Sermongate 2021

Ed Litton and JD Geear take a selfie with the Instrument of Great Power

It can be so irritating to be Southern Baptist sometimes.  Mercifully, I'm 2 months late to this information.

I became aware this week of the sermon gate controversy. (#sermongate) Apparently our previous SBC president JD "Cool Dude" Greear preached sermons that were copied almost word for word and delivered by our new SBC president Ed "Mr. Ed" Litton. Sermongate reveals things that I suspected but had hoped were not true. I had known since seminary that people would copy each other and take credit for things as their own, "but only losers do that." Predictably most of the row centers on the word "plagiarism." 

But to me the controversy is less about plagiarism and much more about spirituality and relationship with God. What are our methods for preparing sermons? And hence what is the quality of the message we are delivering?  

If you're an entertainer or an actor then you can deliver an entertainment or actor's quality message. But if you are supposed to be a pastor, supposed to be a minister, supposedly with a calling then you must be very intentional and serious disciplined and careful about what you do during your sermon on Sunday mornings in something that you refer to as worship. 

To me one of the main things has to do with how much of your message is first hand experience with God or second hand third hand or purchased experience with God. Do we actually believe that our congregations want to have something that we have purchased? Or that we have received second hand or third hand? a vicarious Christian experience? 

I firmly believe that most of my sermons and messages and Bible studies need to be first hand delivery of my first hand experience with God and his Word. I hope you will agree that this is a most important and vital consideration!  How could we do anything less and show our faces in the pulpit?  

So to be clear, my method is a very very very key thing, no matter what the Lord may use as a starting point for inspiration.  For example, if I choose to use a sermon outline published in a sermon outline book, or use a past Sunday School lesson, these would only be the "germ" or starting point of the work.  In fact, very very often whatever was the starting point of one of these sermons would be so irritating to me or so irrelevant to the Biblical text that it totally disappears in the later steps of my preparation!  In every case, I do not end up with what I began, unless I have begun, as is most frequent, with a Biblical passage!  

In other words, I almost always do "Expository Preaching" that includes as a very most important step "first hand careful study of the Biblical passage."  And guess what happens?  The sermon's main points are (hopefully and usually) the main points of the Biblical passage!  Even in topical sermons (which center on some specific topic, where many passages of Scripture are read) the text will be carefully allowed to make its points, and not intentionally abused to "proof-text" whatever my clever point is or was.  

All this is to say that the method, learned, practiced and repeated through the years, is the absolute key.  I firmly believe this cannot be done by a team, a committee, or by cutting and pasting, let alone by purchasing it with money from some anonymous person working at a "professional research service." 

After all these years of preaching I (and I hope the vast majority of pastors!) have file drawers full of sermons and studies that I have written, all of which were inspired by the Holy Spirit, for me, for my congregation, for the purpose of glorifying God in their lives and mine.  This collection is an ever churning resource of further information, for further inspiration and celebration of God's Word.  

I am discouraged that those who are the biggest and the most visible, with their multi-campus hologram sermons, are the ones who buy speeches from George Soros and assemble them in committees of major players in their mega church mega nerve centers of mega ministry.  While those in the country with a congregation of 35 are doing the hard work of Bible Study and preaching with no evidence of worldly success at all.  And the cheaters are the winners on this side of Judgement Day, even in the "church."

Don't people care?  Forget what the hodabies think, what on earth do the Christians in the churches think?  Or want?  Apparently for many what they want is something even less than a T.E.D. talk after all, they want a low quality actor running through a prepared script for the first time.  That's entertainment?

Not for me.  No wonder I almost never listen to them.  

Pro tip: hold your pastor accountable for the method they use to prepare sermons.  The method is the key.  Asking questions is the key to understanding.