One thing great preachers enjoy about traveling is that they can hear other\u00a0people preach.<\/p>\n
But the American orator A.J. Gordon received a shock during an 1876 visit\u00a0to England. Sitting anonymously in a church, he realized that the sermon\u00a0sounded extremely familiar \u2014 because he wrote it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe man in the pulpit was reading it verbatim without saying a word about\u00a0the source. After the service, Gordon introduced himself and we can just\u00a0imagine the pastor\u2019s reaction,\u201d said the Rev. Scott Gibson, director of the\u00a0Center for Preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary outside Boston.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the pastor read one of Gordon\u2019s books or found the sermon in a\u00a0journal. He might have lifted it from a major newspaper, because it was\u00a0common in those days for sermons to be published in Monday editions.<\/p>\n
But the preacher never thought the author would cross the Atlantic and land\u00a0in one of his own pews, said Gibson, who is studying the history of\u00a0plagiarism in preaching. It has always been hard for an offender to believe\u00a0that a church member has read the telltale source or that a visitor with an\u00a0excellent memory happened to be sitting in the right place at the wrong\u00a0time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a new problem,\u201d said Gibson. \u201cSome people think the World Wide\u00a0Web came along and suddenly you had thousands of pastors copying other\u00a0people\u2019s sermons with a few clicks of a mouse. But there has always been a\u00a0lot of laziness out there.<\/p>\n
\u201cPreachers get busy and they run out of time and then they just plain\u00a0steal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The temptations are timeless, but the Internet has raised waves of new\u00a0ethical questions.<\/p>\n
In his study, Gibson defines \u201cplagiarism\u201d as preaching someone else\u2019s\u00a0sermon research or content without giving public credit for it.\u00a0But is it plagiarism to use an outline or text the pastor has legally\u00a0obtained \u2014 even purchased \u2014 from one of the thousands of preaching sites\u00a0that have sprung up online? Is it acceptable to use a respected site such\u00a0as SermonNotes.com without telling the congregation? What about quoting\u00a0from the anonymous inspirational stories that arrive daily in everypastor\u2019s email? Is it wrong if a megachurch pastor has support staff\u00a0members who do \u201cghost\u201d work as researchers and writers?\u00a0Does a preacher have to reveal each and every source of inspiration?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to footnote sermons,\u201d said the Rev. Haddon Robinson, an\u00a0internationally known teacher of preaching in Dallas and Denver before\u00a0arriving at Gordon-Conwell. \u201cThere\u2019s no way to make people in the pews\u00a0understand all of the sources you are using, especially if they\u2019re highly\u00a0academic sources. I don\u2019t think anyone expects preachers to stand up there\u00a0and quote all of their reference books and commentaries by name.\u201d<\/p>\n
But all preachers read and hear stories and insights that they want to\u00a0share with their flocks. It makes a sermon more colorful to feature a\u00a0quotation by an author \u201d who simply says something better than you can,\u201d\u00a0said Robinson. Attributing direct quotes also adds authority, especially\u00a0when quoting figures such as Martin Luther, C.S. Lewis or Billy Graham.<\/p>\n
This is safe territory.<\/p>\n
The danger is when pastors appropriate entire\u00a0outlines or sermon texts and claim them as their own. Perhaps the strongest\u00a0temptation is to personalize anecdotes that happened to other people.\u00a0But it only takes seconds, noted Gibson, for a preacher to cite the source\u00a0of a story or to say something like, \u201cI heard a great sermon on this\u00a0biblical text by pastor so and so and I want to share some of his insights\u00a0with you.\u201d Some pastors add additional references in the Sunday bulletin or\u00a0in study pages on the church website.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy for preachers to play it straight, said Gibson. The question is\u00a0whether many congregations have become so mesmerized that they will\u00a0overlook plagiarism.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people get so caught up in the experience of hearing that great\u00a0preacher,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not so much the content. It\u2019s his persona. It may\u00a0not matter to them that he is using someone else\u2019s sermons. What you hear\u00a0people say is, \u2018He\u2019s our preacher and it doesn\u2019t matter what he\u2019s doing.\u00a0Let\u2019s move on.\u2019\u00a0\u201cSome churches today just don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One thing great preachers enjoy about traveling is that they can hear other\u00a0people preach. But the American orator A.J. Gordon received a shock during an 1876 visit\u00a0to England. Sitting anonymously in a church, he realized that the sermon\u00a0sounded extremely familiar \u2014 because he wrote it. \u201cThe man in the pulpit was reading it verbatim without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[392,678,784,1550],"class_list":["post-1235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ghost-writing","tag-preaching","tag-seminaries","tag-worship"],"yoast_head":"\n