Introduction

In part one of this article I acknowledged the issue of plagiarism in the pulpit and how that it has recently (again) become a hot topic after more than one prominent and well-known pastors have been found to be “borrowing” large portions of material from another preacher.  In the last article I also shared some realities of preaching which I believe needed to be put on the table for consideration.  Having stated those, in this article I would like to address reasons why men might plagiarize sermons or sermon material.

Reasons why men might plagiarize:

As I open this discussion let me say that not all of these describe every man who has taken sermon material from another preacher, and this list is likely not comprehensive.  Some of these reasons do overlap as well, and a man might have several of these or more factors in his life that push him to take content from another man.

• Lack of personal integrity—yes, plagiarism is stealing. Presenting an idea or content that you did not create as if it was your own is the embodiment of plagiarism.  It is wrong and it is sin.  Ultimately, this stems from a lack of personal integrity.  The man behind the pulpit has deceived his people into thinking that he was one person, or preached one way, while he was not the man behind the words.  Such deception and hypocrisy inflict damage to the body of Christ.  I could not imagine seeing one of my pastors on youtube being exposed in a video with him side by side another well-known preacher, mirroring what the other preacher had published.  This type of deceit damages the sheep at the deepest level, because the spiritual leader they thought they knew has turned out to be someone else.  Congregations might ask “were any of the words truly his?”  No one knows!  Plagiarism in the pulpit ultimately stems from a heart of deception.  Keep in mind I am talking about the type of plagiarism that lifts large portions of material from another source, not necessarily a man who accidentally overlooks a line in his notes and forgets to read the line “one commentator said . . .”  What about the argument that I have heard used recently—“they gave me permission to use it.”  I still believe this is deceptive if you present it as your own.  The issue here is not whether you use another preacher’s material—I have no problem with that, and I have done so myself!  Sometimes an argument is put so eloquently that you cannot improve upon it and must use it.  So use it!  But give credit to the source.  The issue is not in using other’s material, but in that you passed it off as your own.  It is one thing to hear an illustration and think “that is a great object lesson I need to use that sometime.”  It is another to copy large portions of another man’s sermon and preach it as your own.  Preachers must value their own integrity and opt for either using their own material or citing the material that they do use when it can be cited.

• Misunderstanding of their calling—I believe that some of the men who have been found guilty of plagiarism in the pulpit have a misunderstanding of their calling. II Timothy 2:15 lays out clearly the job of a pastor.  He is to be a diligent laborer in the Word.  He is to stand before God as one who meets God’s approval because of this labor.  He is to “cut” the Word of truth along a straight line (rightly divide) so as to unfold and expose the meaning of the text.  This takes mental energy, physical effort, and diligent perseverance week in and week out to be able to bring God’s Word to God’s people in a manner that meets God’s approval.  When a man determines to use another man’s material, he has a misunderstanding of his calling, at least on some level.  No longer is the message about the preacher’s responsibility to stand approved before God as a worker in the Word; now it is about meeting a deadline or having something profound and entertaining to say to people.  This is not what God expects of preachers!

