Friday, November 17, 2006

Pastors Who Plagiarize

Blog world was buzzing a few days ago about a big article in the Wall Street Journal about how more and more pastors are buying sermons from pastors such as Ed Young and preaching them from their pulpits. You can read the article here. (thanks for the scoop Dboats)

I agree with bloggers like Tim Challies who thinks pastors who just preach other people’s sermons are not being responsible in their calling. Especially if they use large portions of a message without acknowledging that “so-and-so” pastor wrote the message portion. It is really no different that copying large portions of another persons paper without giving the original author credit.

For those Parkview people out there, you can put your mind at ease. Pastor Jeff teaches original material. Sure, like every pastor, books and commentaries do provide inspiration from time to time but the majority of his time is spent wrestling with the passages from which he preaches. Pastors who don’t take time wrestling with the passage from which they teach don’t often have the verbal conviction that will come when you have truly dug deeply into the Word of God. They are also the type of pastors whose messages all start sounding the same after a few years under their teaching. I thank God we have a pastor who works hard to deliver messages that are passionate, well studied, and original most every week he teaches.

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