Church Voices

From here:

James Merritt preached tonight at the Southern Baptist Pastor’s Conference. He began his sermon by mentioning his website PastorsEdge. He encouraged his listeners to download his free Father’s Day sermon - illustrations and PowerPoint included - and use it this Sunday with his blessings. He assured them it was not plagiarism and they had his full permission.

This bothers me for a couple of reasons, none of which has to do with plagiarism, copyrights or any other sort of ethereal claims to intellectual property.

First, using an entire sermon prepared by someone else castrates the development of new preachers. Right now certain young, undeveloped preachers may be able to produce better sermons by using someone else’s material, but after a few years they’ll not be able to develop their own sermons, nor will they ever develop their own style that they’re comfortable with, which also emphasizes their strengths as a preacher. If this were to become wide spread practice Christianity would not produce any more great preachers, and the evolution of preaching would stagnate.

Second, every congregation is different. Oh I know you head off across the blogosphere and you’ll find posts where the view that certain denominations are homogeneous based on their, geographic location, political bent and racial make-up, but its simply not true. Each congregation, and each community has certain shared experiences, biases, sins, questions and needs that are unique. By using a sermon created by someone else you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to communicate the gospel as effectively as possible, and you’re robbing your congregation of hearing the gospel in the clearest possible way (and if we want to be a bit more
pragmatic, you’re robbing them of what they’ve paid you for).

So please, stay far far away from places like Pastor’s Edge because ultimately it will make your preaching dull, and ineffective.