I think the Bee does better when it is satirising stuff inside the Christian community which, well, needs satirising. One of its gags which took a swipe at Calvinism (their background is originally Reformed) was very funny, as was one of their pieces about how a newly-married woman could now be counted as a “real” Christian.
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I’m curious how that went. Did you announce you were preaching Jake’s sermon? How did your congregation receive it? How was the process of prep beforehand?
I remember hearing Dever talk about preaching an Edwards sermon to his congregation (might have been ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’) on an important Edwards anniversary. But he mentioned pouring over it and the text as if he were preparing it as his own original sermon. Then he preached it rather than just regurgitating or reading it. That was an intriguing idea. And I think he made it very clear what he was doing.
Not sure I could do that, but for personality reasons rather than strict morality reasons. Though I’m not a fan of the larger church sermon prep process described above.
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If a liberal micro outlet started The Chirp and Vance show, for liberal audiences who couldn’t embrace Chip and Lance, the profit loss to me would be minimal, I guess, because of the lack of overlap in audience. But there would still be real loss to me, in all sorts of ways. Some of it spiritual and emotional. And if there wasn’t profit loss it wouldn’t be because the dirty Chip and Lance thief hadn’t created the possibility.
I don’t trust my taste for pastors preaching other men’s sermons. Was it accepted in past generations? I pity the congregation that has no pastor and an elder reads a Calvin sermon each Sunday. The pastor should know his flock. Maybe on a rare occasion a particular sermon from the past is just what the flock needs.
As far as ideas from others, I don’t want my pastor (or pastors in general) to be hampered with a general purported obligation to cite sources. It can be distracting for him and the congregation. I’d say the same about having those awful copyright notices show up at the end of the hymns flashed on the overhead screen so that now you’re thinking about the author of the song and the year it was written instead of the message of the song. My pastor will occasionally cite a source in a sermon when he’s quoting someone verbatim. It can be helpful in pointing the flock to good feeding grounds. Done to excess it can distract the congregation as they hear famous names they are proud to say they recognize, while giving the pastor cover to avoid his own application as he hides behind the skirts of famous names. Let’s not have that.
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I don’t think I told the congregation ahead of time. Pretty sure I told some people afterwards. The sermon seemed to be well received, and I haven’t heard any complaint about me using his sermon. (I complained afterward to Jake about how long it was though. 
) It was hard for me to do, because I’m bad at preaching from manuscripts.
When I occasionally repreach an old sermon of mine, sometimes it takes me a long time of prep and sometimes not. I don’t write manuscripts, just outlines, so my written sermons would be pretty useless to share with others. In this particular case it was fairly easy to prep for. Just read the manuscript a few times. Absorbed it. Got its structure and flow. Decided I liked his interpretation and application, and didn’t make many changes. (Maybe cut a story or anecdote? I can’t remember.) I would never be able to read first-person sections without modification in a manuscript. Well, unless they just happened to also be true of me or were generic, like confessions often are.
Baylyblog has some good stuff on plagiarism:
Excellent by David: Christians, Copyrights and "Piracy" | BaylyBlog
To the above, I’ll add that I’ve always felt plagiarism is the least of the worries with the pastors accused of it, and this particularly with Litton and Greear. To reduce the problems throughout his sermon (if you read the manuscript) to plagiarism is to mess with the deck chairs on the Titanic. But that seems to be what we do. We love an objective failure, a quantifiable sin. “Husband of one wife.” Bingo! “One!” But pride and greed? What do we do with those? It’s so hard to make judgments about subjective things, so everyone talks about the Keller/Tripp/Litton/Greear (yes, Keller’s there, too) lineage and leaves to the side the horror of cuddling up to sodomy in the winsome and eternally fatal way everyone’s doing it today.
It’s easy to say “he’s a plagiarist!” It’s very, very hard to show the wickedness of his antinomian wolfhood in such a way that sheep see it and flee. But really, almost every sentence of what he says is wicked in it’s implications and connotations, not to mention his horrible exegesis of Romans 1 and 2. One thing he gets wrong over and over and over again. Do any of you know what it is?
Also, I have often had friends forward Babylon Bee crap to me. I never say “thanks for the crap.” I just try to say thanks and be polite. But I’ve never looked at it. Ever. Why not?
