Must they preach in their own words?

Saturday, Oct. 29, 2005 | 9:54 a.m.

Sermon ethics

A Christianity Today International survey, taken in 2003 and 2004 of 437 subscribers to the company's Preaching Today Web site showed that:

Source: Craig Brian Larson, Preaching Today editor

Is it plagiarism if it's inspired by God?

Preachers nationwide are wrestling with that question as they struggle with the increased temptation of Internet Web sites that offer ready-to-deliver sermons with the click of a mouse.

There are now dozens of Web sites for preachers in a pinch who can go online to find everything from movie clips to illustrate a point to inspirational stories to PowerPoint slides for their sermons.

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For $39.95 at DesperatePreacher.com, pastors can purchase a year's subscription to a weekly tool kit that includes full sermons, commentary, prayers and hymns to fit many Christian denominations. Sermonworld.com offers a full year of sermons with PowerPoint slides for $99.95. Or preachers who need just one sermon, but need it immediately, can pay $4 to download one of Rick Warren's sermons from pastors.com.

Author of the Christian best seller "The Purpose Driven Life" and pastor of the megasized Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., Warren encourages ministers to use his material to improve their own sermons.

"God has called us to be effective, not to be original at everything we teach," Warren writes on his Web site. "So if my bullets fit your gun, shoot them!"

But while some local preachers see such Web sites as useful tools for generating ideas or finding sermon illustrations, everyone interviewed by the Sun questioned the ethics of preaching someone else's full sermon.

"Preachers have the same responsibility to cite sources (as academics)," said the Rev. Bob Stoeckig, senior pastor for St. Joseph Husband of Mary Catholic Church on West Sahara Avenue. "We can't stand up and pretend that something is ours."

The Rev. Tom Butcher of the University United Methodist Church across from UNLV, said that "a lot of folks use downloaded sermons."

"But I've been in ministry 30 years now," he said. "I have my own theology and I don't want to use somebody else's."

Unless preachers say otherwise up front, church members expect that the sermons they hear are from the pastor's own research, life experience and personal reflection on the topic, pastors said. Most local preachers said they have used the Web sites for jokes and illustrations, but that they prefer their own material.

"I don't tend personally to get too inspired by what I find on preachers' Web sites," said Stoeckig, who regularly delivers sermons to up to 1,400 people at a time in multiple services. "I find that I'm a better preacher when it is something from my own life or others in my parish."

If someone does use an illustration or idea from someone else, credit should be given where credit is due, local preachers said.

But deciding what deserves credit is not always easy when everyone is preaching from the same message from the same book, said Craig Brian Larson, editor of Christianity Today's preachingtoday.com site.

Larson counsels preachers to give credit whenever they are quoting something word for word or when the idea is unique to the author. But every idea does not need to be cited.

Preachers have been sharing materials with each other since the invention of the printing press, Larson said. The Internet just made it easier to plagiarize, and easier for congregants to catch their preachers doing it.

Several preachers have lost their jobs in recent years for plagiarism, although there have been no publicized cases in the Las Vegas Valley, according to Larson. Erik Dokken, coordinator for the Gordon-Conwell Theological Serminary Center for Preaching in Massachusetts, agreed.

Dokken said borrowing from others can get preachers in trouble in other ways also, because there are now so many Web sites that many contain false information. They include "a lot of folk stories or urban legends," he said.

Local pastors say they gather their sermon fodder by brainstorming with other pastors or members of their own church, from reading commentaries on the Scriptures and keeping files of everything they read or hear that might help them. Sources include books, newspapers, magazines, movies and television.

Stoeckig said he recently sang a few lines from a Broadway show in a homily to make a point about love.

Several preachers said they plan ahead a few months to a year in advance, which alleviates a lot of the weekly pressure. It takes about 10 hours for a homily based on Scripture, and about 20 hours to prepare a 20-25 minute sermon, pastors said.

Preaching in place known as "Sin City" with its over-the-top entertainment can make it that much more difficult to keep attention in the pews and make a 2,000-year-old work relevant week after week, preachers said.

It doesn't help when their church members hear celebrity preachers such as Warren or author Max Lucado and wonder why their ministers can't preach like that.

Rob Hall, associate pastor at South Hills Christian Church in Henderson, said what people don't realize is those messages are often "sugar sticks:" messages those ministers perfect and then deliver countless times.

"The challenge of a being a teaching pastor is that you are preaching to the same people every same week and that's hard to do," Hall said. "They want you to be funny, they want you to be insightful, they want you to know the Bible, they want you to produce."

One danger preachers admit they run into is plagiarizing themselves -- forgetting where and when they've used an illustration from their own lives. Several said they keep a database of their sermons to prevent that, but it inevitably happens when they speak off the cuff.

But what matters, they all say, is what their congregants take away from the message.

"Preaching is not about information. It's about transformation," Hall said.

Christina Littlefield can be reached at 259-8813 or at clittle@ lasvegassun.com.