First: Taking over another sermon and preaching it as if it were yours is always and unequivocally wrong, and if you do it you should resign or be fired immediately. The wickedness is along at least three axes: (1) You are stealing. (2) You are deceiving the people to whom you are preaching. (3) Perhaps worst, you are not devoting yourself to the study of the Bible to the end that God’s truth captures you, molds you, makes you a man of God and equips you to speak for him. If preaching is God’s truth through human personality (so Phillips Brooks), then serving as nothing more than a kind of organic recording device in playback mode does not qualify. Incidentally, changing a few words here and there in someone else’s work does not let you off the hook; re-telling personal experiences as if they were yours when they were not makes the offense all the uglier. That this offense is easy to commit because of the availability of source material in the digital age does not lessen its wickedness, any more than the ready availability of porn in the digital age does not turn pornography into a virtue. (Occasionally preachers have preached a famous sermon from another preacher, carefully noting their source. That should be done, at most, only very occasionally, but there is no evil in it.)
Second: Taking over the structure, perhaps the outline in exact wording, and other significant chunks, while filling in the rest of the substance yourself, is not quite so grievous but still reprehensible. The temptation springs from the fact that writing a really good outline is often the most creative and challenging part of sermon preparation. Fair enough: if you “borrow” someone else’s outline, simply acknowledge it, and you have not sinned.
Third: In the course of diligent preparation, you are likely to come across clever snippets and ways of summarizing or formulating the truth of a passage that are creative and memorable. If you cite them, you should acknowledge that they are not yours, either with an “As so-and-so has said” or an “As someone has said.” This discipline keeps you honest and humble.
Fourth: If you read widely and have a good mind, that mind will inevitably become charged with good things whose source or origin you cannot recall. Often such sources can be tracked down fairly easily. On the other hand, do not become paranoid: a well-stocked mind is the result of decades of reading and learning, and ought to overflow easily and happily with gratitude toward God to the blessing of God’s people.
Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687-1752): “Apply yourself wholly to the text; apply the text wholly to yourself.”
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2010/12/20/tgc-asks-don-carson-when-has-a-preacher-crossed-the-line-into-plagiarism-in-his-sermon/
Monday, December 20, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Tell Us Your Stories by Collin Hansen
Sometimes younger Christians give the impression that we have things figured out. We’re the future. We’ve found the old methods wanting, so we’ve developed new ones. We’re the generation that will strike the right balance where our forebears fell over to one side or the other. We’ve learned from your mistakes. And we don’t mind telling you.
Older believers recognize this youthful arrogance for what it is. You’ve been there, done that, grown out of it. You wait patiently for us to do likewise. But I want to encourage you not to let us younger believers off the hook so easily. Don’t berate us, for we excel at tuning out what we don’t want to hear. Don’t patronize us, as our pride will kick in and make us defensive. Still, there is one thing you can do: Tell us your stories.
Your stories give us the perspective we haven’t yet gained with experience. We don’t yet understand how much we don’t know. Our youthful bluster masks insecurity. We stand tall against withering attacks from our peers, but we’ve hardly been tested. We fear that when harder times come our faith will prove ephemeral. But your stories gird us against these doubts. So look underneath our confident exterior. You’ll find that younger Christians actually want to hear from older believers about how God demonstrated His faithfulness in their generation.
I’m worried, however, that these stories will be lost. Evangelicals suffer from self-inflicted amnesia. Our churches segregate age groups in order to foster relationships between peers. If you’re not deliberate about developing intergenerational friendships, they will not happen. Worse, our relentless effort to contextualize the gospel by chasing new cultural trends leads us to disparage the past. After all, what can the past teach us about spreading the gospel in the age of social media? Innovation is indeed necessary as we take the gospel into all the nations. And those committed to semper reformanda will always re-evaluate their practices by the standard of Scripture. But the line between innovation and fashion appears dangerously faint these days.
