Plagiarism in the Pulpit (Pastor's Podcast)

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June 30, 2021

On today's program, Pastor Keith welcomes a panel of guests to discuss recent events involving J.D. Greear and Ed Litton and the subject of pastors "borrowing" sermons. Is this something we should be concerned about in the church?

00:16: Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:22: My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
00:25: I'm coming to you today with a very special program.
00:28: We're going to have a pastor's forum on the program today, where I'm going to be joined by two other pastors and a deacon to talk about a very important subject.
00:41: And that subject is plagiarism in the pulpit.
00:45: And I want to introduce the panel that I have now.
00:48: And throughout the program, we may have some others joining us.
00:51: We've invited some others to opine at certain points.
00:54: And if they decide to, we'll look forward to them participating.
00:57: But the ones that I have on the program with me beginning right away, I have Mr.
01:02: Kenny Roberts.
01:03: Kenny, can you introduce yourself to us and where you are the pastor? Yeah, so as he said, my name is Kenny Roberts, and I'm the pastor at Mission Way Church here in Jacksonville, Florida.
01:14: I've been there about two and a half years.
01:16: Wonderful.
01:16: And you've been on the program before.
01:17: We interviewed you just a few weeks ago.
01:20: Yep.
01:20: Yep.
01:21: All right.
01:21: And Austin is in Ocala, right? Yeah.
01:25: Well, Ocala area, technically Somerfield near the villages.
01:29: And I'm the pastor at Grace Point Church.
01:33: And I guess chief administrator, Grace Point Academy.
01:36: And I've been here coming on 13 years.
01:39: And you have been on the program twice.
01:42: We had you on for an interview, and we had you on to talk about conspiracy theories.
01:46: And if somebody missed that one, that was a pretty good, pretty good show.
01:51: And of course, with me, almost as always, is Richard Roden.
01:56: Richard Roden, do you need an introduction? Does the world need to? Well, a lot of you don't know me.
02:03: I'm Richard Roden.
02:05: I am a deacon and a Sunday school teacher at Greg Ables.
02:09: And I've been a member there since 2001.
02:12: So I've been there quite a while.
02:13: And I'm bringing up the rear with the pastors today.
02:18: Yes, we've invited Richard to sort of give a non-pastoral perspective.
02:22: And there are going to be certain times where I'm going to ask him from the, sort of a picture from the pew.
02:27: What does the pew or the church member expect? So we're going to have you be that sort of that participant today, Richard.
02:38: All right.
02:39: So as we're going along, we have a few things that we're going to be going through.
02:43: We have some questions that we're going to be going through.
02:45: But before we get to those, I kind of want to discuss what brought this about, what brought about this conversation.
02:50: And many of you know that a video recently went viral from the previous president of the SBC, whose name is J.D.
03:02: Greer, and the current president of the SBC, Ed Litton.
03:07: And the video was a compilation of a sermon that both men preached.
03:13: And when you begin to watch the video, it becomes painfully obvious very quickly that both men are preaching the same sermon.
03:20: They're using the same illustrations.
03:22: They're using the same notes.
03:24: They're using the same outline.
03:26: Even almost at certain points seem to be telling the same one-liners, you know, sort of waiting on the same response from the congregation.
03:35: And so when that video went viral, people began to have all kinds of opinions.
03:41: And both men wrote responses to what was happening because it was obvious.
03:49: It wasn't something that anyone could say, well, this was just a coincidence.
03:54: Certainly wasn't a coincidence.
03:56: And what has come out is that Litton admitted to using Greer's material.
04:04: But according to him, he used Greer's material with his permission.
04:11: And so this has led a lot of people to say, well, then it doesn't matter.
04:15: He used it by his permission.
04:18: He didn't have to tell anybody, according to some people.
04:21: And that's one of the things we're going to talk about, attribution and citation.
04:25: But he said, you know what? He had permission, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal.
04:29: But the question really comes down to the question of integrity.
04:33: This is something that I have dealt with personally over the years, because on two occasions in the last 15 years of being the pastor of Sovereign Grace Church, in the past 15 years, on two different occasions, I have had churches contact me because their ministers were using my notes.
04:51: I remember specifically the first time it happened.
04:53: It was about 2008.
04:55: And I had written a sermon that was entitled, What Can You Do While Waiting on God? It was from Acts chapter two, when the disciples were waiting on the falling of the Holy Spirit.
05:05: The title was pretty, What Can You Do While Waiting on God? It was pretty catchy.
05:10: And I had posted that on a website called sermoncentral.com.
05:14: It's a place where pastors can go on and share notes and share illustrations.