Because they consistently break the Third Commandment. Let me say that again: they consistently take the Name of the Lord our God in vain. Then too, they mock the mistakes poor sheep make at the intersection of faith and holy things. It’s impossible for me to understand how people can tolerate this sort of stuff, nor how those who look at this crap avoid becoming corroded in their observance of the Third Commandment as well as their love and defense of God’s truth. Love,
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That’s the one for me, too. No pity for the sheep badly shepherded. No love for the name of God upheld. I can’t recall it, but one of their headlines from several years ago was clearly a violation of the Lord’s name. I went and looked on the site and it is everywhere.
To be clear, THIS is far and away the main reason to hate the wicked, witless Babylon Bee. They are blasphemers.
And the main reason to hate the video posted above is because of the lying lies told by lying liars.
That said, as someone who generates intellectual property for a living, I find it obnoxious (and threatening) how little respect many folks have for intellectual property as … y’know, property.
I didn’t mean to post those quotes as a criticism of Litton necessarily, but to answer your question:
in their own words. I am in general agreement with you, where would anyone be without help from faithful men of God leading us in truth. Proverbs 11:14 is true after all. I hardly cite my pastor every time I talk about the things I’ve learned from him with others.
Interestingly, JD Greaar wrote a pretty decent article on citations and plagiarism regarding his own sermons that I agree with almost completely, although I think he could have some better inspirations than some of those he mentioned.
A friend sent me this response from Robert Gagnon. He notes that the main issue with the copying of the sermon is that the lies of the sermon have been further spread. Robert A. J. Gagnon
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I’m finally watching this.
Did anybody note the the euphemism for “rich”? “Materialistically successful.” Talk about hiding the meaning of the text. Even the Bible teaching he’s trying to up-play (the dangers of being rich) is safely covered in foam so nobody gets hurt, not to mention the Bible teaching he’s trying to downplay (the condemnation of sexual sin).
You can buy a similar sword here:
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Of course. But there is a major difference between (A) inviting your own flock to determine or modify their feed upfront according to their likes and tastes, and (B) a man charged and appointed with feeding them according to their needs and sins, determining and/or modifying the feed accordingly.
My nearly 3 year old son would like to eat pizza every day. And he would also like to not eat vegetables. And he would also like to not be spanked for disobedience. And he would also like to watch more videos on the ipad. He could probably make some basic argument for each of these positions. He doesn’t get to determine that. I do. And I don’t consult him. This doesn’t mean I only and ever bark orders. I don’t. Nor does it mean I don’t ask him questions if it would help me better love or lead him in a particular moment. I do. It does mean I am the authority, not him, and my exercise of such does not require his permission or consultation.
To your second post—I’m sorry brother but do you hear yourself? You’re not a fan. And for personality reasons you wouldn’t do it. Of course it’s all very intriguing. But there’s nothing strictly moral here. How is it there in gray-land? Surely the second commandment, the third commandment, the fifth commandment, the eighth commandment, the ninth commandment—all strictly moral—are worth considering? What I am seeing is a terribly sad indication of the view of preaching today. What you propose as intriguing I propose is symptomatic of spiritual anemia. Men quoting other men and reading other men and preaching other men. Amazing! Except it’s not. Matthew 7:28-29, 1 Thessalonians 2:13
Couple quick responses…
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I’m not willing to say it’s always wrong to preach another man’s sermon (though in practice this will likely be very rare for a godly shepherd). @jtbayly’s illustration shows that there may be more than either laziness or lack of preacherly spine that can, on occasion, influence one to use another’s material (in a responsible and appropriate way). @danielmeyer is right to pity the congregation who only hear their pastor preach Calvin’s sermons, but we would also pity the congregation whose pastor is never tempted to preach what Calvin says where he says it so much better than we ever could.
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A pastor getting input from other pastors and elders in his congregation on specific application for a given passage is hardly "inviting your own flock to determine or modify their feed upfront according to their likes and tastes.” Granted, that may be what Greear, Litton, and other megachurch pastors are doing, but let’s rightly analyse the problem and not jettison legitimate co-labouring because of inappropriate collaboration. And, as I mentioned before, I’ve heard plenty of sermons from men who did their prep without consulting either elders or congregation but delivered sermons that were merely regurgitations of commentaries. I don’t consider that to be preaching either.