• Poor use of time—another factor that might cause men to plagiarize in the pulpit is poor use of time. Pastors are busy people; they have a lot of work that they pack into a week.  If pastors are not careful about how they use their time they can easily give away the time that ought to be spent preparing a sermon.  It could be goofing off or fooling around during office hours, or it could be other legitimate ministry that a pastor has never learned to prioritize.  If pastors wait to the last minute to do sermon preparation or prioritize other aspects of ministry over this important task, they can find themselves out of time to adequately prepare a sermon.  In my own ministry, I endeavor to give my biggest part of my ministry (preaching) the first part of my time.  Monday and Tuesday are sermon preparation days.  Wednesday might be administrative tasks or discipleship meetings, and Thursdays are usually when I do counseling and visiting.  Friday mornings are for final administrative issues that need wrapped up for Sunday, and I usually try to take most of Friday and most of Saturday off, though it is not always that cut and dry.  If something happens on Monday, say a funeral, I get sick, or have a doctor appointment, my whole timetable gets shifted, but my sermon preparation does not suffer.  Perhaps I do not have time for as many house calls at the end of the week, or need to limit my availability for counseling, but either way my sermon gets done because I have structured my time to allow for that.  I suspect that some of these men who regularly plagiarize sermons have schedules that make it difficult for them to find time to do sermon preparation.  Their busy lifestyles or even lack of discipline crowds out what should be priority.  One more thought here.  Lack of time can be a legitimate struggle for a pastor.  In a small church setting especially, pastors wear more hats than they can count on all of their fingers and toes combined, and those responsibilities vary greatly!  Sometimes churches expect so much of their pastor that he could never get it all done proficiently.  In situations like this, pastors might experience the temptation to cut a few hours out of their week by borrowing another man’s work.  But busyness is not an excuse for a lack of sermon preparation!  I have heard seasoned men in ministry talk about how sometimes they might need to “re-preach” a sermon if they have a busy week.  The thought is that they never want to go into the pulpit underprepared.  While I understand the sentiment behind this, it has never set well with me.  I might even suggest that if you have to change your topic the week before you are to preach it you were probably already underprepared!  Yes, I understand that things happen, and people do not consult you before dying or getting admitted to the hospital.  But I believe pastors should still try to give themselves to making adequate time for sermon preparation.  In my own ministry, I have been preaching every weekend for six years now, but very rarely have I ever changed my preaching schedule last minute due to lack of time to prepare.  Certainly, I have had busy weeks, and I have “re-preached” a sermon on occasion, but only if the message was something that I believed our people needed to hear again.  COVID-19 for instance had me pulling a few sermons out of the file because they fit the need for the occasion.  But pastors need to make adequate time for sermon preparation.  Poor use of time could contribute to a man deciding to utilize another man’s words.

• Inadequate amount of training—another factor could be an inadequate amount of training. I spent six years in seminary, and hope to go back one day.  In seminary, it was generally accepted that a Master of Divinity degree was a “pastor’s degree.”  Since I was preparing to be a pastor, that is the educational path I pursued.  Now do not misunderstand me on this, I know of plenty of amazing and gifted preachers who have very little by the way of professional education.  But I do think that inadequate training could contribute to a man stealing someone else’s material.  I remember when I was taking my own preaching courses during Bible college that we had a discussion on the length of time it took to prepare a sermon.  I asked the pastor at my extension church how long he spent in preparation each week.  His words shocked me—“I do not spend as much time in sermon preparation as you might think, because I view my time in seminary as part of my sermon preparation.”  This pastor had an MDiv from a sound institution and was working on a DMin as well.  Looking back now, I see what he meant.  My time in my Master of Divinity program was kind of like sermon preparation.  I learned how to use the languages, studying both Greek and Hebrew.  I had six semester long theology courses, courses on preaching, Old Testament and New Testament survey courses, courses in hermeneutics, and a host of other types of training.  As a result, I come to any text with years of focused training in doctrine and interpretation.  Many of the difficult texts of Scripture I have encountered over the course of ministry I had already wrestled with; many of the significant doctrines which one must understand I had already been taught, or at least had been given enough understanding of the issues that I could reason through them.  In short: I had a whole foundation of education and preparation before I even entered ministry!  Some men, however, have not had the opportunity to go to seminary, or have not chosen to take it.  Others have taken a lighter program of study and therefore have not experienced the extent of preparation that they could have enjoyed.  I understand that God leads everyone differently, but let me make this point: those who have not had the benefit of being given a foundation of theology, exegesis, and exposition will likely have to work harder in their sermon preparation, and it may take longer than those who have this foundation.  In fact, such individuals might even rely on the material of others even more, because of their own limitations.  To share my own example, when I approach a text I start with my own exegesis, usually a translation.  I block diagram the pericope where it warrants diagramming and I get a feel for the flow of the text in the original languages, trying to find the exegetical outline on which I build my homiletical one.  If I use commentaries at all in my preparation, this is usually to check my work, see if there has been anything I have missed, and to look for application and illustrations.  As I progressed in my seminary training, I saw a shift in the resources I would use.  As I was able to use Greek and Hebrew in my own study and do much of my own exegetical work, I found that if I consulted a commentary, I shifted from using exegetical commentaries to devotional ones.  Why was this?  Previously, I always thought of devotional commentaries as “light weight” and “not in depth enough.”  The difference was that as I became able to do my own exegetical work I did not need to rely on exegetical commentaries as much, and if I needed help it was more in the area of application and illustration—making the message to the original audience applicable to my contemporary one.  But if I had not spent time pursuing the training I pursued in seminary, I might not be able to do the exegetical work that I can now do.  Men who have an inadequate amount of training might have to rely more on the work of others, and their own preparation might take them much longer than if they had been given other tools to help them in their craft.  I remember my preaching practicum professor in Bible college telling us that “Sunday’s come with awesome regularity!”  He was right!  You cannot get away from a Sunday!  Men who do not have adequate training will likely have to spend more time preparing, and the ever-approaching Sunday could become a burdensome deadline which they might desire to put off.  This could open them to the temptation to utilize another man’s material.  But one who is trained to mine truth out of a text will always be able to find it, because that is what he is trained to do, despite the never-ending deadline of another Sunday.  Perhaps some of those who rush to plagiarism would be better off broadening their educational backgrounds so that they can do the work themselves and do it efficiently, not having to rely on the material of another.

