Those who have been reading this blog for sometime may remember the interchange that took place here last March on Pastoral Plagiarism (post 1, post 2, post 3). These posts brought a bit of traffic and some strong debate. An edited version of the original post has this week been published in the “Baptist and Reflector”, the TN Baptist state paper, under the title Pastors must be messengers of God, not “talking heads”. I hope to raise this issue in local church life because this seems to be a rising problem. I continue to receive email from people who have discovered that their pastors are preaching sermons taken directly from other men or lifted directly from a book. These people are shocked and feel betrayed. Whatever sort of rationalizing a pastor might do, the fact is that the pastor’s integrity is seriously blemished by this. This issue needs to be raised and addressed for the good of the church.

Joe Thorn is also discussing this here.