05:18: And I got a call from a deacon one night, and he says, is this Pastor Keith Foskey? And I said, yes.
05:23: He said, Pastor Foskey, did you write the sermon, What Can You Do While You're Waiting on God? And I said, yes, I do.
05:30: I remember writing it.
05:31: I was part of a series I was doing.
05:33: And he said, well, our pastor preached your sermon as if it was his.
05:39: He did not attribute it to you, but we knew it wasn't his work.
05:44: We knew because of some other things that were going on, it didn't sound like him.
05:48: It didn't come out like him.
05:49: So we looked it up on the internet and we found your name.
05:52: So we wanted to know, are you the author of this sermon? And I said, yes.
05:56: And then the next thing he said was, what do you think we should do? And first of all, I said, because I was 28 years old, I said, well, congratulate him for having good taste.
06:14: No, honestly, there was a part of me, the sinful part of me that was like, wow, somebody thought it was good enough to use.
06:21: And I don't know if you guys have such a sinful disposition as that, but there was certainly a part of me that was a little, in a sense, kind of happy in a wrong way.
06:35: But at the same time, I knew that this deacon was calling me because this man had an issue with integrity.
06:43: He had an issue with not wanting to do the work himself, not wanting to do the work of study and exegesis and the homiletical preparation of a sermon.
06:53: And the deacons were concerned about his integrity.
06:56: And that's what I said.
06:57: I said, you need to confront him.
06:58: You need to have a conversation about integrity and his work ethic and what is he doing in his ministry.
07:04: And again, it happened a couple of years later.
07:06: It was a different sermon, different situation, but it was still a committee called me and said, we are investigating our pastor because he has used your sermons as well as some others that we have found online.
07:18: So this is not an isolated incident with Lytton and Greer.
07:24: But theirs, having done it, has really put it out there, has made it, you know, now people are talking about integrity in the pulpit.
07:31: And so I'm going to go around the panel now.
07:34: I'm going to ask each of you if you would, for just a few minutes, tell me what were your initial thoughts when you were listening to the Greer and Lytton video? What were your initial thoughts about this? Did you, were you offended? Were you, did you feel like this is not as big a deal as everybody's making it out to be? I'll start with you, Austin, you've been pastor at your church for 13 years.
07:57: I'm gonna let you maybe go first and then we'll let Kenny and Richard speak.
08:03: Well, when I first started in the pastorate and I left my youth pastorate to go to my first church, my pastor said something to me.
08:13: We sat down in his office every day and he said, you're going to find yourself, because I was 24 when I started pastoring.
08:19: He said, you're going to find yourself borrowing a lot, make it your own.
08:24: But as you mature in the Lord, you'll eventually, and I have found that, but there's a difference between borrowing and a basic outline and hanging your meat on it versus preaching another man's sermon.
08:39: And when I first seen the video, I thought, okay, it's going to be his quote about that horrible, horrible quote about what the Bible whispers about and screams about.
08:49: And then I started watching the video and here it is.
08:52: This is not a young preacher.
08:54: This is an elder statesman in the SBC and he is downright plagiarizing without giving credit.
09:05: That really bothered me.
09:07: It's bad for a 24-year-old to plagiarize, no matter what the age is.
09:13: But it really bothers me that this is an elder statesman who's supposed to have been in his Bible his whole life and has more than 20, 30 years ministry.
09:22: That is what bothered me the most.
09:25: A preacher should be preaching from the flow of his daily devotional life and the scriptures and the growth.
09:34: I can tell you, and I listened to sermons that I preached 17, 18 years ago when I was a youth pastor and I listened to sermons I preach now, I have grown.
09:46: I would think an elder statesman like him would not be plagiarizing that much.
09:51: It really bothered me personally.
09:54: Okay, awesome.
09:56: Kenny, what were your thoughts initially? My first thought was, I'm not surprised that this is happening and coming out now with Ed Litton taking over, being president of the SPC.
10:11: But at the same time, I was also thankful that some things are being exposed, that people are finding out some of the stuff that had already happened, but nobody had known about or cared to share about before.
10:24: One of my second thoughts was how much that grieved me as a pastor to see another pastor, instead of loving his congregation enough to say, let me take this difficult issue from the scriptures and preach the word faithfully to my congregation.
10:44: He said, who preached this in a good way? And how can I take what they said? And it was almost as if he was more preaching to the culture than he was preaching to his church, which that gets into the content of the sermon in general.
10:57: But that was my big problem is, not only did you plagiarize, but you didn't feed your congregation.
11:03: You simply wanted to take talking points from somebody else.
