Thread by @JonathanLeeman

First, here's a link to my conversation with @MarkDever and @blacey88 on plagiarizing sermons.

Second, here are 9 thoughts on plagiarism plus 4 replies to justifications for it that I’ve heard. (A thread). 9marks.org/pastors-talk/e…

1. You can have good intentions and still sin (see Lev. 4).

2. To preach another man’s sermon is to violate the eighth and ninth commandments, assuming you present the sermon as your own.

3. No congregation thinks they are paying a man to preach another man’s sermons, a friend observed. When they discover you do, you undermine their trust in you, even if they love and sympathize with you. You also make it slightly more difficult for them to trust other preachers.

4. To preach another man’s sermon without attribution once, perhaps, can be confessed and overlooked. I believe a pattern of doing so disqualifies a man. He’s not “above reproach.”

5. Bigger picture: I fear we’ve taught our churches to prioritize charisma, style, and communication gifts over “rightly handling word of truth.” In this pragmatic environment plagiarism won’t seem like a big deal. But as one friend said, "apt to teach is not apt to communicate."

6. Along these lines, I’ve noticed a trend of downplaying the significance of preaching someone else’s sermons without attribution. While I want to leave room for churches to make their own judgments on specific cases, I worry that we're letting pragmatism trump ethics.

7. The devil wins when we downplay plagiarism and people lose trust in the honesty and integrity of pastors, because faith depends on faithful voices speaking truthfully. And trust in those voices is a key ingredient in their being heard. IOW: Plagiarism is a big deal.

8. Trust in a pastor's integrity depends not merely on the isolated fact that he preaches his own sermons. It's that he's personally encountered God and grown thru the text. We preach not just information, but "our very selves" (1 Thes 2:8; 1 Tim 4:16). tonyreinke.com/2021/07/03/tho…

9. It's finally the responsibility of a church and its elders to take responsibility for plagiarism in their pulpit.

Now 4 replies to justifications for plagiarism I’ve heard:
1. “But sermons aren’t academic papers. Different standards of attribution.” Sure, in some ways. But in other ways, not. Both are acts of communication in which...

... the speaker says something which the audience receives as “his.” And so in both domains you can claim something comes from you which doesn’t. It’s not enough to just assert, “They’re different.”

2. “But we’re all dependent on resources and things learned from others.” True, but we’re humans, not computers or parrots. And human communication, particularly in personal and familial settings, presumes...

...the person has processed what he’s heard and is now speaking for himself, like husband to wife, parent to child, friend to friend, and pastor to congregation. “I’ve learned what I'm about to say from others, but now this is ME speaking to YOU.”

To be sure, there are places where this isn't the case. Salesmen, we assume, don't speak for themselves. And insofar as our churches have become pragmatic and consumeristic, the dynamics of the mimicked sales pitch don't strike us as outlandish.

3. “Standards were different in the past. For instance, preachers sometimes preached from a book of homilies.” Yes, but everyone knew what they were doing—preaching from a book not their own material. Also, Christians in the past justified a number of things we wouldn’t justify.

4. "What matters is that it's God's truth, not the preacher's truth." In one sense that's true, which is why Paul says people can be edified by preachers preaching from "envy and rivalry" (Phil. 1:15-18). Likewise, people can be saved and edified from a plagiarized sermon! But...

...Paul is not justifying envy and rivalry. People might be saved by God's powerful word, but there will be no credit or reward for such preachers--only the Lord's condemnation of their envy and rivalry. So with plagiarism. IOW: let's not be short-termed in our thinking: ...

Someone can be saved from a plagiarized sermon on any given Sunday because "It's God's truth, not the preacher's truth." But this won't work over the long term, because the loss of trust and credibility will eventually make it difficult for people to hear and grow.

Last thought: we can offer excuses for plagiarizing sermons that might "work" for the charitable and inclined-to-sympathize (both good things) Christian observers. But how will non-Christian neighbors process news of plagiarism? Will it help a church's credibility and evangelism?