For my pastor friends - How to avoid preaching plagiarism

Another thought from H. B. Charles Jr. :

I stood, called my text, and began to preach. There was a weird response by the congregation. Something strange was happening, but I didn’t know what.

I couldn’t catch the vibe. The congregation, to whom I had preached several times before, was tentative throughout the entire message. But I couldn’t figure out why.

After I sat down, it all became clear. Someone leaned over to me and told me the speaker who had opened the meeting several nights before preached the same text and/or message.

For some reason, this news made me nervous. At the same time, I was at peace. I had preached what I believed the Lord wanted me to say. And my message was the product of my Bible study and sermon preparation.

They gave me a copy of the other pastor’s message. When I got to my room,   I crawled into bed with my computer and watched the message.

Indeed, it was the same text. And it was essentially the same message.

We both preached the same doctrinal theme from the text. We organized the messages differently. We labeled the messages differently. I worked through the message with three main points in my outline. He had four. The homiletical approach was different. And the way we argued the message was different.

It really was the same message preached from two different perspectives.

This got me to thinking about the ethical matter of pulpit plagiarism.

The late evangelist, Vance Havner, said when he began preaching he was determined to be original or nothing. He ended up being both, Havner said.

This is true of every preacher. All faithful preachers deliver an unoriginal, “stolen” message — the word of God.

Biblical preaching simply explains what the word of God means by what it says. And if we read the text right, what we see will be pretty close to the conclusions drawn by other faithful Bible expositors.

In fact, if you come up with a reading of the text that no one else has ever seen, you’re wrong! Likewise, most Bible expositors use many of the same exegetical resources. So it should be no surprise for you to hear two messages that “overlap,” for lack of a better term.

But let’s be clear. Stealing other people’s material and preaching it as if it is your own work is wrong.

After the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007, a certain pastor preached a message he claimed the Lord had given him. Later that week, his local newspaper outed him, revealing that the message was actually from a website that sells sermons. This “inspired” message had, in fact, been preached and posted by several other pastors across the country that same day!

I repeat. This is wrong. The eighth commandment should apply to our pulpit work: “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15).

This is not to say that we shouldn’t use sources. To the contrary, it is arrogant for you to study a text and preach a sermon on it without consulting the wisdom of those who have, in some instances, spent a lifetime studying those passages, books or themes.

Milk a lot of cows. But churn your own butter.

When you do the hard work of personal study and sermon preparation, something wonderful can happen. For instance, you can stand and preach a text that was just preached in that same pulpit three days earlier. And you can make the point the previous sermon made. Yet, God can use your preaching — YOUR PREACHING — to declare the unchanging truth of God’s word in a fresh, new and life-changing way.

Just my two cents. What do you think about pulpit plagiarism?

Here are MY two cents:   Nothing is new under the Sun.   The Word of God never changes.  God is source of every message.  Every word I preach is nothing without the anointing of God.  Each message I preach is preached to me first! 

With the growing responsibilities and pressures of ministry I find that the one responsibility I have a as pastor of a smaller church is the privilege I have to preach each Sunday. I want my message to come from the Word of God and not simple stories or my opinion about current issues. I need the anointing of the Holy Spirit and I cry out fro this each Saturday night and Sunday morning before I even arrive at church.

God has blessed me in ministry.  I look back on times where I stood to preach  before congregations of hundreds before me.  I have flown high in ministry and soared as I pastored a growing church with excitement about what God was doing.  I have also stood below on the desert floor; thirsty; seeking a drink from the Lord and I labor and toil. In order to encourage myself in the Lord and bring balance into my ministry, I sought the counsel and wisdom from other ministers. A wise and successful pastor said to me, "Rick, let me help you.  We are both beggars holding our cup before the Lord for a drink . If I have something you can use - use it.  In other words - 'If my bullet fits your gun - shoot!'" 

I have established a "bullet club" with over 75 pastors now a part of this sharing forum of ministry.  The sermons recorded at NRN are posted on our church website along with the outline and I offer it freely to all ministers who could use it.  If the message God placed in my heart speaks to you and could speak the Word of God into your church family - take it, use it, make it better and applicable to your church - to the Glory of God. And I freely take from sources available to me to preach with Word of God to my church family to the best of my ability and in the most simple form with clarity. 

When I milk a lot of cows - and churn butter, salted of the Word of God and the message in my heart, inspired and anointed.