The Island Syndrome: When the Only Sermons You Ingest Are Your Own

PREACHING SKILLS
The Island Syndrome: When the Only Sermons You Ingest Are Your Own
Much has been said recently about the dangers of sermon plagiarism, but the effect can be a misguided shunning of others' sermons. Growing preachers study the messages of other outstanding preachers.
John Koessler

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Not long ago someone asked me how I felt about having transcripts of my sermons posted on the Internet. "Does it bother you that someone might download your sermons and preach them as their own?" Others have asked me similar questions. Each reflects the same basic assumption: What reason, other than plagiarism, would a preacher have for reading someone else's sermon?

Writers read the classics to learn about style and language. Artists study the paintings of the masters to discover their technique. Musicians listen to the works of great composers to understand the dynamics that shaped their distinctive sound. Preachers learn by reading and listening to others. Preaching, like other art forms, is partly imitative. Eloquence, Saint Augustine observed, is learned by hearing, not by rules.

In a seminar on preaching I attended some years ago, noted pastor and author Kent Hughes revealed that one of his hobbies was collecting old sermons. He found these volumes, often sold cheaply in used bookstores, to be a rich resource for illustrations in his messages. But illustration is not the only reason to read someone else's sermon. In his book Preaching & Teaching with Imagination, Warren Wiersbe tells why he reads sermons by pulpit greats like G. Campbell Morgan and George H. Morrison: "When I read a sermon, I first read it as a sinner who needs to hear God's voice and receive God's grace. I imagine myself seated in church, hearing the voice of the preacher."

But Wiersbe also reads these classic sermons as a student of preaching. "After I've gotten the blessing from the Word, then I read the sermon a second time as a preacher seeking to develop his skills," he explains. "How does the sermon show imagination? Why did the preacher develop the text as he did? Was the message true to the text?"

There is something about a good sermon that makes me want to be a better preacher.

The example of Kent Hughes and Warren Wiersbe has been invaluable to me. I, too, have discovered that when I turn to the sermons of others looking for a good quote or some personal encouragement from God's Word, I often come away with much more.

The chief benefit of reading or listening to someone else's sermon is the potential it has to surprise and inspire me. There is something about a good sermon that makes me want to be a better preacher. I find that I need to hear God's Word taught in other voices. Not because I do not know how to preach, but because I do. Preaching has become too familiar to me. The path of sermon formulation is so well worn that I can fall into writing my messages in a way that is predictable and, thus, dull even to me. I'm alone on an island with me, myself, and I.

Some years ago Jill Briscoe visited the campus where I teach and in her chapel messages urged us to read a series of sermons on the Lord's Prayer by Helmut Thielicke. A Lutheran pastor who preached during the allied bombing of Stuttgart in World War II, Thielicke's messages are some of the most powerful I have ever read. He asks the hard questions I am afraid to voice without offering pat answers or trite solutions. His sermons speak faith into my heart like few others and make me want to be a different kind of preacher.

I read others' sermons for more than freshness. Sometimes I look to other preachers to see how they have handled my text. Their sermons help me check my interpretation and provide ideas for illustration and application.

But the greatest gift of others' messages has been to teach me how to preach. For example, from Helmut Thielicke I learned how to combine pastoral compassion with powerful metaphors. Thielicke was a shepherd with the heart of a poet.

Nineteenth century Scottish preacher Alexander MacLaren was another master of metaphor, whose vivid comparisons have made me more aware of the language I use in my preaching. The sermons of Martyn Lloyd-Jones display his skill in the art of reasoning. A medical doctor before becoming a preacher, he was a true doctor of souls who used his audience's own experiences to help them diagnose their spiritual condition. Lloyd-Jones often entered into dialogue with his audience, enabling them to examine their own thinking in light of the biblical text, and that has affected my preaching.

I also turn to other preachers to jump start my thinking when I find myself suffering from writer's block. When this happens, I open a favorite preacher and begin reading at random. I do this not to find ideas for my sermon, but to stir my soul. When my mental gears are frozen, the words of another are often the oil that sets the works in motion again. Interestingly, it is not uncommon for their ideas to trigger something in my own thinking about the passage I happen to be studying, even though it may not be the focus of their sermon.