11:07: And as a pastor, that's hard to watch.
11:11: Amen.
11:12: Amen.
11:13: Brother Richard, what were your thoughts? Initially, I was actually surprised.
11:22: And I say surprised by when I was watching it the first time, I was trying to figure out who's plagiarizing who.
11:27: And at first I thought Greer had borrowed from Litt.
11:30: And then when I found out that it was flipped, that was where I was a little more surprised because as I mentioned earlier, this is an older gentleman who's supposed to have been in the pulpit for ever and a day, and he's borrowing from J.D.
11:46: Greer.
11:47: And not just borrowing, but flat out just basically re-preaching the same sermon.
11:53: What's interesting is as I was going back over the video today, I can't remember the name of the site, but you said in your introduction, Keith, that they labeled this a coincidence.
12:06: But I found another video that they put out there, Romans 13, where Litton has done the exact same thing from the introduction to his opening prayer.
12:15: I've watched about three and a half, four minutes of it where he's almost verbatim preaching another Greer sermon.
12:21: So there's two times that he's done this, not just once.
12:25: So they've actually taken down all of the Roman sermons on his website.
12:30: From what I understand, there was a certain amount of sermons through Romans, and they've just taken them off the website.
12:37: So over 200 sermons.
12:41: And why would you do that if there wasn't an issue there or you're trying to hide something? So first I was surprised that it was the older man borrowing from the younger, but then just disappointment because of everything else going on with the SBC, it's just further down the drain it goes because of just everything going on with them.
13:03: Just more disappointment in that whole organization.
13:06: Those are my initial thoughts.
13:08: And Richard, you and I talked a little bit earlier about the interesting beginning of the sermon, how they both used an illustration.
13:19: And Lytton referenced it as being from Paul Tripp and Greer referenced it as it coming from his own experience.
13:31: That was another really weird thing.
13:33: And of course, if you read their response, Greer said, well, what it was, was I have been on missions trips and I have experienced what Paul Tripp mentioned.
13:44: But my point is simply to say, it seems like they were both taking from Paul Tripp the idea.
13:50: So it's like they're both drawing from a single source in that regard where Greer got the idea, well, this is good.
13:57: And then Lytton couldn't say that because he'd not been where Greer had been mission wise.
14:02: So he has to go and say, well, go back to the original source.
14:06: It's just all so convoluted.
14:08: And did you guys read the response that they gave both sides? Yeah.
14:14: Yeah.
14:14: Was there anything in there? I have not.
14:16: Okay.
14:17: Kenny, Austin, was there anything that y'all felt like was made better? J.D.
14:23: Greer, that phrase, whatever bullet of mine works in your gun.
14:29: So, I mean, there was a definite permission given.
14:32: There's a difference between taking a few illustrations and even I'll even say this.
14:38: Like I'm exegetical preacher, expositor.
14:43: So there are some books of the Bible I will read one commentator and I will outline it myself.
14:50: And it's like it just outlines itself.
14:53: So there's going to be some outline copies points, but these were not those types of points.
14:59: They had nothing to do with the actual structure of the verses he was using.
15:02: They were typically nothing but topical verses.
15:05: He was working through Romans one, but it was topical culture, social.
15:11: He was really pulling what he could from the text.
15:14: And this was not a matter of this best describes the text.
15:24: This was, I like the way he did it.
15:26: I want to do it his way because it was popular.
15:30: Yeah.
15:31: Kenny, do you have any thoughts about the responses? One of the things that was interesting to me is I don't really, I didn't really see a clear apology from Ed Litton and not bothering me.
15:46: I mean, I don't know that everybody here knows, but our church is SBC and to see the new president get called out for something that he admits is wrong.
15:57: I mean, he's not, he did admit that it was wrong, but there wasn't this clear apology of, I know that you all have trusted me to lead this organization.
16:06: This was a big deal and I messed this up and I'm really asking you to forgive me.
16:11: I mean, there are people out there who, which I don't know that we need to get into this necessarily, but there are people out there who are saying if a pastor does this, they should resign.
16:20: I've seen articles from way back when from 2012 from some men I respect to have said that for a long time.
16:28: But whether or not you agree with that, this is a big enough deal to do more than say, hey, this happened.
16:35: I should have mentioned Greer, but I didn't.
16:37: I'm committed to integrity and honesty moving forward.
16:40: There was no real apology.
16:43: Yeah, and actually that leads us into the next question, Kenny, very well, because what you just said about this has been an issue and people have written about it since you said back in 2012, because my next question was, do you think plagiarism is a problem for pastors? And by you saying that the answer is, yeah, there are some guys that this is a real problem for.
