January 27, 2012: Pulpit Plagiarism

Twelve years ago I visited a church and heard a bad sermon, and when I told a friend about it he said he had visited a different church that Sunday and heard the same sermon! We compared notes and found too many parallels for coincidence. It turns out both ministers had lifted their sermons, without attribution, from Bruce Wilkinson's The Prayer of Jabez, which went on to become a bestseller.

Another time I heard a minister relate an incident from his life and thought, "That's odd - I read the account of another minister who had practically the same thing happen to him." I thought no more of the coincidence until later when this pastor told a funny story from the early days of his ministry - and this time I knew for a fact that it had happened to someone else. My blood ran cold. "How many of his personal stories," I wondered, "are lifted from the lives of others?"

It is not wrong to use other people's words, outlines, stories or illustrations in your sermons. It is wrong to pass them off as your own. To do so is dishonest and reveals a corruption of spirit incompatible with proclamation of truth. Plagiarism cannot be tolerated in the church.

Last week I watched online a sermon from a preacher whose honesty had been called into question by a relative of mine. The preacher developed a catch-line phrase from a cartoon which I knew originated from a nationally known speaker, but which had supposedly come to him from videos he got for his son on a family trip. Investigating further I found I could discover the source material for virtually all his messages (always unattributed) simply by googling the sermon titles. His plagiarism extended even to the use of parenthetical comments, wisecracks and weak jokes.

I asked my lovely wife if she would watch a couple five-minute clips from two sermons and give me her response. I played a clip from this pastor and then one from what was obviously his source material. She sat stunned and said to me, "It makes me think he is not a man of God." She's right, of course, and that is what is so scary. When - and with what devastating consequences - will this pastor's lack of integrity be made manifest in the church that now (outwardly) thrives under his leadership?

If you are a pastor and a plagiarist, you have two options:

(1) Repent, come clean, confess to your congregation, let them handle the response, and never do it again. From now on, when you use others' ideas, say things like "Bill Hybels calls this a 'Popeye Moment,'" rather than, "I like to call this a 'Popeye Moment.'" Or, "This morning I'll be borrowing extensively from a message by Mark Driscoll," or, "I found a helpful outline for this text in a book by John Piper."

Or,

(2) Resign from the ministry, acknowledging that you are not worthy of the pulpit and do not have the gifts that a pulpit ministry demands.

If your pastor is a plagiarist, I think you also have two options:

(1) Confront him in love. Tell him precisely how you are aware that he is using others' words and ideas and experiences but passing them off as his own. An excellent template for such a confrontation may be found in George MacDonald's novel The Curate's Awakening. There an educated parishioner gently and tactfully informs an inexperienced young minister that a sermon of his was lifted directly from the works of Jeremy Taylor. The young pastor is distraught. He humbly acknowledges that he does not really know what he is doing - he had been reading sermons bequeathed to him by an uncle in the ministry who, he now finds out, was a plagiarist himself. He contemplates resignation, but instead, submitting to the wise layman's tutoring and direction, develops into a mature man of God capable of feeding his congregation without relying on corrupt practice. If your pastor is humble enough to turn from his dishonesty once confronted with it, then there may lie in his future a blessed redemption like this.

Or,

(2) If you are certain that your pastor lacks the humility of spirit necessary for such personal reformation, go find another church.