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Kelmed from the Christian Research Network:
Sermon Copying: When The World Has More Integrity Than The Church
Published February 13th, 2009 by Tony Rose in Apologetics, Church Growth Issues, Church Growth Movement, Compromise, Convenient Preaching, General, Pragmatism, Purpose Driven, Seeker Sensitive
When it comes to matters of integrity and decency, the normal course of events it seems, is that the secular culture and the world often condones that which the church condemns. For example, when the world calls adultery an “affair,” justifies divorce without cause, or calls addictions “diseases,” it is then the church that holds its own people accountable to a higher standard of morality and has less toleration for a lack of integrity and morality.
Although we typically find the world celebrating sin and the church confronting it, there is one area where this seems to be reversed: Plagiarism.
When it comes to intellectual property, copying another person’s work, and presenting it as one’s own, the secular world has absolutely no room for toleration. However, the church too often fails to condemn the same behavior, and sometimes even boasts of its use!
Why?
Consider this, can you imagine a member of congress standing up and saying “Last night I was doing some research and 74% of …” when he didn’t, but was reciting another person’s experience? Or what about a CEO standing in front of his board of directors saying “I remember it like it was yesterday,” while every word he speaks is another person’s history? Or what about your child’s 6th grade English teacher grading a book report presentation that was actually memorized from another student’s report?
We all know what happens when people in the secular world behave this way. Last year, an aide to the president resigned. Ironically, a university was recently under fire for copying another school’s policy on, plagiarism. Even Oprah Winfrey has been embarrassed, twice, for endorsing books written by authors who have manufactured history. If this behavior was appropriate, why was Oprah embarrassed by it, and why was it a scandal in the secular press? How can it then be endorsed by those who claim the name of Christ, and be tolerated by churches who practice this deceptive behavior while claiming and even openly bragging about their churches being “authentic” and “genuine?”
So what exactly am I talking about, the reader might ask? Am I talking about a pastor who hears another pastor’s sermon and wants to share it with his congregation, uses the same outline and verse, and disclaims ahead of time what he is doing? While I think doing so should be rare, it isn’t what I am criticizing here. This post is also not concerned specifically with a pastor who reads another’s sermon aloud, and tells his congregation what he is doing. While that should be rare too, it isn’t what I am addressing in this post.
Although we typically find the world celebrating sin and the church confronting it, there is one area where this seems to be reversed: Plagiarism.
When it comes to intellectual property, copying another person’s work, and presenting it as one’s own, the secular world has absolutely no room for toleration. However, the church too often fails to condemn the same behavior, and sometimes even boasts of its use!
Why?
Consider this, can you imagine a member of congress standing up and saying “Last night I was doing some research and 74% of …” when he didn’t, but was reciting another person’s experience? Or what about a CEO standing in front of his board of directors saying “I remember it like it was yesterday,” while every word he speaks is another person’s history? Or what about your child’s 6th grade English teacher grading a book report presentation that was actually memorized from another student’s report?
We all know what happens when people in the secular world behave this way. Last year, an aide to the president resigned. Ironically, a university was recently under fire for copying another school’s policy on, plagiarism. Even Oprah Winfrey has been embarrassed, twice, for endorsing books written by authors who have manufactured history. If this behavior was appropriate, why was Oprah embarrassed by it, and why was it a scandal in the secular press? How can it then be endorsed by those who claim the name of Christ, and be tolerated by churches who practice this deceptive behavior while claiming and even openly bragging about their churches being “authentic” and “genuine?”
So what exactly am I talking about, the reader might ask? Am I talking about a pastor who hears another pastor’s sermon and wants to share it with his congregation, uses the same outline and verse, and disclaims ahead of time what he is doing? While I think doing so should be rare, it isn’t what I am criticizing here. This post is also not concerned specifically with a pastor who reads another’s sermon aloud, and tells his congregation what he is doing. While that should be rare too, it isn’t what I am addressing in this post.
What I am focusing on is the use of the same sermon, the same text, the same examples, and the same experiences, even first person, as if they are one’s own.
Craig Groeschel, who gives his sermons away on the Internet for free says, “It isn’t plagiarizing if you’re given permission,” and also agrees that “just because it isn’t plagiarizing doesn’t always mean you shouldn’t give credit to others.”
While I agree with Pastor Groeschel’s definition, I think it is incomplete, because plagiarism, I believe, also includes the element of deception when a sermon is presented, because the expectation of the congregation, without being notified, is that the material is the speaker’s own work. Especially when examples, experiences, and testimonies are spoken in first person. Just because a pastor has permission to use someone else’s material, this doesn’t mean he is without responsibility to not compromise his integrity to his hearers by presenting the material to them as if it were the work of his own study and preparation.