17:06: I'll tell you a quick story and then I'm going to let you guys jump in.
17:12: There was a church that we received some members from the church closed because the pastor was forced to resign because of a moral issue.
17:23: But the months leading up to his moral issue, it became very clear that he was no longer writing his own sermons, but that he was simply reading the John MacArthur commentary series that he had.
17:35: And they literally the people were going home, opening up the John MacArthur commentary and seeing the outline and being, oh, well, he didn't write this.
17:44: He's literally using the outline that's in the commentary and people owned it.
17:48: People in the church had those commentaries so that they could go home and see what he was doing.
17:53: And they said that was the first key indicator that something was wrong in his ministry.
18:00: And then, of course, it ended up he was exposed with a very tremendous moral failing, which led to the actually the dissolution of the church because of his very, very sad situation.
18:12: So, yeah, I mean, you know, what are you guys thoughts about how much this is a problem for pastors? Austin, I'll go with you first.
18:26: Um, I think the problem is, is that most pastors don't know how to study.
18:36: They don't know how to outline.
18:38: I and what got me when I was I was reading Lytton's response on his goredemption.com.
18:47: He says, as he said, I hold the same study process on each sermon as any pastor who preaches regularly knows.
18:55: We often rely on scholars and fellow pastors for more clarity with the goal of faithfully preaching the truth that that that's not a bad statement.
19:06: But again, if I'm looking at other men's sermons, it's usually after my outlines completed and I'm going, did I miss something? And, you know, it's it's not it's not something I go to to write my sermon.
19:23: And that's probably where a lot of the plagiarism is coming from.
19:26: And it's often probably unintentional instead of becoming familiar with the text, reading the text, doing the language work, digging through it, then writing a rough outline and then building an outline, then looking at other resources.
19:40: They're starting backwards.
19:42: They're starting with these other sermons and trying to move backwards.
19:47: And then the outline is already set in their mind.
19:50: And I think it makes it easier for pastors to find themselves plagiarizing, even if they don't mean to.
19:56: I love that idea that working backwards.
19:58: That's that's a that's a good thought.
20:01: Kenny, did you have anything you wanted to.
20:04: Yeah, I mean, I think I've seen a I don't I don't know if this is a good term for it, but it's a term that comes to mind, kind of a soft plagiarism that's almost celebrated in ministry where I get advertisements all the time for these things that say, hey, if you're a pastor and you need more time for ministry, let us do the sermon prep for you.
20:25: And and beyond that, I've been to conferences where these churches and pastors say all the time, use our stuff.
20:33: Don't give us any credit for it.
20:35: Just use it.
20:36: It's all God's stuff.
20:37: And I'm like, I love the heart behind that.
20:40: I mean, I have that same heart for wanting to share ministry tools and insights and all that kind of stuff.
20:47: But at the same time, I think especially a lot of young pastors who are essentially CEOs of their churches are saying, oh, great, I don't have to put in a lot of work to this.
20:56: There's other guys that have done this.
20:57: Let me let me move forward with it.
20:59: And it just it easily translates into full blown plagiarism.
21:03: Yeah, absolutely.
21:04: Richard, when we we say, do you think plagiarism is a problem for pastors? You write a lot of material yourself.
21:11: I know because we talk a lot about your Sunday school classes.
21:16: But have you ever in Sunday school, have you ever used someone else's and I'm not talking about like a workbook because that's not that's different.
21:24: Right.
21:24: Wouldn't we agree that like if it's a workbook that you're working through, that that's that's something like a leader guide? Yeah.
21:30: I mean, and everybody has the everybody has the student guide.
21:33: You have the leader guide.
21:34: That's different because you're not you're not everybody knows that you're not plagiarizing.
21:39: You're using it now.
21:40: You would still be expected to read ahead and study ahead.
21:43: But you're still if you're using like I was at your church on a Wednesday night and your pastor was going through something.
21:50: I think he wrote that what we went through, but it was he was he was basing it off of another book that he read, but he had wrote his own material.
21:59: Yeah, yeah.
22:00: Because it was very well done.
22:01: I mean, it was your pastor is a very skilled at outlining things.
22:05: I've seen some of the stuff my wife visits their church sometimes because it's closer to our house for Wednesday nights.
22:11: So sometimes she goes there with our kids because they have awanas and stuff and really enjoy their pastor.
22:16: And he's really good at outlining.
22:18: So but how about you? Have you ever have you ever used somebody's material? And how did you give credit if you did? Well, I kind of go through some of the similar process that y'all do for studying for Sunday school.
