There seems to be a new discussion in the blogsphere about pastors plagiarizing other pastors sermons. See Scot McKnight
here and Out of Ur
here.
The main gist of this is the idea of pastors using other pastors sermons verbatim. I have never done this, but I know those who do. I heard the comments from other pastors about how crazy their lives are. How demanding their jobs are and their congregations are and how they do not have enough time to come up with an original sermon every week. I know the resources are out there...and sermons are easy to get (they are sold on the internet...the complete sermon from your favorite mega-church pastor - all power points included.)
I think one of the reasons that pastors do this is that the idea of buying someone else's sermons in marketed to them. I get catalogs in the mail a few times a month offering subscription services. I get e-mails offering me sermons. It has been so well marketed that it just seem natural...everyone must be doing it. (I speculate that is why there seems to be an increase in pornography today...it is marketed as normal.)
All this brings me back to a story from when I was interning to church plant. Rocky and I went to a Church Planting conference once. There was this well respected pastor / church planter speaking at the conferees, giving all of us future church planters some advice on how to survive the first year. One of the suggestions that he gave was to subscribe to a sermon service. With all the stress of the first year of planting, your life would be made easier if someone else was preparing your sermon. I had never heard of something like this, and it excited me (since I had never preached in my life and was terrified of what it would be like). Rocky and I left the session and climbed into his truck. He then turned to me and said "If I ever catch you using someone else sermon, I will go to where you are and kick your...." (the last word, although not very "pastoral", got his meaning across well.)
Like I said earlier, I have never preached someone else's message. The closest I have gotten to that was repreaching one of my own (to a different audience). That message fell flat and I swore I would never do that again. Now, I have borrowed other people's thoughts from stuff I have heard and read, but I tend to give credit when I do that. I try to be original, but I read a lot, and I am influenced by the scholarship that I read. With that said, the sermon that I present I crafted (with the help of the Holy Spirit).
I think that the excuses that pastors make are valid....this job is odd. To do it well means that you are working almost 24/7 (more on that concept later). Everything is pulling at you and at your time. And a good sermon takes time to write (for me 8 to 16 hours to write one sermon...including study time). What is a pastor to do? My first thought is that we need to prioritize our life better...and our church needs to understand that. I have writing / study time. I have to put it into my schedule or else it won't happen. My wife knows I need it, my secretary knows I need it, my board knows I need it. If I don't get it, they won't get any teaching on Sunday (that might be a good thing every now and then)
Enough of this rant. It is 11:27pm on Saturday night. I finished my sermon for tomorrow about 90 minutes ago. Time to get some sleep.
