Preach Magazine Issue 4 - Preaching in the digital age | Page 15

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ROBERT REID, IN HIS
EXCELLENT ESSAY,
‘AUTHENTICITY IN PREACHING’,
ARGUES THAT ‘THE PROBLEM
WITH PULPIT PLAGIARISM
IS NOT ABOUT THE THEFT
OF PROPRIETARY WORK AS
MUCH AS ROBBING ONE’S
PARISHIONERS OF ONE’S OWN
WITNESS TO FAITH.’

irritating, degree. ‘Finding a natural
style for speaking a sermon begins
with finding the preacher’s own
voice,’ advises Richard F Ward. ‘The
authentic sound that a preacher
makes comes from the interrupted
cries within the unexplored recesses
of the preacher’s own experience.’4
It is absolutely vital to find a style
that you are comfortable with, and
to speak in a way that is natural and
not forced or derivative. Are you
someone who likes to get your points
across with a bit of dramatic flare?
Perhaps you are more comfortable
being conversational and informal?
The key is to find a way to speak that
makes sense with who you are.

ORIGINALITY
There is some debate about whether
plagiarism in preaching matters.
There are those who feel that the
important thing is delivering good
content, regardless of who first
created it and would see nothing
wrong in performing someone else’s
sermon word for word. It could be
said that ultimately the preacher’s

task to is to feed the congregation
with Scripture and to say nothing
original at all. But Robert Reid, in
his excellent essay, ‘Authenticity in
Preaching’, argues that ‘the problem
with pulpit plagiarism is not about
the theft of proprietary work as
much as robbing one’s parishioners
of one’s own witness to faith.’5 When
we replicate the words of others,
we are not speaking out of our life
and experience, out of our ongoing
dialogue with God, and in a very real
sense, we are being inauthentic.

CONSISTENCY
Have you ever heard a charismatic
preacher who could have been
speaking directly to you – so
personable and warm did she seem,
so uncannily perceptive her words
– only to approach her afterwards
and find her cold and inattentive? If
that scenario is familiar, I wonder if
it detracted from the impact of her
words. I would be surprised if it didn’t.
This is not to say that if you are a
cold person, you should be sure to
appear cold in the pulpit! But if you
are shy and introverted, don’t create

a different persona for when you
stand in front of a crowd. And if you
are by all accounts hilarious and a
little unhinged, don’t feel you have to
become scholarly and intense when
you preach. All of us have different
aspects to who we are that come out
in different settings, but if we pretend
to be someone we are not, it will be
disconcerting to our congregation.
Communicating effectively in a
church setting means connecting the
listeners with the mind and heart of
God. It is an awesome responsibility.
While we may be able to get away
with performing the task on a
superficial, detached level, if we strive
for authenticity in the pulpit, our
partnership with the Holy Spirit in
transforming lives will be that much
more dynamic, and through it, we will
ourselves be changed.
1. S
 tetzer, E and Hayes, J, ‘Preaching to the Younger
Unchurched’, SermonCentral : bit.ly/Stetzer.
2. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.2.4.
3. W
 arren, R (2013), ‘How to Preach with
Authenticity’, Pastors.com : bit.ly/RWarren13.
4. Ward, RF (2001), Speaking from the Heart:
Preaching with Passion, Eugene: Wipf and Stock,
page 39.
5. Reid, RS (2014), ‘Authenticity in Preaching’,
academia.edu: bit.ly/RSReid14.