plagiarise as well as the temptation to make it all about how clever/new/exciting/entertaining your sermon is, it also leads to lazy listening…non-participation. Sure at times, even in my liturgical church, the homily may go for more than 15 minutes, but really, if someone can’t convey a key message in 15 minutes, something’s amiss.
Also I disagree with the comment above about truth principles. Ours is a living faith, based on an encounter with the living God. Relational. We want to know God, not memorize a manual of trench warfare.

Mariam seems to be addressing this somewhat, but I’m a bit surprised at the flow of the blog entry. While it rightly criticizes plagiarism, most of the arguments used seem to apply equally well to attributed sermon (element) reuse. Yet I agree with Mariam in saying that if the source is attributed fully and honestly, there shouldn’t be a problem. Perhaps a congregation does prefer that the preacher preach from his/her own life, but I can’t see that as a viable reason to suggest that preachers must always create their own material.
(P.S. And, really, the line “I don?t know any search committees that prefer their pastoral candidates and preachers to use sermon sources without letting others know” is a straw man and a bit silly. To say that no one “prefers” using unattributed sources is perhaps obvious, but still a far cry from saying that that the practice is actually wrong or otherwise to be avoided, which is the point you’re trying to make, isn’t it? To not “prefer” something to not the same as saying it’s actively frowned upon.)

Rob #27: I love the idea of the sermon being a piece of the larger gathering rhythm. When I was a part of an Episcopal church in DC, the sacramental nature of the service prohibited the sermon from taking center stage 1) because the architecture was focused around the alter rather than the spoken word like most Evangelical churches and 2) the service did not culminate in a 40 min exegetical speech, but rather our reidentification as a tribe with Jesus through the sacriment.
Maybe i’m dreaming here and reality will give me a spank on the butt once I’m out, but my heart with planning and crafting gathering environments is to make the sermon only one piece of the larger purpose of gathering, not THEE focal point…
-jeremy

saint(#29),
I think I am the only one in this thread who used the phrase “truth principles.” Please read carefully the comment #6. Note the sentence: “A theology I reject.”
I like Jeremy and his comment #20. Can you imagine this in Revelation 2-3? Jesus visits the church in Ephesus and gives his message. He then writes a book about it. A big publishinf company thinks that Jesus’ sermon is really marketable. The publisher creates a marketing scheme where the book and message are sent to the churches in Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyathira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. We could call it “The Jesus-Driven Church.” Same author, same sermon, different churches. Wow, Jesus would become soooo popular. Just imagine.
You really don’t object to my imaginative reframing of Revelation 2 and 3, do you? Why?

Rob,
What if the sermon was only a part of the whole Sunday experience? I?m not sure what it would look like
What it could look like is an RC, Anglican or Lutheran service where the “focus” is the Lord’s Supper and everything leads up to that, from the opening prayer “Lord, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your Holy name” , through the reading of several scriptures by various readers (or cantors), with appropriate common thanks given for each, to the short sermon which illustrates those scriptures, to the confessional prayers, sense of forgiveness of ourselves and others and exchange of the peace to so that with an unburdened heart we await, with quiet anticipation and a sense of sacred, our participation in that great symbol of our oneness in the body of Christ. Not that I’m biased or anything. Have I mentioned before how the Anglican Church saved my life?:) That is not the ONLY thing it could look like but think that “sermon-focussed” denominations could do worse that to look at the order of service in the liturgical churches.
OK, for someone who does not preach and has no desire to do so I’ve probably posting far too much on this topic, and with thanks for your patience I will now withdraw.

Right on mariam! It seems like this is a broader conversation about why the hell we gather each week. Is it to listen to a guy speak? Or is it about recapturing our identity in Jesus and reorient our life around the Eternal when our Monday through Saturday ravages that identity and orientation? Maybe if our gatherings were holistic and multifaceted, incorporating different voices and activities, the pressure to perform would be lessened and our communities wouldn’t be looking to one woman or man to give all the answers…
-jeremy

great post scot. and great comments.
but hasn’t anyone just made a slip and forgot to properly credit the original author?
and when you’re using commentaries, don’t you run into the situation mentioned in #24.
i think the areas mentioned by scot in the original post ar clear delineations of plagiarism but there are some areas that perhaps need more clarification or dare i say, a little more grace.
i do have a book called “blue parakeet” coming out in november folks.

Yes John you are right. I skimmed it too fast to read it properly. My apologies. We agree on that point then.

Saint, yes, we do. Whew!

I have to agree with miriam (#1) and others who have commented on why the Protestant church has elevated the sermon as the central focus of the weekly gathering. The service should be about so much more than the sermon.
It’s not just that today’s congregations want to be entertained, either. It’s much more that there are very few speakers that can manage to be the center of attention for 45 minutes. Churches are not lecture halls, and they aren’t set up for college course level instruction. If you want a good theological lecture you go, with pen and paper in hand, to a class. Perhaps I’m speaking as a mom of five, but I rarely have had the free hands to take notes on Sundays. A sermon doesn’t have to be a stand-up routine, but it doesn’t need to be weighty to the point of dense, either. If you can’t say something meaningful and memorable about the Bible passage or topic in 30 minutes, you don’t need to be up there to begin with.
I worship with my husband at the Catholic church several times a month (and he attends service with me and the rest of the family). I love the liturgical approach to worship, and have gotten more out of the 15 minute homilies there than many 45 minute marathons at our evangelical church.

