Ha! I remembered another topic I was going to write about: preaching recycled sermons.
Last year, around the time that a priest in Michigan got into trouble for preaching sermons he had downloaded from the net, I made my case (summary with links here) that preaching sermons that other people wrote was not only not-bad, it was a big step forward for many preachers. I made not only my own argument, but also invoked (with the help of kind readers, bless the Web) opinions from Ben Franklin, St. Augustine, and Joseph Addison.
Since last year, I have on more than one occasion been given grounds to believe that I was hearing a sermon that someone other than the preacher had written. That reminded me of another variable in the equation: some people just can’t read. I mean “read” not in the sense of puzzling out what words mean, but in the sense of being comfortable, thoughtful, careful, understanding readers. The preachers I heard were reading someone else’s sermon, but they weren’t reading it.
I hear this in my Bible classes, too; students often can’t read the Bible. You can well imagine that this complicates my job as a professor of the New Testament; how much does it matter it a student knows where Paul was when he wrote First Thessalonians, if the student can’t read 1 Thes as a comprehensible text?
Having diagnosed one dimension of a problem falls far short of solving it. If I were to concentrate my New Testament courses on remedial reading skills, some students might gain valuable practice at reading more richly, but there wouldn’t be time left to engage the sorts of critical interpretive questions that they pay me to teach — and the better readers in class would be left out, as they wouldn’t benefit as much from the change in tactic. In the end, I try to work with students on comprehension and oral interpretation in class, but I don't take it all the way.
So part of the preacher’s problem lay in his being a poor reader. Another problem lay in the tacit contract between a preacher and a congregation. Since the assumptions on both sides of the agreement remain unspoken, it’s hard to pin anyone down on what’s expected; this lay at the heart of the Michigan controversy, where it was argued that the priest’s transgression lay not in preaching sermons from the internet, but in reproducing passages from them as though he had himself written them.
Most congregations, though, expect that a sermon will have been composed by its preacher unless they’re told otherwise. A wooden acknowledgment goes a long way toward killing the homiletical moment: “I saw this sermon by the Rev. Jane Doe, so I’m going to preach it to you this morning.” A sophisticated preacher could probably indicate that the sermon had been written by another author in a less direct way: “It may be true, as Jane Doe suggests, that. . . ." (being sure to insert the Rev. Ms. Doe’s name at intervals). Instead, a preacher sometimes just drops the original author’s name into the sermon somewhere without differentiating the author from some other quoted theologian or anecdotalist (“anecdotitian”?), a move that the congregation will hardly ever recognize as proper attribution for borrowed prose.
I’m not utterly convinced that either of those is necessary as long as one doesn’t in any way make the positive suggestion that one has written the sermons in question. The human component of preaching is a performance art, and there’no need to interrupt the sermon to provide the metadata on authorship. But one ought absolutely to make it clear that the sermon wasn’t original in some extra-homiletical way. For instance, congregations that use a paper bulletin could include the author’ name therein: “This morning, the Rev. Ms. Doe will preach a sermon by John Smith”). If the parish usually prints copies of the week’s sermons to leave in a rack at the door, one might print the borrowed sermon out, with the author’ own name (perhaps saying, “preached on Oct. 12 by A K M Adam,” or whatever). Or if one wanted to finesse copyright restrictions (a pertinent problem if one is performing other authors’ material for pay) at the printing stage, one might write up a short summary, giving full credit to the original author. But preaching someone else’s sermon without making some explicit note of that fact seems to suggest that the sermon is original — and congregations typically respond badly to finding out that surprise. (As Paul notes in the comments below, some preachers feel obliged to resign; in the Michigan case, the priest was suspended for 90 days.)
Summary ending? I support absolutely the preacher’s prerogative to use another’s sermon, absolutely. And I don’t even feel as though the preacher has to make a prominent point of having borrowed the sermon, certainly not in the context of preaching itself. But a preacher who borrows without making that utterly explicit in some way (whether in the bulletin, the announcements after the service, or some other venue) is asking for trouble,, and I can offer only tepid support for unacknowledged (or “inadequately acknowledged”) borrowing.
Posted by AKMA at October 14, 2003 11:06 AM | TrackBackI look forward to your comments. Seems like this issue came up (not necessarily here) about a year ago or so. One of the pastors in my denomination (Presbyterian Church in America) admitted to his congregation that he had been preaching sermons written by Tim Keller, one of the most prominent pastors in our denom., apparently getting them by some sort of subscription. He stepped down from his pastorate upon making the admission.
I thought it was a bit strange, given that the church as a whole through history has something of a tradition of using the sermons of others, using the works of the great preachers if one is not up to the task oneself. In this particular case though, the issue seemed to be that of deception, rather than just an admission on not being a good sermon writer.
