A Growing Trend of Pastoral Plagiarizm

Several years ago, the church with which I was affiliated received two new pastors; a husband and wife "pastor-couple" brought in by the body that oversees such things in my state, and in my denomination, United Methodist.

As part of their new ministry at my church, they inherited an existing contemporary worship service that was vital and growing, attached to which was a small group of lay volunteers who would, in conjunction with the pastors, plan sermon themes and series. Twice a year, this team would have an overnight retreat, brainstorm and plan themes in great detail, including scriptural passages, song ideas, and the overall direction of the message and worship service.

Once the new pastors came, I, and others, began to notice a vexing trend. Despite the planning on the part of the team, plus the weekly meetings intended to bring the worship service father along, and the lip-service given by the pastors that they were preaching the planned themes, the actual sermons never quite seemed on par with what we had planned.

Each week, those of us on the planning committee would walk away scratching our heads, thinking to ourselves "hmmm...that's not really what we talked about...."

Moreover, the sermons, despite the team-approach to planning, always seemed to fall into a "template" structure. Style is one thing, but these sermons seemed oddly cookie-cutter. There were usually 3-4 "bullet points" with fill-in-the-blanks answers, all unusually generic to the extent that it seemed that one week's theme could easily be swapped for another - so that whether the planned series was "Overcoming the Holiday Blues" or "Dealing with Crises of Faith", the boilerplate answers of "trust God" or "put Jesus first" could work either way.

At some point, I wondered to myself - "I think maybe these sermons are coming from some sort of subscription service". I couldn't figure how else the sermon that was actually delivered would consistently be so different than the service that was planned, and, how the messages always seemed eerily similar to one another. Morale in the church was waning as well. As was attendance.

What I discovered was that, in fact, my pastors were just two in a growing number of pastors and preachers who are falling victim to the overwhelming temptation to plagiarize. Passed off as using "resources", these pastors are looking to the holy grail of church building, Rick Warren (The Purpose-Driven Life), who founded Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California.

Warren is gracious enough to offer his entire litany of sermons for purchase and download online. You can search through the ten-most popular series, the most recent series, or search for individual sermon titles. You can do a keyword search, which is what I suspect the pastors at my former United Methodist church would do. Oh, we're doing a series on depression? Search...Ah! Saddleback has one called "How To Defeat Your Depression". Perfect!

What is happening more and more is that rather than using the sermons and their outlines as a resource, they are being used as a framework. Pastors who purchase these sermons online download the entire text of the Rick Warren sermon in Word format, which can be easily manipulated. Take out a paragraph here, add your own joke there, voile, you have your Sunday sermon ready to go.

The problem with this method is multi-layered. Aside from being plagiarism when delivered on Sunday morning without any disclosure of the source, and passing the content off as one's own, the practice truly cultivates a culture of laziness on the part of the preacher. The sermon should be the cornerstone of a pastors' week; the manifestation of years of theological study, experience, training and preparation; delving into the Word should be the starting point from which a pastor begins his or her sermon prep.

When a pastor just cuts, pastes and tweaks a Rick Warren sermon, he or she is not honoring their commitment to be spiritual leaders; they become spiritually lazy themselves, and their credibility begins to suffer. Is it any wonder we see a decline in the mainstream denominations membership from year to year? Yes, we believe that the non-denominational churches have the formula figured out when it comes to growing the kingdom of God, but rather than be inspired by that formula, we copy it. As a result, we as United Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, are merely putting on a Xerox copy of the church built by the Saddlebacks and the Willow Creeks of the country.

So, this blog exists for many purposes. One, to shine a light on the problem. This is not set up to embarrass or expose individual pastors, bring about the fall of spiritual leaders or point the finger. This is design to educate and increase awareness. For the laity and congregations who feel like this may be an issue in their church, to gather the information and the courage to confront and challenge their pastor. For the pastors, it's a direct challenge to stop the over reliance on downloaded sermons, outlines, sermon notes and other easily pilfer internet resources and rise to the challenge of crafting your message from your heart, beginning with The Word - not with Rick Warren's 10-year old sermon.

I am not suggesting that the Rick Warren messages of old not be used as part of an overall source of material from which to glean ideas; properly used and properly referenced, everything from the Bible to TV Guide can serve as resource material. However, when delivered as if it's your own material, it's plagiarism, plain and simple.