Yes. I most certainly agree. It needs to be fresh from our own hearts and hopefully with God’s heart, from our own prayers and lives.
But it is so true that we pick up so much from others which we share, or like has been said on this thread, what we find and say has been said before, likely many times.
Notes are okay, and if I regularly preached I would want an outline to keep on track, but I think it does help to break away from them some, maybe entirely, I mean written sermons. It needs to come fresh from us, from our hearts. I’m getting off track here, but to hopefully see I’m trying not to- the point it, I think that would at least curb the tendency or problem some have towards plagiarizing.

I also think the more we read and study and pray, the less apt we’ll be to plagiarize. God will help us to have and deliver the message needed for that time and place and people present. We need to depend on the Spirit before, during and after the message given.

mariam #28,
Using a common idea is not plagiarism – using a particular phrasing is and yes, borrowing one sentence. and not attributing it is plagiarism.
Actually, plagiarism extends beyond just the use of “words,” it also extends to the use of ideas. Citing something that is “common knowledge” is not plagiarism, but we have to be careful with what we label “common knowledge.” If you read a book and then spit out a paper/sermon without citing the source of the book from which you got the ideas, that is plagiarism.
I think the plagiarism problem extends beyond just ripping sermons off of the internet. What do you do with the preacher that reads a book by a John Ortberg or a Rob Bell and then decides to do a sermon series on that book? (I have seen preachers do sermon series that go chapter-by-chapter through another preacher’s book.) If you don’t give credit to the original author of the ideas–that’s plagiarism.
I read a great book last year called Death by Suburb by David Goetz. I thought, “This would be great material to include in a sermon series.” I combined Goetz’s ideas about suburbia with my own exegesis of The Gospel of John to make a series called The Good Life. We are contrasting the good life as presented by suburbia with the good life as presented by Jesus in John. But every week I have to give Goetz credit for the ideas that are his or I am plagiarizing him.

“What is a sermon? Well, it?s a whole life brought to bear on a text each week for a single 30 minute or so sermon before a specific congregation.”
“the sermon is . . . highly personal, highly local, and highly temporal.”
“Sermons are local, time-specific, congregation specific.” (comment #6)
I’d like to push back against these statements a little bit, or at leaast explore their boundaries. Do you really mean this must be true of all sermons? I would agree that “pastoring” is local, time-specific and congregation specific. I would also agree that over time most sermons should be of this nature. But all? Are these statements really normative of all sermons and anything else is out of bounds?
If so, would you say the same re. a work of literature, or a film? Don’t show Babette’s Feast or read The Brothers Karamazov in Des Moines, because the people there just won’t get it or if they do, you’ll be manufacturing a fake experience for them outside the context of their local culture?
What about something like C.S. Lewis’s famous sermon “The Weight of Glory?” It’s ok to read devotionally, but the pastor had better not do more than offer a short quote from it (if that) from the pulpit? I think a well-done reading of that sermon on a select Sunday morning might be more edifying than a lot of well meaning sermons in which the local pastor “brings to bear his whole life on a given text for 30 minutes.”
This is a little far afield from plagiarism. I’m against dishonesty, and wouldn’t want someone to try to pass off “The Weight of Glory” or any other sermon they didn’t author as their own. I also think most sermons should be of the type exemplified in the initial quotes, above. But the above quotes seem to go beyond criticism of plagiarism, to suggest that if the individual pastor didn’t write it or think it, he is somehow being inauthentic if he tries to use someone else’s sermon to edify his congregation. That all of his sermons need to come from his own head and be directed at the specifics of his congregation as he knows them – because surely his congregation can’t have anything in common with some other congregation in another time and place.

While I agree that lots of churches put too much focus on the sermon in a worship service, I would even go farther than that and wonder why we expect pastors to spend so much of their time on the Sunday event. While I understand BW’s concern about lazy pastor, (I can call myself that at times) I am concerned that his example of pastors only coming “in” from 9-3 sounds a lot like when people complain that the youth pastor isn’t working hard enough because he or she isn’t at church enough.

Philips Brooks, noted 19th century preacher said that, “preaching is truth mediated through personality”. If we take the homiletical task to be that (and it is more than that as well), then integrity dictates that it be my personality that mediates or makes clear that such is not the case.
Pastors are called for particular congregations, at particular times and with particular gifts. Faithful stewardship of all those gifts (of which ministry itself is in fact one) seems to me to require that we are present in the particular. The selling short of the congregation is one thing, but pastoral integrity and the desire to grow as disciples is as important. When I am lax in the preparation I find it is my own discipleship that suffers as much as that of the congregation.
I am here now and pleased (mostly) to be present in the moment of preaching my reflection about how God is at work in my life and the life of my community.
Having said that, I have guest preachers this weekend and then am off for two weeks. I have to say I’m ready for a break.

