Cheating in the Pulpit
Rick Warren, of the Saddleback Church, who markets his sermons online, told the British journal Christianity, "If my bullet fits your gun, shoot it," and Craig Brian Larson, writing about pulpit plagiarism at PreachingToday.com, cites a preacher who says, "When Chuck Swindoll starts preaching better sermons, so will I." When it comes to preachers desperate to feed the incessant pulpit hunger, "the Internet," as one of my colleagues likes to say, "is like having a drug dealer on every corner."
Preachers who strive to tell the truth, who seek to honor the communion of saints, who desire to maintain the trust of the faithful community—that is to say, preachers with ethical integrity—will wrestle with these questions and make the best decisions they can. Pulpit plagiarists, however, in the name of expediency, will grab what they wish wherever they can find it and claim it as their own. Their stolen sermons may occasionally sparkle, but in the end they will have spread the banquet table of God with the empty calories of homiletical fast food.
It’s the laziness that troubles me the most. When Rick Warren says, “If my bullets fit your gun, fine,” is he referring back to the ancient church’s attribution of all truth to God, or is he making allowance for pastors who long since quit reading, thinking, working out the content of salvation on behalf of their churches? In the instances I know about that is indeed the case. It’s not as though these pastors have such interesting, important and dynamic ministry that they couldn’t spare a day or even a few hours preparing something fresh. They’re just burnt out: they need love and care, but not a pulpit. As for the rest of us: if Dietrich Bonhoeffer could write fresh sermons at Finkenwalde, if Desmond Tutu could in Apartheid South Africa, if pastors in Zimbabwe can now, surely we can too.
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