22:31: I don't go as deep as y'all do, obviously, because I have a basic outline in the leadership material in the guide to go off of if I want to follow it.
22:40: But a lot of times I deviate from it, not because I don't disagree with it, just because I come across elements that I think would be more.
22:51: Pertinent to the Sunday school class than what's in the material, if you follow what I'm saying there.
22:56: Well, it's like I got to say what y'all do with it.
22:59: You're trying to speak to your people.
23:00: Well, I'm trying to speak to my class.
23:02: Well, that's what that's what Kenny just said a few minutes ago about knowing your church, right? Knowing your people.
23:06: If Lytton is preaching someone else's sermon, he's preaching it that was written to somebody else's people.
23:12: Right.
23:12: That kind of what you were saying, Kenny? Yeah.
23:14: Yeah, exactly.
23:16: So, um, that's fine.
23:20: So, yes, I've I've borrowed from other guys when I read commentaries, whether it's Henry or Calvin or Spurgeon or something.
23:29: But if I'm using something from them, I will tell the class, this is what Henry has to say about the subject.
23:37: And then I will read his quote and then I will go on.
23:40: But I'm not taking what's in the commentary and then putting it on my paper and then preaching what Henry wrote so long ago as my own or anybody else.
23:50: I understand what he was saying earlier about borrowing to some extent.
23:56: Yeah, you'll borrow a little bit, but that's not plagiarism because you might take an idea, but you make it your own in the sense of doing that.
24:06: But speaking to whether or not I think plagiarism is a problem in the church, since you wanted me to give the pew perspective, I've been fortunate enough that I've sat under pastors that don't have this problem.
24:19: And I've actually with both with Cody and with Andy before he was a pastor before, they kind of took me behind the veil, so to speak, into their study process.
24:30: I actually got to see this is how they do it.
24:33: And the work and the time and the effort and the study and the prayer and everything that goes, they start with the text and then work from the text to the commentaries, if need be, especially with a difficult subject that kind of has differing views.
24:48: I go to other guys to kind of get an idea, but it's starting with the text and working that way.
24:58: When I first started teaching Sunday school, when I was real green, I made a mistake of starting with the commentaries.
25:04: And unfortunately, if you start with the commentaries or you start with like MacArthur, his commentary is just a sermon.
25:12: Those ideas are those things already planted in your head before you get to the text.
25:16: And it's hard to work backwards.
25:19: And then you fall into this accidental plagiarism, so to speak, if you want to call it that, because you're not trying to do that, but you've been influenced in that direction.
25:29: So it's always best to start with the text, work from the text, and then go to these other sources as the last part of your study to make sure that you're in line with 2,000 years of church history with all these other guys that came before you.
25:43: They were a lot smarter than me, as well as there may be something or perspective that you just didn't get, that you didn't catch in the text, but they did.
25:51: That's the part of iron sharpening iron.
25:54: These other guys may have something that you didn't get from the text that could be helpful.
25:59: But yes, I'm going to agree with these other guys.
26:01: There probably is a problem with it.
26:02: And it's because men don't know how to study and they don't have the attention span to study in this culture that we have.
26:10: Yeah, I want to tell that real quick.
26:16: I remember in 15 years, I remember two sermons that I preached that were other men's sermons.
26:22: One was sinners in the hands of an angry God.
26:27: I've done that one too.
26:28: That I thought I could just read it, but we announced it.
26:36: Tonight it was an evening sermon.
26:39: I said, tonight, instead of the normal study, I'm going to read sinners in the hands of an angry God.
26:46: And it was interesting.
26:48: Not everybody thought it was great.
26:50: Did you have people falling out of the pew? Nobody fell down.
26:53: Nobody was grasping the back of the pews.
26:56: But I also did, and this is the weird one.
27:02: I was preaching through Jonah and R.C.
27:07: Sproul mentioned that in the book, Moby Dick, there is a sermon that is preached.
27:15: One whole chapter in Moby Dick is a sermon preached about Jonah.
27:21: And I read that to the church on it.
27:23: It was a Sunday evening service.
27:25: And it was Sunday evening.
27:27: That's your small crowd.
27:29: You can do things maybe a little different than normal.
27:32: And that was the only other time I can remember reading another man's sermon.
27:37: And what's funny is that was R.C.
27:39: Sproul's idea because he mentioned it.
27:41: He said, he loves Moby Dick.
27:43: And he said, if I ever had the opportunity, I would read this sermon from this.
27:48: So I went and downloaded it, printed it and read it.
27:51: But again, everybody knew what I was doing.
27:53: I was preaching the sermon from Moby Dick that was written by Herman Melville.
