The Best Sermon Is Your Own

Several years ago, I received a phone call from a friend. What he said drove home the point that the best sermon really is your own. My friend told a story of the preacher who had come to preach in chapel at the Christian university where he works.

The sermon was great but afterwards faculty and staff began to get suspicious when several students came to the campus pastor asserting that they had heard the message before.

A quick Google search provided the answer. This sermon did not belong to the one who preached it but had been “borrowed,” from a pastor in a large western city.

What’s the problem with this? Are there times when it’s acceptable to preach someone else’s stuff? Why are there thousands of sermon outlines on the Internet (including those on our site) if people don’t want others to preach them?

I think this is a legitimate question. I am so thankful for sermon resources. They make our preaching better. I understand that there are times when circumstances such as emergencies or time constraints prompt us to use another’s sermon. But there is a real difference in going to a sermon resource sight and getting a sermon or sermon outline which has been posted for the express purpose of helping pastor’s who are in a pinch and ripping off another’s intellectual property and passing it off as your own.

Is a preacher obligated to give credit when he or she uses someone else’s idea, outline, or intellectual property? How much “borrowing” is too much? Should  it make a difference where something is posted or published and the purpose for which it is posted or published? What do you think?

One Response to “The Best Sermon Is Your Own”

1. Kris says:

   July 9, 2011 at 12:50 pm

   I’ve struggled with this question quite a bit. How many times have funerals, weddings, planning, business, etc. gotten in the way of proper sermon prep? Not to mention, if you’re stuck preaching to a different culture than you’re used to, how do you create sermons which reach them?

   A mentor of mine told me a story of being approached after a seminar he presented. He was told, “I’m going to steal that. The first time I’ll say my good friend Chuck once said… the second time I’ll say I once heard it said… the third time it’s mine.”

   If anyone can come to a conclusion in the Scriptures that is different than any commentator or theologian before him I suppose it’s worth crediting… Otherwise it wasn’t his idea in the first place.