When it comes to actual practice, Pastor Groeschel seems to agree with my expanded definition of the term, as demonstrated when he uses someone else’s material himself. He not only gets permission, but also is honest with his hearers regarding his usage of another source. Notice also that the consensus in the comments on Pastor Groeschel’s blog is that his doing so “is common courtesy and decency. AS WELL AS INTEGRITY.”
But what happens when a pastor, even with permission to use another’s material, doesn’t tell his congregation, and even claims the personal experiences as his own? Do we consider this to be acceptable in the church, when even the world rejects it?
Words can only explain this so far, consider watching the following examples to understand the full gravity of the question:
In this first example, watch Pastor Craig Groeschel’s introduction as he describes his VBS experience. The speaking starts around time marker 2:30 and his story concludes around the 5:00 mark:
Next, listen to Tadd Grandstaff, of Pine Ridge Church in Graham, NC, as he appears to use Pastor Groeschel’s material, as his own, in first person:
So are we to believe that both of these men had the same experience, at the same age, with the same details, exactly as described in first person by both of them?
Both men had a neighborhood vacation bible school, when they were 8 years-old, sat Indian-styled in a circle in the driveway, ate the cookie, drank the Kool-Aid, both were the only one to raise their hand and be taken to the garage to be told the same thing, with the same intonation, both race home and hide in the closet and pray the same prayer, and both fall asleep in terror of the same thing, and praying the same thing? I’m serious! I don’t believe it!
Ok, it may be unpopular to say, but it seems to be that one of these men is lying to his congregation.
I am not certain who wrote or first preached the sermon. I assume Pastor Groeschel’s is the author since he is the one giving his material away for free. Perhaps one of them can share with us those details, and if they approve of the other’s use of their material in this manner?
But to the one who copied the other I ask, why not just show the video of the other guy? Why not tell the congregation he wrote it and tell the story in third person? Do people really believe God is using the copier as an oracle for His message, when he is deceptively claiming he “remembers it as if it was yesterday,” while in reality it never really happened in his own history?
Besides the blatant audacity of copying another person’s sermons and presenting them as your own material, while simultaneously claiming that “God has spoken to me, so plainly,” there is even more shocking aspects to this than first meets the eye.
For starters is the observation that there is no apparent shame in this by its proponents. In responding to similar criticism in the past, this practice is not denied, but bragged about and promoted. Steven Furtick says “if my bullet fits your gun, shoot it” as he boasts that everyone is really doing this, so it therefore must be justified. Gary Lamb, and Tadd Grandstaff of his famous “Stupid People” rant, call it “collaboration.” In the comments on Tadd’s blog, Gary mocks those who would dare question such methods. However, in claiming “collaboration” for the message both Tadd and Gary preached, neither chose to reveal that Perry Noble actually preached a very similar sermon earlier than either one of them! Did they “collaborate” with Noble too? If so, why not mention that at this time?
Furtick is correct to acknowledge that pastors share anecdotes, stories, and illustrations. However, pastors who have integrity quote their sources and give credit, or acknowledge another writer, even if the original writer is anonymous. He is simply wrong that most pastors do what these guys are doing! Most pastors certainly do not recite entire sermons as if they wrote them, nor do they quote specific detailed experiences as first-person testimony when the events really never happened to them. To do either is blatantly dishonest and out of line for a Christian, much less a pastor.
The second thing that deserves pointing out is what this type of “preaching” does to the image of preachers, Christians, and to the church, in the eyes of the unbelieving world. Moreover, when this point is contrasted against their own stated goals, the hypocrisy and inconsistency is glaringly obvious. For example, Tadd Grandstaff in his “I Hate Christians” message (which is eerily similar to chapter one of Craig Groeschel’s book Confessions of a Pastor) rants and rails about how traditional and orthodox churches have disenfranchised a demographic of our culture with their lack of genuine faith practice, lack of authenticity, and abundance of hypocrisy, and how it is the goal of his church to “reach” these people. There certainly is no denying that there are those who have had bad church experiences who need to be reached with the gospel, but is it ethical or even pragmatic to try to reach them with more lack of genuine faith practice, more inauthentic behavior, and more hypocrisy?