28:00: So those are two odd things that I've done, but I have done them.
28:04: How about you guys? Have you ever used another person's sermon? Have you ever just read another man's sermon? If so, how did you give attribution? Kenny? I have not read a full sermon.
28:20: The closest thing I've done, and I did this when I first started preaching at 20, 21.
28:28: I had some sermons that I appreciated from other guys who at the beginning, I said, most of what I'm going to say tonight came from whoever it may have been.
28:39: And I honestly can't even remember the specific instances.
28:41: I just have a recollection of doing that.
28:44: But that's the closest that I have in my ministry.
28:47: But you were clear up front.
28:49: This is what I'm doing.
28:51: I appreciated this man.
28:52: This sermon spoke to me.
28:53: I hope it speaks to you.
28:56: What's funny is I preached at the FIRE conference last year, Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals.
29:02: Austin, you were going to try to come to that member.
29:05: Remind me next time it comes up.
29:07: Yeah.
29:07: It's a great group of guys.
29:09: And I was one of the guys preaching while one of the other brothers preached a sermon.
29:14: And it was similar to what you just said, Kenny.
29:17: He'd come up and he said, my outline tonight is from this other pastor.
29:21: And for the life of me, I can't remember who it was.
29:24: But he really made it his own.
29:25: But you could tell the outline was very structured, specific.
29:30: And he kept going back to that.
29:33: But it certainly didn't feel canned.
29:35: It didn't feel like he had...
29:38: If he hadn't told us, we wouldn't have known.
29:40: But I'm glad he did tell us.
29:42: He was very honest about it.
29:45: And Brother Austin, you said you have done Centers in the Hands.
29:49: Yeah.
29:49: I was like in my 20s.
29:51: It was...
29:52: It was...
29:52: Me too.
29:53: Yeah.
29:53: I was licensed into the ministry.
29:55: Oh, goodness.
29:56: October of 2000.
29:58: So it would have been early, early on.
30:01: And I remember hearing all about that church history and thought I wanted to preach it.
30:06: And I just ended up boring a whole bunch of young adults and teenagers for an hour.
30:11: And it was not impressive at all.
30:14: Yeah.
30:15: Since I've been a pastor here, we have done several series.
30:21: And there have been times...
30:23: I can think of two sermons off the top of my head.
30:25: One particular I remember because I was doing commandment number one.
30:32: And I was working...
30:32: And I didn't do this on all the commandments, but commandment number one.
30:35: Thomas Watson has the best outline.
30:39: And so I went to the pulpit and I said, all the main points are from a great theologian of the past, passed away years ago, Thomas Watson.
30:49: And I took the meat, just the main points, but I built my own meat around it.
30:55: But I told the church up front, I'm borrowing a lot from Thomas Watson because I made this outline.
31:01: And after I got done finishing my outline, I went and read it.
31:04: And I went, man, I missed a lot.
31:06: I just missed a lot.
31:08: Thomas Watson slapped me over the face.
31:10: I did not even know the first commandment that well.
31:14: And so I just came to the church and I was honest about it.
31:17: And I almost delayed my sermon by a week because I almost felt uncomfortable doing it.
31:22: But the more I prayed about it, I just went through the pulpit very honestly.
31:26: I'm using Thomas Watson's outline.
31:29: I'm borrowing a lot from it.
31:31: And that's one particular one I can remember.
31:34: And that was probably only about four years ago.
31:38: And it sounds like because that was the next question.
31:41: How do you handle citation and attribution from the pulpit? You just tell everybody, right? I mean, that's it.
31:47: You say this is where it comes from.
31:49: I like to quote people.
31:51: Now, I don't quote my whole sermons, not quotations.
31:56: But the way that I do my preparation is, of course, I begin with the text.
32:01: I cut and paste the text from my accordant software into a Word file that I can write on with my iPad.
32:11: And I just double space it and I can go in and write my notes.
32:15: And then I cut and paste from Logos.
32:17: One of our church members has a Logos account with a big, nice library that he's been gracious enough to let me have his, you can put it on multiple computers.
32:26: So he puts it on my computer.
32:27: So I'm able to do that.
32:29: And what I do is I cut and paste the commentaries out.
32:32: But as Richard mentioned earlier, that's after I've already done my writing on the notes and my exegetical work.
32:40: If it's in the Greek, I feel more comfortable in the Greek than the Hebrew.
32:44: But I try to do the exegetical work in both, making sure I'm understanding multiple translations and everything.
32:51: But something else that I do, and I don't know if I'd like to hear you guys if you do this, do you ever, after you've written your sermon or maybe in the midst of the commentary portion, do you ever listen to other pastors preach that sermon on that text? Often.