Posted by: Paul Baxter at October 14, 2003 12:05 PMI agree about being a good reader. I was a speech major undergraduate, and have always appreciated people who take the time to communicate the words of the text as they read it. And as a lay person in the ECUSA, I think reading skills among our clergy are not always very strong.
A couple of weeks ago, Jerry Jantzen, a retired seminary professor who is a member of my congregation in Indianapolis, conducted a four hour retreat with our parish's lectors. It was much more philosophical than practical, with the aim of getting us to try to listen with our ears (in the the biblical sense of Isaiah referring to hearing as understanding) when we read scripture aloud.
He used as an example the divine speeches from Job. He had written a book about Job thirty years ago and is working on a new one. He told us that his old view of these speeches was that God sounded like the lawyer who didn't have a good case, so instead of arguing the facts he just pounds the table over and over. Recently, he decided that another voice may be present in the divine speeches, one that is much quieter, one that has a tone more like, "Job, you weren't there when I made these things...I wish you could have experienced it..."
Anyway, amen to thoughtful public readers.
Posted by: Don Temples at October 14, 2003 03:57 PMSorry, dear, but I think you've got this a little wrong. It's not at all necessarily wooden or problematic for the preacher to state at the outset something like:" This sermon by Chrysostom/Jane Doe does a much better job than I could in proclaiming the Gospel today. I am eager to share it with you." or, "I was so moved by this sermon by Augustine/Archbishop Rowan Williams that I can't wait to share with you, and I'll provide printed copies too."
This way, everybody is on board from the start, both with the authorship (thereby omitting any confusion about first person pronouns from the start) and with the preacher's enthusiasm for the message. It's hard enough, as a parishioner, to settle in and commit energy and attention to a sermon. There's no need to make the process harder by unclarity of voice. If someone else's sermon is worth sharing, then the source is worth celebrating as well as the sermon. I'm far less worried about homiletical citations within the sermon space than I am about trite anecdotes and distracting "ice-breakers."
Do we know how this practice of preaching others' sermons was executed in the past (centuries ago)? Before xerox machines and computers? I'm curious.
Until we hear guidance from the early Church pros (or, someone who knows about it) on such strategy, I'm inclined to say: Proclaim the truth, starting with the source of your words--unapologetically and enthusiastically--and pointing toward the truth of the Gospel.
AKMA, isn't there a larger question here? Why are the churches commissioning preachers who can't preach or read, who have no pastoral sensibilities? Isn't there something about call in here? If a person has no gifts for this kind of work, perhaps they shouldn't be ordained.
Posted by: Melanie at October 14, 2003 10:33 PMNot wishing to overly detract from the flow of this particular conversation but, my mixed up brain thought it read "Precaching Sermons" and I thought you'd quietly passed over the invisible divide between digital life and reality for a moment there, AKMA.
Precaching sermons sounds like it would be quite a challenge though, certainly without a substantial memory upgrade.
Carry on.
Posted by: Gary Turner at October 15, 2003 02:28 AMI completely agree with Margaret. Sifting to find the best thought and passing it on is possibly more valuable to your congregation than passing on thoughts that aren't yet ready because you feel you ought to say something new.
And in many ways there's a close parallel with the blogging citation model that has so successfully helped a community develop thoughts toward 'truth' in this medium.
Douglas Rushkoff said that the internet doesn't necessarily change existing society by replacing it or subsuming it, but it does provide us with a new way of looking at things - a way to see the frame and realise that the picture was drawn.
Is this what is happening here? Are we getting towards a greater transparency in spiritual guidance? That those who add value to the material they quote (either by passionate personal endorsement, or by editing and developing the content) will thrive and survive in the eyes and minds of their audience. Those who merely duplicate information, or pass it on without comment are either wasting bandwidth or running a linklog.
I can't help thinking about how the letters of St Paul have influenced and developed thought, with people still finding new things to say about them in today's world. But how would simply reading them out, in their entirety, go down with a congregation?
And, while we're at it, how would we implement the theological version of Trackback?
Posted by: Tom Dolan at October 15, 2003 05:33 AMInteresting thread. I'm off to the Thursday silent vigil for peace. Maybe we'll do a little worship sharing and see if we can preach to each other!
Posted by: fp at October 16, 2003 04:47 PMI'm a little behind, clearly, but I refer anyone who would like to think about how to do this "correctly" to this short article.
Posted by: Micah at October 22, 2003 01:54 PMHow excellent is that? I’m intensely impressed that Christianity Today took up the topic, then did so well with it. So much anxiety haunts sermon-preparation and preaching that I’m delightedly surprised to see a matter-of-fact, sensible treatment of this situation. Thanks, Micah!
Posted by: AKMA at October 22, 2003 02:40 PM