Unfortunately this practice is not new as a way to disgrace the pulpit. In this piece by Terry Mattingly, the Rev. Scott Gibson, director of the Center for Preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, recalls an experience A. J. Gordon had in 1876, said,
“”This is not a new problem,” said Gibson. “Some people think the World Wide Web came along and suddenly you had thousands of pastors copying other people’s sermons with a few clicks of a mouse. But there has always been a lot of laziness out there.””Mattingly continues,
“In his study, Gibson defines “plagiarism” as preaching someone else’s sermon research or content without giving public credit for it.”The article continues to pontificate on the legitimacy of this practice and the burdens pastors face, but rightly concludes which behaviors should be considered appropriate, and which are over the line,
“But all preachers read and hear stories and insights that they want to share with their flocks. It makes a sermon more colorful to feature a quotation by an author “who simply says something better than you can,” … Attributing direct quotes also adds authority, especially when quoting figures such as Martin Luther, C.S. Lewis or Billy Graham.Sadly he concludes, that,
This is safe territory. The danger is when pastors appropriate entire outlines or sermon texts and claim them as their own. Perhaps the strongest temptation is to personalize anecdotes that happened to other people.
But it only takes seconds, noted Gibson, for a preacher to cite the source of a story or to say something like, “I heard a great sermon on this biblical text by pastor so and so and I want to share some of his insights with you.”… It’s easy for preachers to play it straight, said Gibson. The question is whether many congregations have become so mesmerized that they will overlook plagiarism.“
“Some churches today just don’t care.”Fortunately for some this is still considered a matter of integrity and taken seriously by those who esteem the Word of God. Pastor Lenny Stringer speaks of the views of Jim Donahue, president of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California and a specialist in ethics,
“the use of sermons without attribution is fundamentally a credibility issue of the preacher. “The congregation has an implicit set of expectations about the minister, that there’s going to be trust, authenticity. If a preacher is not attributing his words, then a violation of that credibility occurs,” says Donahue. While Donahue agrees the message is more important than the messenger, he says any lack of credibility on the part of the preacher will “erode the quality of the interaction between the preacher and his congregation.”"Another point that is commonly missed with this practice, is exactly who is getting robbed! Debates can go on and on about who’s copying whom, whether permission is being obtained or not, and regarding giving credit where it is due, but what about the congregation that is getting cheated? In this article by Doug Smith, Who’s Robbing Whom? Some Thoughts on Pulpit Plagiarism, he writes,
“And the interesting thing is that the people who suffer the most are not the people whose material is being used, but the people who are stealing it and the people who are having it fed to them.“He goes on to list (and expound upon) five ways in which pulpit plagiarism robs pastors and congregations:
1. Pulpit plagiarism robs pastors and congregations of spiritual nourishment they can get only from someone who lives among them and labors in the text of Scripture.As I read through Mr. Smith’s article I was humored by his quoting Warren Wiersbe’s warning from page 226 of his book, Walking with the Giants,
2. Pulpit plagiarism robs pastors and congregations by discouraging consecutive exposition.
3. Pulpit plagiarism robs pastors and congregations by encouraging laziness.
4. Pulpit plagiarism robs pastors and congregations of a safeguard against false teaching.
5. Pulpit plagiarism robs pastors and congregations by rendering thieving preachers obsolete.
“One young preacher was so taken with the sermons in a certain book that he decided to preach them as a series. What he did not know was that one of his members owned the same book and had read it. As the member left the service one Sunday, he said to his pastor, “That was a fine sermon this morning!” Then he added with a smile, “Next week’s is good, too!” The problem, of course, lies not with the character of the printed sermon but with the character of the preacher reading it.” (or citing it from memory)What saddened me about this story was that the church member didn’t seem to mind, what humored me about it was that I’d had a very similar experience while discussing this issue with a member of Tadd Grandstaff’s congregation.
When I explained to the congregant that Tadd’s sermon “All In Life: What Are You Going All In For?,“ appeared to be taken from a study called Chase The Lion by Mark Batterson, which is based on his book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, he claimed that he not only knew it, but had previously read the book himself, and recognized it when Tadd was preaching it as his own (ironically, this same sermon was preached a week before Tadd by Gary Lamb in “All In Living,”). Maybe I’m old school, but it is sad to me that this lack of integrity doesn’t bother some people any longer.
Fortunately, some churches and people still have enough concern over this issue that they regard it as a reason for a pastor to resign, as Calvary Church’s Glenn Wagnor did, after a congregant accidently stumbled upon his similar behavior.
In conclusion, there is obviously room for disagreement within the church over exactly how a pastor prepares a sermon. I personally believe a pastor should be spending time in God’s Word, praying over the text, and preparing what the Holy Spirit has to say to the church. There are others with whom I would disagree who believe a steady diet of shared, purchased, and downloaded outlines and Scripture texts is sufficient. We can have that disagreement and probably always will. However, the question I ask the reader in this article is: Have we sunk so far that we can no longer spend enough time in God’s Word to prepare original messages of God’s truth, relevant for today, without compromising the integrity of the pulpit? Does the gospel of Jesus Christ need this type of preaching in order to reach lost souls?
