Recycling sermons from Web site debated

When churchgoers in Bluffton, Ind., turn out at Fellowship Baptist Church to hear Pastor Lenny Stringer, they might hear a sermon he wrote himself. Or they might hear one somebody else gave years ago to another congregation, a sermon that is now available at www.sermons.org.
   
“I know and trust the men who have submitted sermons on the page,” Stringer said. “I have even preached a few. I would love to see more sermons added on a regular basis.”
   
Stringer is one of thousands of preachers who consults preprinted sermons and outlines when preparing their Sunday messages. He’s also among an untold number who go one step beyond consultation into a realm some consider plagiarism by sometimes proclaiming a message someone else composed.
   
Dozens of enterprises, from Logos Productions Inc. to sermoncentral.com, make prewritten sermons easy to get. Busy pastors have learned to tap the Internet, especially when they’re in a pinch. According to www.sermons.org founder Shelton Cole, the site gets most of its 500,000 hits per month during the wee hours of Saturday night as preachers scramble to think of a few poignant words.
   
But not everyone is singing the praises of the sermon-marketing industry or of those who depend on it.
Calvin Miller, a professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, said a sermon that is presented at one church might not fit the needs of a different congregation. Miller also cited another problem with using a sermon written by someone else.
   
“I don’t think the same sermon should be used in two different contexts, even with amendments,” Miller said. “There’s rarely any sermon so applicable to every set of demographics and needs that it works exactly between two contexts.”
   
David Bartlett, Lantz professor of preaching and Christian communication at Yale Divinity School, said the practice of preaching “anonymously inspirational stuff as if it were your own” amounts to plagiarism and betrays the pastoral responsibility to the flock.
   
“A sermon needs to go to the particular needs of a particular congregation on a particular day,” Bartlett said. “If you’re too busy to do the job right, then get another job.”
   
Apparently, quite a few pastors do find themselves too busy to generate a fresh word each week. Craig Baugh of Fredericksburg, Va., for instance, praised one sermon-supply site for helping him deliver on Sundays as a part-time pastor. “I have been preaching here for more than six years while holding a full-time job with the federal government,” Baugh wrote. “Sometimes the demands are just too much to prepare a sermon from scratch. Your site has been a real blessing.”
   
Those who furnish sermons, outlines and illustrations have no misgivings about the endeavor. As long as users either treat the material as a springboard for their own ideas or give credit where it’s due, Cole said, everybody benefits.
   
“They’re there for people to use as they see fit,” Cole said, noting that he doesn’t allow copyrighted material to be posted on his site. “If God gave (a sermon or outline) to me, why couldn’t God use it for someone else?”
   
Cole’s point shows why pastors often don’t see the sermon-borrowing practice as plagiarism. Pastors have traditionally understood the preached word to be a gift of the Holy Spirit, not merely of human hand. To take credit for a sermon is to commit the sin of pride by depriving the Spirit its due. Hence, pastors are often willing to share — and borrow — sermons and outlines with few restrictions since they do not consider any man or woman to be the true author.
   
“To be honest, most times when I preach from an online outline I preach it as a Word of God” rather than as another person’s work, said Stringer, who works 50 hours per week outside the church at a secular job. “God blesses His Word as it is preached with clarity no matter who came up with the outline.”
   
“Sometimes you know what subject you want to preach on or what verses have touched your heart, but you are having trouble getting a handle on just how to proceed,” said Dennis McKinley, pastor of Landmark Baptist Church in Carlsbad, N.M. “You can then go to a site like sermons.org and see what other men have done with the same subject or text.”
   
Unlike Cole, Bartlett sees the use of outlines as another “pastoral danger” because they too often substitute for preparatory work in developing a particular message. What’s more, plagiarism is especially likely to occur with material found online, he said, because in terms of citation protocol, “we’ve got good guidelines for books, but we need to develop them for online resources.”
   
All 10,000 members of Cole’s site are told, he said, that the intent is for materials to serve as a catalyst for ideas. They are “not designed to replace anything in the way of study materials.” Nevertheless, he concedes, “you can’t stop somebody from plagiarizing.”
   
For example, he once found one of his own sermons, titled “Three Things From Hell You Should Find in Every Baptist Church,” posted at another pastor’s Web site where the other pastor was taking credit as the author.
   
“I wrote him a note saying, ‘Nice sermon,’” Cole said. “He was embarrassed and took it down.”
Miller said there may be stories or illustrations from other pastors’ sermons that can help them develop their own sermons.
   
“I have no problem with doing that,” he said. “I always think it’s really dishonest, though, if we don’t acknowledge those sources.
   
“We want our sermons to reflect a breadth of reading,” Miller said. “We’re pulling in insights from books we have read, the life we have lived, people we have met through the week, television and movies we have seen.
   
“We’re always using a plethora of sources — they vary widely from sermon to sermon or even within a sermon,” Miller said. “I wouldn’t think you would want a sermon that doesn’t reflect you’re a student of life.”
   
Cole operates his sermon material clearinghouse from his home in Sheffield, Mass., where he is an independent Baptist church planter. Eager to offer thoughts for this story, his site’s devotees sent e-mail from ministry outposts as varied as Johannesburg, South Africa, and Odessa, Ukraine. Some reported adapting the site’s material to settings from the pulpit to Sunday School and prayer meetings. Others said they subscribe just to keep tabs on those who use such preaching aids. (RNS, TAB)