• Spiritual bankruptcy—Another factor that could play a role in the plagiarism issue could be the minister’s own spiritual bankruptcy. Ministry is not easy!  One of my own pastoral mentors used to say, “ministry is not for the faint of heart!”  Pastors are expected to give and give and give some more week in and week out.  For people who are so busy giving out spiritually, pastors can easily neglect taking care of their own spiritual life.  Pastors can ride the waves of ministry from one study time to the next—preparation for sermons, and then Sunday school, next a Bible study, and then on to counseling, only to do it all over again!  Pastors can learn to ride this roller coaster and set up habits of ministry without ever focusing on their own spiritual lives.  The result is not simply that they become dry—spiritual dry spells do happen.  But they become completely and totally barren and bankrupt.  This would be perhaps the worst place a pastor could be, because try as he might, he cannot find spiritual truths to share with his people.  As a result, the only option left to such a man is to take someone else’s material.  This creates even greater problems because then the pastor’s spiritual issues become unaddressed and the people consider him to be a spiritual giant because of his “great” sermons, without even realizing that he is spiritually bankrupt and has nothing of his own he can feed them.  This is never a good place for pastors to be!

• Lack of confidence—one final factor comes to mind relating to why men might plagiarize a sermon; perhaps they simply lack confidence. Maybe they identify with young pastor Timothy, who was still new to ministry but had been sent to set things right at the church in Ephesus.  He likely felt inadequate as false teachers in the church attempted to undermine his ministry and lead people astray.  Pastors can feel that today, especially young ones.  Perhaps the draw to plagiarism comes from a heart that says, “I do not have anything significant to say here; why would they listen to me; someone else could say it better.”  Perhaps even a pastor might hear another preacher on the radio or online and say “he just says it so much better than I ever could!  His church is growing, and he is a great preacher, maybe my people just need to hear him!”  Whatever the case, I think lack of confidence, or lack of confidence in God’s calling, could be a factor in why men might choose plagiarism in the pulpit.

Final Thoughts

I have given six reasons why men might be drawn to lift content from someone else’s sermon without giving adequate credit.  This list is certainly not comprehensive, but these are simply things that came to my mind when contemplating this issue.  Not every man who borrows material from another preacher does so for these reasons, but I do believe that some of them may.  Having said all of that, in the final article on this topic I hope to address some specific reasons why preachers ought to cite their sources when necessary, and the benefits they might receive when doing so.