Exceptions give me hope that this unfortunate trend may be reversed. Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, killed by the Nazi regime, continues to inspire young Christians to forsake cheap grace and follow the path of costly discipleship. The Ecuador martyrs’ courage has prodded many young believers to reach the unreached with the gospel. Their story gives remarkable power to Jim Elliot’s famous quote: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” And I won’t soon forget sitting in Park Community Church on Chicago’s North Side in April 2009 as hundreds of trendy young evangelicals listened to D.A. Carson and John Piper for nearly four hours. Carson and Piper did little more than share their stories of God’s providence displayed over decades of faithful ministry.
There is consistently strong biblical warrant for encouraging one another by telling these stories of God’s grace. In his charge to Israel, Moses told God’s people: “Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you” (Deut. 32:7). And oh, what a story the elders could tell of the God who heard the cries of His people, delivered them from Egypt, destroyed their pursuing enemies in the Red Sea, and sustained them in the wilderness. Yet Psalm 106 details the sad saga of how quickly and often the Israelites forgot what God had done. When still in Egypt, “they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love” (Ps. 106:7). Even after the Red Sea miracle, “they soon forgot his works; they did not wait for his counsel” (v. 13). Then, when Moses ascended Mt. Sinai, they worshiped a golden calf. “They forgot their God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt” (v. 21).
We Christians live according to the new and better covenant ratified in the blood of Jesus Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit. But we are similarly sinful. We need constant reminders that God is good no matter our circumstances. Scripture is the ultimate deposit of these faith-forming stories. So we mine the Scriptures, which were “written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
But our own testimonies to God’s persevering grace build up the body as well. I can attest to this effect while researching the history of revivals. As I read about the heaven-sent awakenings that broke out during president Timothy Dwight’s tenure at Yale University during the early 1800s, I was inspired to pray boldly that God would set college campuses aflame with revival today. I mourned over the darkness that has since enveloped North Korea but gave thanks for the Pyongyang revival that spread into China and eventually transformed South Korea.
Maybe God hasn’t used you to lead a revival. But he has revealed his sovereign goodness to you in countless ways both big and small. So tell us your stories. We’re listening.
www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/tell-us-your-stories/
Older believers recognize this youthful arrogance for what it is. You’ve been there, done that, grown out of it. You wait patiently for us to do likewise. But I want to encourage you not to let us younger believers off the hook so easily. Don’t berate us, for we excel at tuning out what we don’t want to hear. Don’t patronize us, as our pride will kick in and make us defensive. Still, there is one thing you can do: Tell us your stories.
Your stories give us the perspective we haven’t yet gained with experience. We don’t yet understand how much we don’t know. Our youthful bluster masks insecurity. We stand tall against withering attacks from our peers, but we’ve hardly been tested. We fear that when harder times come our faith will prove ephemeral. But your stories gird us against these doubts. So look underneath our confident exterior. You’ll find that younger Christians actually want to hear from older believers about how God demonstrated His faithfulness in their generation.
I’m worried, however, that these stories will be lost. Evangelicals suffer from self-inflicted amnesia. Our churches segregate age groups in order to foster relationships between peers. If you’re not deliberate about developing intergenerational friendships, they will not happen. Worse, our relentless effort to contextualize the gospel by chasing new cultural trends leads us to disparage the past. After all, what can the past teach us about spreading the gospel in the age of social media? Innovation is indeed necessary as we take the gospel into all the nations. And those committed to semper reformanda will always re-evaluate their practices by the standard of Scripture. But the line between innovation and fashion appears dangerously faint these days.
Exceptions give me hope that this unfortunate trend may be reversed. Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, killed by the Nazi regime, continues to inspire young Christians to forsake cheap grace and follow the path of costly discipleship. The Ecuador martyrs’ courage has prodded many young believers to reach the unreached with the gospel. Their story gives remarkable power to Jim Elliot’s famous quote: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” And I won’t soon forget sitting in Park Community Church on Chicago’s North Side in April 2009 as hundreds of trendy young evangelicals listened to D.A. Carson and John Piper for nearly four hours. Carson and Piper did little more than share their stories of God’s providence displayed over decades of faithful ministry.
