Pulpit Plagiarism: an acknowledgement

Mmm. I'm not sure I really buy this from the great Prof Don Carson on the wickedness of pulpit plagiarism. I tend to think that what we want is the best possible sermons. The sermon is not an academic essay. It seems to me that citing sources or flagging up "borrowings" might detract from the whole thing. It doesn't seem to me that the preacher is claiming originality for his outlines, forms of expression etc. Sure, you shouldn't tell other people's personal stories as if it happened to you on the way to the church: that would ammount to lies. Save your footnotes for the blog, I reckon.

Revd Dr Tim Keller talks sense on the subject when, whilst warning against plagiarism and especially failure to grapple with the text for yourself, he says:

we must be careful not to over-react. I don’t think anyone expects oral communication to have the same amount of detailed attribution as we expect in written communication. To cite where you got every allusion or basic idea or general illustration in a sermon would be tedious. A certain amount of leeway must be granted. Also, if you take a basic idea or illustration and “make it your own,” I don’t think you have to give attribution. Often the preacher you fear you are stealing from got that idea from some Puritan author and re-worked it into more contemporary form. And the Puritan might have gotten it from someone else. In fact, in the act of preaching, we often say something that we know we heard somewhere, but we can’t even remember where we got it. Again, I think we need to be charitable to preachers and not charge them with plagiarism for every un-new idea. Brand-new preachers, especially, are going to do a lot of copying of preachers that have influenced them.

Preaching Questions for "Us"

Some of these may be (!) leading questions and I ask them to myself too!

Do we contemporary British Conservative Evangelicals generally believe, with Luther and Calvin and the Reformed tradition, that the Minister's preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God?

How does our preaching compare to the preaching that is preserved in the written Word of God? Does our preaching tend to over emphasise instruction and application over and against the Bible which speaks the Word of God of Christ? Do we tell people about Christ (or indeed other things) or do we aim for them to see / hear / meet / taste Christ?

How is it that in the past preachers seem to have given fewer specific applications and instructions concerning marriage in their sermons, and yet many hearers had better marriages?

Does our preaching tend to produce an effect at the time, to be affecting there and then? Are we over concerned that our preaching should be memorable or helpful later rather than moving?

Do we preach to the heart, mind, will, affections, conscience, inner / whole person?

Is our preaching mainly thought of as a natural or a supernatural event?

Is preaching basically teaching with application or a visitation of Almighty God?

Would our people call our preaching powerful or rather faithful and clear? What do we pray for? If God were specially to bless your preaching one Sunday, what would that look like / how would you know?

Do people call your preaching somewhat engaging and interesting? Do people call our sermons "nice"? Are you satisfied with that? Would people say the same of the Sunday papers? What are your great aims and ambitions for your preaching?

Do people love to hear your preaching because it is the voice of heaven on earth? Does it contain the deep and infinite or is it rather light and breezy, even at times frivilous?

Does your preaching ever batter or break or thunder?

Is it clear from your preaching that you can see far more than you can express and that you know there is much more that you cannot see?

Is our preaching a tedious, pedantic, dull Bible class? How concerned are we to show our workings or to do the work?

How much warning, promise, encouragement, comfort and rebuke is there in your preaching? What replaces them?

Do we tell jokes and entertain and lighten it up or rather is our preaching basically a serious, solemn business? Is our preaching terrible, awesome and wonderful? Does it have a gravitas without pomposity or pretense?

When did someone (including you) last cry or cry out durring one of your sermons? Are people (ever) heart-broken or over-joyed when you preach? Are people appreciative of your sermons or rather silenced and awestruck by Christ as a result? Does our preaching tend to produce love, joy, faith, sorrow, zeal or rather smiles and nodding heads and better informed sinners?

When preparing our sermons do we hunt great game and make sure that we roast it and serve it up?

Is prayer the chief part, or indeed hardly part at all, of your preparation? Could it be said of your preaching that you "have not because you ask not"?

When you preach do you realise that you stand between your hearers and God on the brink of eternity? Do you preach as one who has the 4 Last Things (heaven, hell, death, judgement) in view or as someone looking at the prospect of some grand and beautiful scene to which he invites his hearers?

Do we read the great preaching of the past who move you?

Is your preaching consistent with your life? Do you ever speak of Christ outside of the pulpit as you seek to in the pulpit? Do your people sense that you have a moment by moment sense of what you try to say on a Sunday and that it moves you yourself?

Do your people want to hear 2 of your sermons on a Sunday? Why not? Would your people come to hear you midweek?

You are concerned for people to come to your church, but would it be worth their while?

How long does it take you to prepare a sermon?

