Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Pastoral Plagiarism in the WSJ

Today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal ran a front page story by Suzanne Sataline on the issue of pastors preaching others’ sermons. The story is titled, “That Sermon You Heard on Sunday May Be From the Web” (you have to subscribe to read articles online, though they appear to offer a free trial). Mrs. Sataline interacts with this blog and conversations we had by phone. She also talked to Steve Sjogren, Ed Young Jr. and Thomas Long, preaching professor at Candler School of Theology at Emory University (who opposed the practice).

I am glad to see the topic continuing to get attention because I think it is a problem that needs to be addressed. The posts on this blog on the topic have also been commented on in two German news sources. Here is one. Society sees that this is a problem. Sadly too many church leaders do not.

3 comments:

Brett said...

Wow, Ray! That German article was great... I think.

Anonymous said...

I'm quickly reminded of a Piper expression... "True biblical preaching should be dipped in the blood of the Cross and singed by the fires of hell." I may have some of that line softened, but you get the point.
Thanks for reminding me of specific areas of praying for my pastor. Thankfully, he has no idea how to turn on the PC and will probably never face that temptation. As a matter of fact, he only has a monitor in his office so that it looks like he has a computer. He cracks me up!!

Ray Van Neste said...

Hey Al! Great to hear from you!