I have been a pastor for about 7 years, and I have never used a sermon from someone else.
But as a Wesleyan, I am curious as to what you would say about the old Anglican tradition of preaching Cranmer’s Homilies and the Methodist tradition of preaching Wesley’s Standard Sermons? These were not only acceptable practices in their day; they were encouraged! Is it not okay to preach the theological material of an authoritative sermon, so long as it is melded with the more contemporary experience of the church and pastor who are receiving/preaching it?

I just read through the discussion. This is very good and many good points have been made.
Just a couple of observations:
1. It is wrong, of course, to use someone’s material and then present it as if it were my own. Suppose someone in a book, journal article, or sermon handles a thought or has a wonderful insight. Why not simply give that person credit in the sermon. “I like what William Willimon has said regarding…”
2. To tell a story as if it really happened to me, when in fact it did not, is dishonest. I recall once hearing two very high profile preachers tell a story as if it happened to themselves. I was disappointed as I heard this story and wondered what else was being presented as if it were first hand.
3. Preachers who use other’s material and present it as their own are hurting themselves. Such shortcuts can quickly become addictive. Instead of seeing preaching as the hard work that it really is, a person can become preoccupied with finding such “shortcuts.”
4. Scot’s post is a reminder to me of the calling we have received to preach what has been entrusted to us. Perhaps we all would do well to remember that this is a precious calling and is worthy of our best and most noble efforts, even as we rely upon the Spirit.

Weekly roundup – preaching, whales, and gaming « On Living

[...] Anyway, I read a good article on preaching – how much should or can a preacher take as inspiration from another preacher, or should a sermon be all his own work? Scott McKnight wrote a great piece in response to this article on Christianity today. [...]

A few comments from a non-American non-pastor:
1. I agree with the comment which pointed out that Scot’s post does not clearly distinguish between using others’ materials legitimately and plagiarizing, tarring both with the same brush.
2. Those who stress the need for sermons to be “original”, coming out of the unique interaction of the preacher with the text and the specific congregation in its specific situation need to watch out that they don’t push an ideal not attainable by many who are expected to preach — as has been pointed out already by some commenters. Don’t we all know some very “pastoral” men who are lousy preachers, yet who are in positions where preaching is expected from them, as well as some great preachers who are not great pastors?
3. Someone mentioned the old practice of preaching Cranmer’s Homilies or Wesley’s sermons. What prevents this from being plagiarism is being honest about what one is doing, and that applies to preaching other peoples’ sermons in general. However, I would prefer calling this “reading” or “reciting” these sermons, not “preaching” them.
4. If you use commentaries, other books, and even others’ sermons in your sermon preparation, one way of keeping this honest would be to have a notice in the bulletin stating what meterials you used in preparation (especially if you base the theme of a sermon or an entire series on a specific source). I would consider that adequate accounting for ideas. But unless you are clearly reading someone else’s sermon, if you cannot be bothered or are not able to express these ideas in your own words, you must attribute all verbatim quotes.

Wolf Paul,
For once we are up at the same time … but my sixth point I think covers the intent of your opening dust off: “and says so if it is substantial.” Which is the point: we all learn from others; using another’s ideas as one own is another matter altogether.

Scot,
yeah, surprising who is awake and when sometimes
Actually, it wasn’t meant as a dust-off, and I will stand by it — your point 5 and what follows “substantial.” in point 6 gives the impression that lack of originality is the bad thing. I wasn’t the only one commenting on that, either.
I think this:
So, the sermon is highly biblical, highly personal, highly local, and highly temporal: it is the individual preacher engaging God and Bible and congregation, in that specific location, for that time.
and this:
it is a uniquely personal, local, and temporal bringing of those things together.
sets up an ideal which is hard to attain to in many local church settings (and even more so here in Europe where Evangelical churches are much smaller than even the small churches of North America) and it does not seem fair putting the non-attainment of this ideal in the neighborhood of plagiarism.

It strikes me as odd that we need to have a conversation such as this one. I don’t know that the Apostle Paul would even comprehend what this conversation is about. And perhaps it’s to our discredit that we’ve allowed preaching to become as much or more about the preacher and his “goods,” than about the proclamation.

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[...] Jesus Creed on Sermons and Plagiarism. [...]

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[...] Scot McKnight and the Jesus Creed Community have a great discussion on Sermons and Plagiarism (refers to this CT article) [...]

Has somebody ever been approached by a fellow preacher after your sermon who asks, “Can I have a copy of your sermon manuscript?” I’d be interested to know what your responses were.

I know a Pastor who would send his manuscipt to his District Superattendant for their personal devotion use. One week this DS was set to preach at a gathering that this Pastor couldn’t attend. Long story short his plans changed and he made it. The DS was a little red faced as he gave a great sermon which was exactly the same as the last manuscript this Pastor sent. The only difference was the DS substituted his wifes name in a story. The Pastor walked up after looked him in the eye and said with a smile that was one of the best sermons he’ed ever heard! I love the response. Personally if I use a lot of material from one source I share it in the sermon from the get go. Beter honest than to lose integerity.

your crazy! since when does any man hold a copyright on God’s word? preachers preach the word of God and nobody owns that!