While hearing a preacher deliver a sermon away from my home church a couple of weeks ago I thought it sounded awfully familiar. My wife did some checking and discovered that paragraph after paragraph of the talk had been taken almost verbatim from a recent article in a ministerial journal.
This wasn’t a backwater preacher we heard. He’s a published author and nationally recognized church leader. Unfortunately, it’s become common practice for many time-strapped pastors to lift material from other sources and stand in the pulpit as though the words are their own. I know pastors have many pressing duties beyond delivering the Word every week. There’s nothing wrong with borrowing a few sentences from another source — as long as there is attribution.
I find it disturbing that many ministers freely appropriate the works of others (and there is a burgeoning market out there to sell such fare) in a profession that is supposed to be teaching ethics and righteousness. Silly me. I thought maybe those who are close to God might be able to provide fresh insights of their own.
Certainly in my profession of journalism there’s no tolerance for plagiarism. I once discovered a writer had incorporated quotes from a newspaper from a source he couldn’t reach himself and slapped his byline on it. The writer didn’t get paid for the article he submitted and I’ve never used him again.
Most every profession is stressed these days, but we shouldn’t give in to temptations to take shortcuts. I don’t have as much time to spend writing now because our staff has downsized. Yet I still have to interview people myself. I can’t be lazy and steal the published articles of others.
The ultimate paradox of the plagiarizing pastor is the topic of his sermon: How we no longer can tell the standards of the church apart from the world’s standards.
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