Solomon once wrote that there is nothing new under the sun. He might have been right.
I find it hard to believe that after 2000 years of preaching the Gospel that every preacher is saying something has never been said before. Or even required to do so.
I would argue contrary to popular perception in the pew, that the sermon probably has been preached somewhere else depending on the hermeneutic used, linguistic and cultural context and a few other factors. This would especially be so for preachers, priests, and pastors who tend to deliver expository sermons in such a way that they stick close to the outline of the text.
I would also argue as one of my own homilectical Old Testament profs said in seminary, sermon preparation is a lifetime of learning, influences and God-given experiences pouring out into a message for the congregation every week. It is not merely sitting down with the text, a commentary or two (or twenty) and crafting a message for that coming Sunday morning. All of the preacher’s life is in play in sermon development, including things the preacher may have read 15 years ago and barely remembers except for the life change wrought by the Holy Spirit in the words of another preacher.
That said, the preparation of a message that is entirely or mostly drawn from someone else’s material without attribution is sick. As others have pointed out here, just saying “One commentator/preacher said…” goes a long way. Rick Warren and Steve Sjogren have both promoted this mentality of lifting other’s (their’s especially) messages as if their congregational message would fit my congregation.
A few years ago I can remember a well-known pastor, preacher and author telling an audience of fellow pastors from all over the map of Christianity that there were only a few A-list preachers in the U.S. Thus the trend will be to use the messages of those A-list preachers, either via satellite video feed or in the delivery of their message by a local pastor. And he thought this was good.
There is an ego involved in this enterprise. The promotion of sermonic dependency does not create strong congregations, nor bold pastors who can lead their congregations through difficult times. They become what Ayn Rand, I believe, termed “second-handers.” People who live on second-handed experiences and thoughts and thus never truly live their lives.
We need pastors, preachers and priests who are transparent in the pulpit who can speak of their own wrestling with the text and life, even if not with the same style as a radio or TV preacher with a dozen books to their name. Congregations want authenticity from the pastor/preacher, which is why the trust level is broken when the reality of the plagiarism is discovered.
Lots of other good comments and discussion followed. None of this is to say that Sunday morning or any other service ought to be the Pastor’s Preaching Show. I’m a firm believer that the message and worship should not be about who is up front, but rather ought to be pointing to Christ in everything.
Pastors who plagiarize other pastors’ sermons are either insecure in their calling and standing before their congregation due to the inevitable comparisons to other well-known preachers; or they are insecure due to other factors, such as a need to be about growing the church, hitting homeruns with their messages every week, or the inevitable time crunch that comes with being a pastor in the 21st century. It could also be that they are lazy and prefer to do other things with their time.
It is a sad trend unfortunately that has been with us for a while as one of the commenters on the thread noted in mentioning Thomas Wingfold’s being outed as a plagiarizing pastor in George MacDonald’s The Curate’s Awakening (a great book BTW, I would highly recommend it). A book that was originally written in the 19th century. If it wasn’t new then, we shouldn’t think it is new today.
Just so everyone is aware: The original article that Kendall refers to is here.
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