"We were recently notified that one of X's messages was reproduced on your website. While we are delighted that you use our material, I need to remind you that our sermons are copyright protected content and may not be distributed or reproduced (in whole or in part) beyond your immediate congregation without our permission and without proper attribution to the author. As such, we would ask that you remove this message, along with any other sermons you may have reproduced there which are based on X's outlines. Thank you in advance for your immediate attention to this request."
I had to admit it when I received this e-mail. Like it or not, I had become what I had always condemned — a sermon thief. I was the Winona Ryder of preachers.
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I'm now a sermon thief in recovery. Here is some of what I learned along the way.
Like most pastors, I entered the ministry with a strong work ethic — sort of. I remember coasting through my first few years of ministry with a lot less sermon preparation than I do now. I had a lot to say, and I could get away with little preparation.
I still remember the Sunday it caught up with me. I had hardly prepared, and I stank. I knew I stank. Everyone knew I stank. I went home that day and repented for my shoddy sermon preparation. I knew that I wasn't living up to my calling, that I was a workman who needed to be ashamed. You could say a lot about my sermons since then, but you couldn't say that I hadn't prepared.
In January 2000, I attended a preaching seminar that changed my approach to preaching. The speaker encouraged us to be ourselves, but his method was so compelling, and his sermons so available, that I adopted his method. My sermons started to sound a little like his. They weren't his, but they sounded like his. I then began to go even further.
I never knowingly stole a whole sermon. I did, however, begin to get series ideas from others. I began to borrow sermon titles, even though I would develop the sermon differently. It was easy to begin the preparation process by looking at what others had done on the topic. I might or might not use an outline or a point. My sermons were becoming more of a collaborative effort.
I never stopped putting lots of time into my sermons, usually at least ten hours. I never significantly borrowed material without giving credit. I was open with my leaders that I consulted other people's sermons as I prepared my own. But — and here is the problem — I was sounding less and less like myself, and more and more like some other preacher. I was losing my own identity. In short, I was selling out.
On a few occasions, without realizing it, I crossed that line. I don't even know where that line is, exactly. But I have no doubt that I crossed it. On about four occasions, even after all my preparation, the sermon that I delivered substantially resembled one that I had read during preparation. No, I hadn't just downloaded and preached a sermon. Yes, I had done my own work. But the results were close enough that I had essentially stolen somebody else's work. The sermons were close enough to somebody else's that I received an e-mail asking me to remove them from my website.