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Which means, as @tbbayly pointed out above, the primary problem with Greear/Litton isn’t the method of preaching (though there are problems there). The primary problem is their theology of preaching. Fix the theology and instil a pastor’s heart, and in all likelihood, the method will be clarified as well.
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This is certainly a take.
There is a world of difference between being influenced by other pastors, quoting them, having learned phrases over time so that you forget the original source, rewording ideas in your own words, or even using a basic structure from someone like Calvin (I would still want to attribute this if is were followed very closely)and preaching another’s sermon almost word for word while passing it off as their own. It’s unethical. It would be one thing to say at the beginning I owe a great deal of debt to JD Greear for the content of this sermon. A pastors we preach to the people in front of us. This requires loving them and thinking about them as we apply the text to them. I just don’t see how that’s remotely possible if you just copy an entire sermon of someone else.
So yes there is the problem that the content of the sermon is terrible here but it’s compounded by the plagiarism.
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I think you just made the argument that winning a market competition is theft.
To be clear, what I hate most about the video, isn’t just the recycling of someone else’s sermon, it’s the content.
This pastor apparently doesn’t have the good sense enough to shepherd how his own church website describes the Trinity as being parts of God. Not until he and Mohler were both embarrassed publicly at the convention did the take down the errant language.
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Frankly brother you continue to go to this and that exception. None of which I’m denying. And if we wanted to do justice to such exceptions, we would need an encyclopedia. But one thing is necessary.
Your third point is in principle what I’m saying. Thus “symptomatic.” And also your “theology of preaching” seems to be my “view of preaching.” Now for a quote.
The man who tries to be humorous is an abomination and should never be allowed to to enter a pulpit.
Who used these very strong dogmatic words? Lloyd-Jones.
Was he against all humor at all times? Of course not.
Was he making a very important point? Yes.
I put it to you as a general rule that a man who can “preach” the sermon of others with no bothered conscience is not a man who is called to preach. Period. Now if you want to neutralize the point with dozens of exceptions and lead us all into a deep gray, go ahead. I won’t stop you. I also won’t be following you. But if you can’t fundamentally disagree with the point, on its own merits, maybe there is actually a point, and maybe it’s pretty black and white.
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With that statement I have no objection!
Period.
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I think that using another man’s sermon may be ok - but I do think you should have given more weight to letting that be known to the people you were preaching to.
I can see two problems that may occur from not making it known. 1.) Your people find out in a manner like we are seeing above. The trust will be hard to regain. 2.) Though it may not be dishonest at the beginning, it may give a foothold for doing it again and not crediting…and again…and again. That is, not making it known and having no bad consequences may give you reason to do it again sinfully when you are tired and haven’t prepared your own.
A few weeks ago I preached, essentially, a smash-up of two sermons I heard in 2006. One was Jim Grier preaching on Revelation 5 (him preaching the same sermon at a different time and place.) That sermon began the crushing of my hyper-calvinism.
The second was Paris Reidhead’s 10 Shekels and a Shirt. This further smashed those heresies into the ground. I took many applications, quotes, and general ideas from those sermons. I did, however, note it for my people.
When I was an associate minister in an American Baptist Church I confronted the senior pastor after he preached the worst sermon I’d ever heard. He confided that he had not written it, but had gotten it, verbatim, elsewhere. Turns out it was a regular practice.
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I agree with this. I actually think MORE pastors should be using other’s sermons, because there are many sheep who need feeding and there are many men who are not adequately gifted at composing long and powerful sermons week after week (especially in the reformed tradition where a 30-45 minute sermon is often expected). However, it should be noted at the outset what is happening “This sermon is a modified version of Charles Spurgeon’s sermon on Romans 1. I have modified and shaped it to the needs of this congregation, but most of the material is in the original” or something like that.
@nathanalberson WRT to intellectual property, I don’t see how your claim about the Bee and the Onion is tenable. If you are in a city with a single newspaper and you start a second is that theft? What if you cover the same basic stories. Or maybe there is already a sitcom about a collection of dissipated singles in New York City and you decide to write another? Where are the edges of this doctrine?