33:06: Often.
33:07: Okay.
33:07: Because I do.
33:08: I do.
33:09: What about you, Austin? I have, and it's usually on a text because I work through books of the Bible.
33:17: And it's funny because sometimes it's like, what did R.C.
33:20: Spurl say on this? Because I just feel like there has to be more.
33:25: I'm missing something here.
33:26: I've dug through it.
33:27: I've already done a base outline, but sometimes going back and saying, what am I missing? And again, it's important not to work backwards on this.
33:36: If I listen to R.C.
33:37: Spurl first, guess what I'm going to write? I'm going to end up writing an outline like R.C.
33:42: Spurl, and I'm not R.C.
33:43: Spurl, and I do not do well at delivering his sermons.
33:46: So, well, I think that's part of, it plays back into all this too of, in Lytton's response, that whole statement that Austin read earlier, where he said, I'm gleaming from other pastors and authors and theologians.
33:58: And I think we all do that.
34:00: I mean, we're all doing that.
34:02: That's great.
34:03: Nobody's saying that's what's wrong here.
34:05: Nobody's even saying it was wrong for him to listen to Greer's sermon and try to gain some insight from that.
34:11: What the problem is, is he preached the same sermon and didn't give any credit.
34:16: I mean, it's a really simple problem.
34:18: I don't understand.
34:20: It's hard for me to comprehend why anybody would defend this and say it was okay or not a big deal.
34:25: It is a big deal.
34:26: I mean, it's okay in the sense that admit it, be honest about it, move on and do better.
34:32: But at the same time, you can't just play it off and say, oh yeah, that kind of happened.
34:36: I'm sorry, but let's delete these sermons.
34:40: Yeah, let's hide it.
34:42: Yeah.
34:43: Yeah.
34:43: And something else, I don't know how many of you caught this, but in Lytton's response, he mentioned that he has a team of eight people that helps him prepare his sermons.
34:52: Yeah.
34:54: That's common, unfortunately.
34:56: Yeah.
34:56: You didn't see that, Richard, did you? No, I haven't seen the responses.
34:59: Yeah.
35:00: He said, he didn't say that he didn't use the word employ, but it was something I gathered with a group of eight men in my church and we put the sermon together.
35:14: And I was like, what? I mean, I do have one of our elders, we have two elders plus myself and brother Mike and brother Andy and brother Mike and I talk two or three times a week on the phone.
35:27: And it's often about the texts I'm preaching.
35:29: So he is my sounding board, especially when there's an issue that I know that is a controversial issue.
35:35: I've been in Genesis.
35:36: So there's been a lot.
35:37: And I want to know, do we agree? And oftentimes I'll call brother Andy, where do you stand on this text? Because I want to make sure I'm not saying something that the three of us are going to be disagreeing about, or if we do disagree, I want to present both sides if I can and be fair to this text.
35:54: But a team of eight guys, I can't imagine he doesn't have research assistants and people who are presenting him with illustrations and stuff like that.
36:03: And it just, I just don't, I mean, what are you doing if everybody's doing the work for you, you know? So that was just, okay.
36:18: Now, when we, we've kind of already answered this question, but I'm going to bring it out again in the big picture.
36:26: How important do you think this subject should be in the church? And like I said, I think we've sort of already answered this, but I'm going to, I'm going to kick it to you, Kenny, because you seem from what you've said, really like this is being part of the SBC.
36:41: This is offensive.
36:42: And how big of an, how big of an issue should this be in the, in the church? Should, should, should the church be, should the church be looking for something more than what they've gotten out of Lytton and Greer over this? I'll be a little bit careful to speak to that.
37:01: I'm still new to the SBC.
37:04: I don't know Lytton super well.
37:07: I know Greer somewhat in terms of, I say, no, I don't know them personally.
37:12: And so I want to be careful in my response to that in particular.
37:17: I'm not, let me, let me give this perspective too.
37:21: I've listened to a lot of people talk about this recently.
37:23: I think some people have just absolutely attacked every aspect of these men's characters and lives over, over this issue.
37:31: I think that's extreme and wrong as well.
37:34: I want to be clear about that.
37:36: I've been bothered by just how extreme people have gotten, but at the same time, I'm, I'm bothered by the people who came to the defense of Lytton immediately.
37:44: And, and one comment one comment I won't say the name, maybe I can, but that's okay.
37:51: One, one comment was, was from James Merritt, I believe where he said, let the, let the ants, what did I forget what he said? It was something just weird where he just lumped all the critics into this category and basically.
38:05: The ants at the picnic where the ants at the picnic.
