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.

Just Another Dirty Forehead

 Drive By Ash Wednesday Blessing

Be sure not to value symbolism over substance.  Ashes on the forehead without repentance in the heart is just a dirty forehead.  "I gave up chocolate for Lent." What, exactly, does that get you?  I see much popular sentiment as an extension of New Year's Resolutions: often a nice idea, with somewhat less nice follow up or commitment. 

Repentance is a turning away from sin, disobedience, or rebellion and a turning back to God.  It is an act of turning around and going in the opposite direction.  In Luke 5:32 Jesus says, "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."  What does He mean here?  Who are the righteous?  Why can't they repent?

The righteous in this context are those who choose symbolism over substance.  They prefer to look righteous on the outside.  They have the Law without the Spirit.

The basic fact about people is that we are sinners! 

Repentance is a "godly sorrow" for sin, specifically and generally, and personally.  This leads to a profound "substantive" reality.  This leads to a fundamental change in a person's relationship to God. 

In the preaching of the New Testament Gospel, we hear John the Baptist say in Matthew 3:2, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."  But in v.8 he also says, "Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance." Don't imagine that there is some other way to become righteous in God's sight, John says, by ethnicity or by culture.  Rather, one has to repent and then prove it. 

You see, the good news of salvation and repentance are inextricably linked.  Jesus preached the same way as John, as in Matthew 4:17 he says, "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."  In Jesus' message we realize that repentance and faith are "two sides of the same coin."  Repentance is turning away from sin, faith is turning towards God. 

So this is it: repentance + faith = conversion = salvation. 

If you go to receive the ashes tomorrow (drive-by or otherwise!), be sure to carry the desire for true repentance with you.  That way you can have both the substance and the symbolism, and you'll end up with more than just a dirty forehead!

"A mist in the pulpit (still) becomes a fog in the pew."

You have to love Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages (Baker, 1980) by my former professor Haddon Robinson.  How could we then imagine the thousands of sermons that would flow from our introductory preaching classes with Haddon and Dr. Scott Gibson?  Those were the days...or rather, these are still the days!  Preaching, with Biblical Theology, is a never-ending life-consuming pursuit.  Today I'm reminded of why the basics are called the basics:

"Explanation proves difficult if the expositor does not know his audience.  The more familiar he is with a subject, the less aware he may be of a congregation's ignorance of it.  The people in the pew live in a different intellectual world from their pastor.  Indeed they support him financially so that he can study what they cannot.  He must not assume that his listeners immediately understand what he is talking about.  He owes them a clear explanation of exactly what he means.  As a guiding rule, a speaker should define every important term in language the audience understands.  Certainly it is better to define too many terms than too few.  Explaining the relationships and implications of ideas, we should know the explanation ourselves so clearly that no vagueness exists in our own minds.  Then we should work through the steps in the explanation so that they come in a logical or psychological order.  A mist in the pulpit becomes a fog in the pew." (p. 141)

There should be no pride in preaching, but a sober and humble effort to both speak from the heart of God and speak to the hearts of people.  Here's to continually clearing out the mist!