That all depends on lots of things, not least how much time and engery I have. Preparation can be lots of fun and it can sometimes expand to fill the time available. On the other hand, it can also be hard work and one can tend to hide from it.

One has to decide how much time and engery one can spare and what one's other duties are. There's no set time that one must spend on any one sermon. In a way, all of life is sermon preparation anyway! In some situations it would be possible to work too long and hard on a sermon, when one should be resting, or spending time with the wife and kids, or evangelising the many unconverted people of the parish who ought to be there to hear the sermon but wont be unless you persuade them to come.

It also depends on how well I know the passage or subject in question. There are some sermons I could probably preach to you now without a single note that I hope you would find at least moderately helpful. That's cos I've preached them once or twice before, so I don't feel I desperately need to do much extra preparation.

It also depends on to whom I'm speaking and in what context and for how long. For example, if I know the hearers are likely to be well taught keen Christians with a similar background to me who will come desperate to hear the Word of God, there is less need to worry about being very engaging and accessible. If I'm going to speak in a pub to people who don't even know that Jesus died on the cross, I'm going to think a bit more about a way in and a way of getting it accross.

It also depends what helps I have available. If there's a Vaughan Roberts sermon online on that passage then maybe I might as well just preach that: one hour, sermon ready. I'm kidding. Kind of!

So there are no hard and fast rules. We mustn't be too hung up about it. Adequate preparation is adequate. You will never preach the perfect sermon and its probably sinful to attempt to!

I would say that generally I would want two "sessions" (i.e. mornings, afternoons or evenings - or nights!) to work on a sermon: so something like 8 hours all together. If I couldn't say something true and useful and reasonably engaging after that, I'd think something had gone badly wrong.

What do you reckon? Is 8 hours about right? That amount of preparation would make the typical traditional free church pattern of ministry of 2 sermons on a Sunday and a mid-week meeting do-able alongside a rule like "never be out of your study in the morning, never be in it in the afternoon", allowing for some other stuff too.

96.6% of Christians look forward to sermons!

According to research for the College of Preachers, Durham University, as reported in Times Online.

HT: IC on Facebook

Top 33 Preaching Topics

I wonder how our preaching priorities compare to the topics covered in the sermon in The Books of Homilies?

This nicked from Wikipedia:

The 'Former Book' of homilies contains twelve sermons and was mainly written by Cranmer. They focus strongly upon the character of God and Justification by Faith and were fully published by 1547.

The homilies are:

I. A Fruitful exhortation to the reading of holy Scripture.

II. Of the misery of all mankind.

III. Of the salvation of all mankind.

IV. Of the true and lively faith.

V. Of good works.

VI. Of Christian love and charity.

VII. Against swearing and perjury.

VIII. Of the declining from GOD.

IX. An exhortation against the fear of death.

X. An exhortation to obedience.

XI. Against whoredom and adultery.

XII. Against strife and contention.

The 'Second Book' contains twenty-one sermons and was mainly written by Bishop John Jewel. It was fully published by 1571. These are more practical in their application and focus more on living the Christian life.

This volume includes:

I. Of the right use of the Church.

II. Against peril of Idolatry.

III. For repairing and keeping clean the Church.

IIII. Of good works. And first of Fasting.

V. Against gluttony and drunkenness.

VI. Against excess of apparel.

VII. An homily of Prayer.

VIII. Of the place and time of Prayer.

IX. Of Common Prayer and Sacraments

X. An information of them which take offence at certain places of holy Scripture.

XI. Of alms deeds.

XII. Of the Nativity.

XIII. Of the Passion for good Friday.

XIIII. Of the Resurrection for Easter day.

XV. Of the worthy receiving of the Sacrament.

XVI. An Homily concerning the coming down of the holy Ghost, for Whitsunday.

XVII. An Homily for Rogation week.

XVIII. Of the state of Matrimony.

XIX. Against Idleness.

XX. Of Repentance and true Reconciliation unto God.

XXI. An Homily against disobedience and wilful rebellion.

Brave Sermon Feedback

Apart from the usual "excellent"s, "thank you"s and "lovely sermon"s (no one said this latter one today), many people told me today that my sermon was "brave". I wasn't sure how to take that! I had a couple of relevant intelligent questions. One person said it was 10 mins too long and one person said it would have been better as two sermons; these people may well be right.

(The whole sermon on "You Shall Not Murder" with an emphasis on abortion will appear on our church website in due course this week d.v.)

Listen to the Doctor online

The Doctor was undoubtedly a great great preacher, though I reckon he's not so fashionable as people like Piper or Driscoll these days.

You can hear a little bit of his stuff for free at http://www.mlj.org.uk

There seem to be monthly free specials but most of the stuff is a bit pricey.