Preaching is hard work, and sermon preparation requires considerable mental effort. Preachers must dive into the text, wrestle with it, look for meaningful connections, find appropriate illustrations, and figure out how to help people apply the message to their lives. If anyone says preaching is easy, either they’ve never done it or they’re not very good at it. 

With everything preachers are asked to do, sermon preparation can be crowded out by any of the myriad of weekly responsibilities. Polls indicate that the average time for sermon preparation for most ministers (24%) is about 14-16 hours per lesson, and 69% of ministers say that the average is between 10-18 hours. That’s a lot of work. And most of us who preach don’t want to reinvent the wheel every week. So, many ministers like to listen to other preachers for ideas. I heard one well-known minister say he listened to or read about twelve to fifteen other sermons with additional study and research in preparing a lesson. This can be very helpful, but it also opens the door to a hidden danger: plagiarism. 

Plagiarism is theft, pure and simple. It is taking someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own. With my university students, I make it clear that even using things written by ChatGPT (a popular AI writing tool) is plagiarism. But there are some astounding things preachers might be tempted to do that also qualify as plagiarism. Here are some of the more egregious examples I’ve heard:

A friend who directs a preaching school once told me that another preacher once asked him if he could take an article the director had written and put his own name on it instead when it was published in the church bulletin. In other words, the preacher wanted to take someone else’s article and have everyone think he wrote it. Asking for permission does not change that this was attempted plagiarism of the worst kind.One fellow I know takes sermons from SermonCentral.com and reads them from the pulpit as if he had written them. Members of the audience discovered that they could access the text online and follow it word-for-word throughout the presentation. Members were incensed to learn that he made no attempt to personalize the lessons in any way. Essentially, they paid him to read other preacher’s sermons.At least one preacher I know has told other people’s stories in the first person as if he had personally experienced those events. This is the very definition of plagiarism.

What if we discovered our preacher had some secret, besetting sin – some private sinfulness that he coddled without repentance? I would venture to say that most of us would feel that a habitual, unaddressed sin would discredit the preacher and his work. This is why the apostle Paul says, “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:27).

What would we say if we knew that our preacher was delivering lessons—unapologetically—with words stolen from someone else? How meaningful would those sermons be, knowing they were nothing more than scripts purloined from another preacher originally and intended for a different audience? Wouldn’t it feel a bit dishonest, if not treasonous? 

Make no mistake: plagiarism is a big deal. So how do we avoid it? Here are a few simple tips:

Give Credit. If you use someone else’s material, give them credit for it. This doesn’t mean you have to footnote every sentence. But if you get a significant thought from someone else, have the decency to give them credit for it. Cite Your Sources. If you get material from somewhere else, identify where it came from. For example, if you use someone else’s sermon illustration, preface it with something like, “Minister X tells the story of …” or “Someone once said …” or “The story is told about …” or “While preparing my lesson, I ran across the following story …” That way, you cover your bases. And if you quote someone directly, cite them. You will inform your listeners appropriately when the material is not original to you.Be Careful With Sermon Outlines. John Piper argues that using someone else’s sermon outline with your own words is plagiarism. D. A. Carson makes a similar point, but not quite as forcefully. I have mixed feelings about this. If it’s a case where the outline emerges from the text naturally, it’s tough to argue that you’ve stolen someone else’s ideas. But if someone else’s observations aren’t immediately obvious (what we might call “common knowledge”), or they involve some measure of creativity, make it a habit to give the author credit. Put Your Lesson Together with Time to Spare. This way, a preacher will be less tempted to pull from a source at the last minute. Preach from the overflow rather than having to scrape something together quickly.

Someone might say, “But it shouldn’t matter if someone uses another person’s words to preach the gospel and glorify God. I don’t care if someone uses MY words, so why should anyone else? That’s territorial and selfish!” This is the same as saying, “I don’t care if someone sins, as long as they’re sinning against me.” No one gets to say that sin doesn’t matter just because it doesn’t offend them.

Author Rick Howerton’s article 6 Undeniable Reasons It’s Nearly Impossible to Plagiarize a Sermon makes a poor attempt at arguing that preachers are nearly incapable of committing plagiarism. Honestly, it was painful watching this author do his best impersonation of a literary contortionist. But he uses the same strategy that many others do. Unfortunately, they fail to realize that: 

Taking other peoples’ work is lazy and dishonest.Giving people your work makes them lazy and dishonest.Citing other preachers who don’t have a problem with other people using their material doesn’t legitimize an act of theft.Plagiarism is wrong, even if there’s no financial impact. 

Plagiarism is stealing, pure and simple. But it’s much more than that: it’s a matter of using someone else’s material dishonestly because your listeners will think that you wrote it – you leave them with a false impression. It’s great if you want others to use your ideas so that God may be glorified. But that’s only one part of the equation. One half is theft; the other is deception.

To assume that giving your consent makes it okay for someone to pass off your work as their own isn’t generosity or humility; it’s hubris wreathed in sanctimony. 

If a preacher takes material other people have produced, he is making no attempt to grow spiritually, ultimately affecting the entire congregation he serves. It also calls into question why he is being paid and for what. The plagiarist is fundamentally lazy. 

Every minister wants to hear that his lesson hit home and made a difference. But to all my fellow preachers, I say this: never let anyone thank you for someone else’s work.