• Albert Mohler, “Studying the Scriptures and Finding Jesus” (John 5:31-47)
• Tim Keller, “Getting Out” (Exodus 14)
• Alistair Begg: "From a Foreigner to King Jesus" (Ruth)
• Panel Discussion on Preaching from the Old Testament, Featuring Tim Keller, John Piper, Crawford Loritts, Don Carson, and Bryan Chapell
• James MacDonald: "Not According to Our Sins" (Psalm 25)
• Conrad Mbewe: “The Righteous Branch” (Jeremiah 23:1-8)
• Matt Chandler: "Youth" (Ecclesiastes 11:7-12:14)
• Mike Bullmore: "God's Great Heart of Love Toward His Own" (Zephaniah)
• Don Carson: "Getting Excited about Melchizedek" (Psalm 110)

We also encourage you to embed the videos on your own blogs for wider distribution. You can find all the 2011 national conference videos plus much more on TGC's Vimeo page. Here is the streaming video of Tim Keller's message from Exodus 14:

Before long we'll also have video available from several other events featured on the main stage at McCormick Place in Chicago. And we're working hard to load audio for all 36 workshops at TGC11. Thank you for waiting patiently as we sort through so much media and make it available for free distribution that church leaders might be trained and the gospel may go forth.

Using another’s sermon material in one’s own messages is not a simple black-and-white issue, but rather a gray area requiring wisdom. Factors in play include quantity of material used, permission, attribution, and cultural conventions about published versus spoken material.

The concept of plagiarism addresses at least two concerns: (1) taking material from another and (2) representing another’s work as one’s own. In short, stealing and cheating. The amount of borrowed material affects deliberations about plagiarism in academia and publishing and should also in the church.

Does reciting a minority portion of another’s sermon without attribution constitute plagiarism? Without permission, yes (stealing). With permission? No. What about a sermon that is paraphrased and personalized by another? Not as clear. What about the creative framing of a topic or a story or an outline? Do these require attribution? Grey areas, but these don’t require attribution.

Does reciting another’s sermon nearly verbatim without attribution constitute plagiarism? Yes, because even with permission such a practice activates plagiarism’s second concern, cheating. Ask yourself, “Why would a follower of the Truth take credit for the work of another?”

Last, by convention we place higher standards on published works than on speech acts. We recognize that breaking verbal stride to cite sources frequently in a sermon short-circuits the power of preaching.

Wisdom Guide:

• Don’t tell someone else’s first-person story in the first-person.
• If the bulk of a message is from another, regardless of permission, briefly attribute the source(s). If you fear such candor would diminish you, crucify your ego. Or simply don’t use the material.
• If a minority portion is from another and you have permission to use the material without attribution, enjoy the gift.
• Err on the side of attribution . . . but too-frequent attributions distract from and thus dissipate the power of the sermon.

See also:

Pastoral Plagiarism Is an Integrity Issue

Read other responses from:

Don Carson

Sandy Willson

Tim Keller

Matt Perman

Yes, it does appear to be a problem. For these reasons. Preachers today feel under much more pressure to be spectacular than they used to feel. Christians are much less likely to be loyal to a church of a particular place or a particular theological tradition. What they want is to have a great experience on Sunday, and that means they will travel to get to the most gifted preachers. When you put this pressure together with (a) a busy week in which you haven’t felt able to prepare well, and (b) the accessibility of so much sermon material through the internet—the temptation to simply re-preach someone else’s sermon is very strong.

Nevertheless, we must be careful not to over-react. I don’t think anyone expects oral communication to have the same amount of detailed attribution as we expect in written communication. To cite where you got every allusion or basic idea or general illustration in a sermon would be tedious. A certain amount of leeway must be granted. Also, if you take a basic idea or illustration and "make it your own," I don’t think you have to give attribution. Often the preacher you fear you are stealing from got that idea from some Puritan author and re-worked it into more contemporary form. And the Puritan might have gotten it from someone else. In fact, in the act of preaching, we often say something that we know we heard somewhere, but we can’t even remember where we got it. Again, I think we need to be charitable to preachers and not charge them with plagiarism for every un-new idea. Brand-new preachers, especially, are going to do a lot of copying of preachers that have influenced them.

However, I think the problem comes in when a minister clearly has not done his own work on the sermon, and lifts almost entire sermons whole cloth from someone else. If he takes some preaching theme word for word from someone else, or if all the headings almost in the same words are taken from someone else’s sermon, or if he reproduces an illustration almost phrase by phrase—then he should give attribution. When the basic ideas of your sermon have come from some other brilliant sermon you can early on mention the minister, and say, “Rev X, whose great sermon on this passage has helped me understand it so much . . . .” And that’s all you need.