There is consistently strong biblical warrant for encouraging one another by telling these stories of God’s grace. In his charge to Israel, Moses told God’s people: “Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you” (Deut. 32:7). And oh, what a story the elders could tell of the God who heard the cries of His people, delivered them from Egypt, destroyed their pursuing enemies in the Red Sea, and sustained them in the wilderness. Yet Psalm 106 details the sad saga of how quickly and often the Israelites forgot what God had done. When still in Egypt, “they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love” (Ps. 106:7). Even after the Red Sea miracle, “they soon forgot his works; they did not wait for his counsel” (v. 13). Then, when Moses ascended Mt. Sinai, they worshiped a golden calf. “They forgot their God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt” (v. 21).
We Christians live according to the new and better covenant ratified in the blood of Jesus Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit. But we are similarly sinful. We need constant reminders that God is good no matter our circumstances. Scripture is the ultimate deposit of these faith-forming stories. So we mine the Scriptures, which were “written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
But our own testimonies to God’s persevering grace build up the body as well. I can attest to this effect while researching the history of revivals. As I read about the heaven-sent awakenings that broke out during president Timothy Dwight’s tenure at Yale University during the early 1800s, I was inspired to pray boldly that God would set college campuses aflame with revival today. I mourned over the darkness that has since enveloped North Korea but gave thanks for the Pyongyang revival that spread into China and eventually transformed South Korea.
Maybe God hasn’t used you to lead a revival. But he has revealed his sovereign goodness to you in countless ways both big and small. So tell us your stories. We’re listening.
www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/tell-us-your-stories/
Monday, December 13, 2010
Ten Reasons for Expository Preaching
Expository preaching
Fri, 2010-12-03 06:30 — Adrian Reynolds
I've not long finished reading a book for a review in Evangelicals Now. The book is called The Shepherd Leader by Timothy Z Witmer. You'll have to wait for EN to read the review, but one of the book's strengths is a top-ten list of why preachers should preach expository sermons. You can argue that one or two of the points are the same, but here it is anyway:
1. Expository preaching identifies exactly what is at the heart of the Christian message
2. Expository preaching requires that the shepherd concern himself with the intent of the Divine Author for every text.
3. Expository preaching respects the integrity of the textual units given through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
4. Expository preaching keeps the pastor from riding his favourite hobby horses.
5. Expository preaching requires the preacher to preach the difficult or obscure texts and challenging truths of the Bible.
6. Expository preaching will encourage both pastor and students alike to become students of the Bible.
7. Expository preaching gives us boldness in preaching for we are not expounding our own fallible views but the Word of God.
8. Expository preaching gives confidence to the listener that what he is hearing is not the opinion of man but the Word of God.
9. Expository preaching is of great assistance in sermon planning.
10. Expository preaching provides the context for a long tenure in a particular place.
Enough said?
http://www.proctrust.org.uk/blog/2010-12-03/expository-preaching-948
Fri, 2010-12-03 06:30 — Adrian Reynolds
I've not long finished reading a book for a review in Evangelicals Now. The book is called The Shepherd Leader by Timothy Z Witmer. You'll have to wait for EN to read the review, but one of the book's strengths is a top-ten list of why preachers should preach expository sermons. You can argue that one or two of the points are the same, but here it is anyway:
1. Expository preaching identifies exactly what is at the heart of the Christian message
2. Expository preaching requires that the shepherd concern himself with the intent of the Divine Author for every text.
3. Expository preaching respects the integrity of the textual units given through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
4. Expository preaching keeps the pastor from riding his favourite hobby horses.
5. Expository preaching requires the preacher to preach the difficult or obscure texts and challenging truths of the Bible.
6. Expository preaching will encourage both pastor and students alike to become students of the Bible.
7. Expository preaching gives us boldness in preaching for we are not expounding our own fallible views but the Word of God.
8. Expository preaching gives confidence to the listener that what he is hearing is not the opinion of man but the Word of God.
9. Expository preaching is of great assistance in sermon planning.
10. Expository preaching provides the context for a long tenure in a particular place.
Enough said?
http://www.proctrust.org.uk/blog/2010-12-03/expository-preaching-948
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