An Open Letter to Pastors who Plagiarize

Dear Pastor,

You chose the ministry. Presumably, you felt led to the ministry by the call of God. While not the most lucrative vocation you may have followed, I assume that your call to the ministry was one of discernment, thought and prayer.

In your years of theological study in seminary, you undoubtedly received instruction in homiletics, likely had your preacher heroes, and as a young pastor, had visions of the day when you were in front of a large congregation, delivering your message with fire, conviction, and panache.

At what point did you decide to plagiarize your sermons?

Before you bristle at the suggestion, let me spell out how I think this is occurring with you and many, many of your brethren.

First, I understand that the challenges of being a pastor today are significant. You serve as pastor, administrator, counselor, judge, secretary, professor, and sometimes, trustee. How are you expected to sandwich in 20 hours of sermon preparation each week, and still deliver an out-of-the-park sermon each and every time?

The M.O. is well known; you log on to www.pastors.com, (or one of the many other online-sermon clearing houses) search for a sermon or sermon series that you think is "timely" or "topical", purchase the transcripts, download the Word document, and in short order, you have a ready-made message. Perhaps you only use the outline and write the entire text yourself. Perhaps, however, you only swap out some of the text and actually deliver Rick Warren's words, passing them off as your own.

What's the harm? After all, Rick Warren, the standard-bearer for selling pre-packaged sermons, virtually dares you to plagiarize by not only offering these up for sale, but by stating on his website that you should "use the outlines and transcripts for sermon ideas", providing the full sermon notes and outlines, biblical research, and the full text of his sermon.

Here's the harm: It's lying. It's stealing. It's Fraud.

The truth is, using resources for sermon preparation long preceded the current pool of online sellers of prepackaged scripts. In fact, even the writers of the Bible itself could be said to be guilty of plagiarism; when the writer of Matthew used The Gospel of Mark to craft his biblical account of the life of Jesus without credit or reference (I won't go into this theological touchstone here - there are plenty of other forums for that discussion out there) he was plagiarizing Mark. Using resource material is nothing new, and the very existance of the Bilography is a testament to that.

A pastor's resource material begins with the Bible itself - the very cornerstone of resource material for any pastor. And it should be the starting reference point, as you as pastor should always be immersing yourself in the Word as the basis of your weekly sermon preparation. Moreover, when you do reference the Bible as a source, most likely, you credit your source.

But there is a line between using source material and stealing source material. Naturally, there are sermon helps, books with sermon starters, and the wealth of internet pre-packaged sermons you can download. But the extent to which you rely on these items is what pushes you over the line into plagiarism.

In his excellent article regarding plagiarism on DesiringGod.net, John Piper says this:

"To base the structure of your sermon on someone else's sermon, but to use your own words, is plagiarism."

This is a stern indictment; if you download a Rick Warren sermon outline and fill in the blanks with your own words, it's plagiarism. True? That may be a bit overstated, but have you ever decided to leave a line, an anecdote, or an entire paragraph, and read it as if it's yours? If so, you are plagiarizing.

But moreover, above and beyond the legal tort of stealing material, there is a huge ethical chasm being created. Your flock thinks that you are a master at skilled oratory; at crafting the perfect sermon, week after week. They are being lied to.

A lot of you justify this practice by quoting the old Ecclesiastical axiom that "there is nothing new under the sun". There is very little new that you, as a pastor, can craft to preach about. Right? It's all be said. That is a cop-out. Let's use that logic in another context:

I am a songwriter. Surely, every chord progression, lyrical twist, rhyme and melody has already been written. How can you possibly write something new with millions of songs in every conceivable combination committed to vinyl?

Simple - because with tens of thousands of words and millions of possible mutations of notes, melodic structure, tonal choices and more, I can write a new melody that has never been heard before almost without effort. Imagine the beauty I can create when I really work on something.

When I listen to the music of others, without question, it provides an inspiration. That goes without saying. But what would you say to me if I simply threw up my hands and said "there's really nothing new under the sun...I can come close, but I can't really write anything original." Then proceeded to play, before my congregation, a new song that I claim to have written with the title "My God of Wonders", complete with the lyrics "[My] God of wonders beyond our galaxy, you are [so] holy..."

I know what your reaction would be- shock, disbelief, and most likely, the expectation that I would pull the fraudulent song from the inventory and never do it again. I can either do "God of Wonders", which everyone knows I didn't write, or I can truly write a new song. What I can't do is to craft some amalgamation of a previously written song and my own song, pass it off as mine, and hope to get away with it. Most likely, I'll be sued for copyright infringement.

It amazes me that you pastors who feel no trepidation in pilfering and presenting a packaged sermon as your own are the same pastors who are overly cautious about CCLI, copying music in music library, broadcasting music on your website, using TV clips for your sermon which fall outside the CLVI license, an so on. But you'll literally phone in a sermon, pass off as yours some Saddleback rehash from 1998.

Why?

I am challenging you, pastor - to stop. Stop plagiarizing. Stop relying on pre-packaged internet sermons. If you do rely on them, at least do so with full disclosure. Think about the implicit agreement you have with your congregation - that their expectation is that you are writing your own sermon. With resources, of course, but YOU are writing, researching, immersing yourself in the Word, and crafting the message.

Would you feel comfortable telling your flock that you are using downloaded sermons, sometimes word for word? If the answer is "no", you know the right answer. Stop the practice now, and bring back integrity to the pulpit.

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.