Seldom does this kind of lifting-whole-cloth from someone else happen if you have spent hours studying the text and working out your own outline. The problem comes when you haven’t given the text the time, or when you have been too busy to read widely and pray deeply and develop your own ideas.

Pastoral Plagiarism Is an Integrity Issue

Read other responses from:

Don Carson

Sandy Willson

Matt Perman

Glenn Lucke

Anyone looking to learn official, academic, consensus definitions for plagiarism can find them in a couple mouse clicks. And that's just the problem. A couple clicks can get you a lot these days. Plagiarizing papers, talks, and even sermons has never been easier. Mere definitions don't deter desperate writers and speakers who are either too lazy or so overwhelmed with life that they lift someone else's words, ideas, and outlines.

Studying journalism and history in college, I learned again and again about the evils of plagiarism. If I were caught plagiarizing, I risked expulsion from school or at least a failing grade for the course. If a boss found me plagiarizing my research, professors warned me, I would be fired on the spot. Indeed, many professionals have ruined their careers by stealing someone's political speech or academic thesis and calling it their own.

You can imagine how I responded during my first job out of college when I discovered that one well-known evangelical pastor lifted several paragraphs word-for-word from an article I wrote. The internet might make plagiarism easy to perpetrate, but it also makes plagiarism easy to discover. I assumed others would share my indignation over this theft. The audacity of this minister! He actually bragged about his academic credentials in the process of lifting several innocuous paragraphs from an inexperienced journalist.

I learned, though, that evangelicals tend to hold a different view about plagiarism. I was told that pastors live by a different set of rules from the media and the academy. Whether preaching a sermon or even writing a book, I was told, pastors shouldn't be expected to cite all their references or feel the need to rework someone else's material in their own words. Apparently this sort of thing happens all the time among pastors. In this case, it wasn't worth even writing the pastor a note to caution him against such actions in the future.

Years later, this situation still doesn't sit well with me. I know there are different rules for plagiarism in spoken contexts, compared with material that's sold for profit (as in this case). I know pastors are busy and face many temptations to take others' research and writing. And I know we Christians are not looking for new ideas about the gospel, so in one sense we're all repeating the same old, old messages from God's Word.

Still, I can't help but think of pulpit plagiarism as an integrity issue. I actually appreciate when pastors tell me who taught them while researching. In the scenario I described, the pastor could have largely avoided the problem just by quoting or at least citing me and my publication. No one would have faulted him. In the end, however, he wanted to perpetuate the illusion that he was an expert whom his church and book readers should trust. And that's why I took offense (not because I wrote anything particularly memorable or insightful, which I hadn't, as friends pointed out at the time). We don't need our pastors to be self-appointed gurus. We need them to be honest.

Given the prevalence of plagiarism in our time, and the confusion among evangelicals over when it has occurred, I asked several authorities with experience in this area to answer, "When has a preacher crossed the line into plagiarism in his sermon?" We'll see if we can reach some measure of consensus or shed at least a little light onto a dark corner of our modern existence.

Read responses from:

Don Carson

Sandy Willson

Tim Keller

Matt Perman

Glenn Lucke

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Sermons on Five Psalms

• Psalm 1
• Psalm 2
• Psalm 40
• Psalm 48
• Psalm 110

Workshops on Preaching and Biblical, Systematic, Historical, and Pastoral Theology

• 1A
• 1B
• 2A
• 2B
• 2C
• 3A
• 3B

Cross-Cultural Training

• Why Become "All Things to All People"?
• How to Increase Cross-cultural Awareness

Christ-expo: How Can We Believe?

Five evangelistic sermons on the Gospel of John (each followed by Q&A)

• How Can We See God? (John 1:1–18)
• How Can We Start over Again? (John 3:1–21)
• How Can God Have a Son? (John 5:16–30)
• How to Get the Best Bread in the World (John 6:25–59)
• How Can I Believe Jesus Rose from the Dead? (John 20:24–31)

Sermon at St. Alfred's

• Suffering: A Theological Response

Some Things about God That Christians Have Always Confessed

1. God is triune.
2. God is the transcendent creator.
3. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.
4. God is holy.
5. God is love.
6. God is self-disclosing.

Five Observations from Exodus 34:1–9

1. The setting is sin.
2. The revelation is dangerous.
3. The revelation is hugely self-defined.
4. The revelation is frankly mystifying.
5. The response is unqualified submission.

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Francis Chan will be speaking at the Exchange Conference. Mark Driscoll, Peter Jones, Francis Chan, Kevin DeYoung, and others will teach you how to distinguish the Truth from the Lie in all of life. Exchange is June 17 & 18 in San Diego, California. Find out more.