Preachers stealing sermons

[bishoph]

Originally Posted by FlamingZword

Come on dear bishoph
have you ever felt the temptation to take the easy way out and use one of their sermons?

Nope.....never one of them......I have used tidbits and outlines from some others though.......I will confess I can get a sermon thought from many places and have gotten some great material from other preachers.....that said, if and when I use someone else's thoughts I do my best to give them credit and often even site the occasion in which it was used. There are many other times however, when I may use a title that I have heard/seen and have no idea what scriptures were used or the message content so the message is entirely (except title) something I have studied/prayed into.

And then there are those times when I have heard someone preach a message and thought they really missed some key points that would have been good. If at some point I feel to preach along those lines I say I am a Chinese preacher...you know they come to America, buy an electronic, take it back and make it better (sometimes) and sell it for less (sometimes).

IMO any preacher who says he/she has NEVER used anything they have heard another preacher say....is probably being dishonest.

That said....another valuable lesson I learned early in the ministry is NEVER just repeat something you hear a preacher (no matter how well known they are) say.....they could be way off....they'll get by with it and you'll get skinned. (Besides the fact that God's people need to hear truth not some hype designed to make them feel good.)

[n david]

I was 15 or 16 when I preached my first message. It was awful. I printed out about 40 pages (size 12 font, single spaced) and was done in almost 10 minutes.

Not only was it short, the worst part is I copied a message I heard from Anthony Mangun. I vowed not to make the same mistake again.

[CC1]

Originally Posted by n david

I was 15 or 16 when I preached my first message. It was awful. I printed out about 40 pages (size 12 font, single spaced) and was done in almost 10 minutes.

Not only was it short, the worst part is I copied a message I heard from Anthony Mangun. I vowed not to make the same mistake again.

I am assuming you skipped a lot of pages since a typical page should be a minute or more making your typed sermon approxomately 40 minutes!

[n david]

Originally Posted by CC1

I am assuming you skipped a lot of pages since a typical page should be a minute or more making your typed sermon approxomately 40 minutes!

I must have, because somewhere in my pile of stuff I still have the pages of notes and the cassette tape of the message. I also used to speak very fast and read straight from the notes, making it worse. I don't read word for word anymore, but even now my wife tells me, you were talking too fast, during parts of a message.