38:08: And I'm like, why can't we just simply look at this and go, this was wrong.
38:12: Like admit that and move on.
38:15: And so to, to get to the main question moving forward in the church I mean, I think we deal with it the same way we always have.
38:22: If you see plagiarism, you call it out and you don't let it happen.
38:25: I think, I don't think that this is something that we need to now become a watchman looking at everybody's sermon and who did you take that from? And but at the same time, when we see it happen, we call it out and let's call men in the pulpit to a higher standard.
38:41: Let's be sure that we're training the young men in our churches who are going to one day take the pulpits what it means to outline a text and study a text.
38:50: Let's make sure they know what it means to prepare sermons going forward, because I do believe there is a culture of soft plagiarism that's feeding into this as well.
39:00: So that's helpful, but no, it is.
39:02: And that goes back to what I was saying a minute ago.
39:04: Like I said, I use a lot of quotes in my sermon.
39:06: So guys who listen to me, who are in our church, who are learning to preach, because that's how a lot of guys learn to preach by listening to their pastor, right? And young men who are listening to me, I want them to hear me say, brother Brian Borgman said this, because that's I remember I said, there's guys I listened to brother Brian Borgman is a pastor in Nevada.
39:27: He's one of the he's one of the best expositors I believe alive today.
39:31: I'd rather listen to him than John MacArthur, to be honest with you.
39:34: He's one of my favorite preachers.
39:35: And I listened to him at least once or twice a week.
39:37: I had him on the program about six months ago.
39:40: He came on and just to talk, I just wanted to pick his brain about his study process because he is, he is an expositors expositor and I love him to death.
39:49: And, and, and it's funny because I've gotten to the point where I say, Brian says like, like I say, Brian, cause I, I like him so much.
39:57: He's almost like another commentary.
39:59: And when I'll say brother Borgman or brother Brian will say, the church knows I'm talking about this guy and they know who it is as much as if one of you were to say MacArthur says, you know what I mean? Because people know who you're talking about.
40:11: Right.
40:12: And so they know that when I respect this man, I love this man.
40:16: I appreciate this man, but I have never once used one of his sermons.
40:21: The most I've ever done is like I said, a quotation and I don't have the written hit.
40:27: I don't have a commentary from him.
40:28: So what I'm getting from him is from my ears.
40:30: So sometimes I'm afraid I'm quoting him wrong.
40:32: So I have to go back to the recording and type what he's saying to make sure I'm saying it right.
40:36: But, you know, but I want my people to hear me say, brother Brian said this, or brother MacArthur said this, or Dr.
40:45: Sproul said this because they know then that this isn't, I'm not playing this off as something I came up with.
40:53: And I think that, I think that's a good teaching thing, you know, whether you're using a lot of quotes or not.
41:01: All right.
41:01: So as we begin to draw to an end here, I want to, I have this sort of portion at the end.
41:07: I had planned called the hot take portion.
41:10: Here's the hot take for today.
41:12: In my opinion, the more grievous issue here is not that Lydden took from Greer because he apparently did have permission.
41:21: We've talked about that, but that the material he took was bad.
41:27: He says some things like God whispers about sexual sin.
41:30: His, the whole thing about the going to the shrine and all that stuff.
41:36: So is the bigger problem that we have two of the most prominent Southern Baptist ministers who do seem to be sharing material, but the material itself is not good.
41:52: It's like one man I saw posted, and I don't remember who it was, but he said, you know, if you're going to steal food, you steal a steak.
41:58: You don't steal a bologna sandwich.
42:00: And this is what it looks like.
42:01: There was a lot of baloney.
42:03: So I'm going to give you guys each a minute to kind of share a final thought.
42:06: What are your thoughts about the content of what was said in the message? Do you think that it was am I, am I getting it wrong? And I, and I, and you feel free to disagree.
42:15: This is not a yes man conversation.
42:17: Do you think that I'm being a little overly harsh by saying that this was not a great sermon and the whole topic itself seems to be seems to be somewhat more cultural than it is expository.
42:31: And I'll start with Richard, because you've gone last the whole time.
42:33: Richard, what are your thoughts? And then we'll end with the other two gentlemen.
42:37: Um, the content of the sermon, what I heard, of course, I just got the eight minute clip.
42:42: I didn't listen to the whole thing and I'm not going to, but winking or saying that God whispers about sexual sin.
42:52: Um, I don't think he spent much time actually reading the Bible concerning what God says about sexual sin.
42:58: Cause he certainly certainly doesn't whisper about it in any way, shape or form.
43:02: Um, but I had a different hot take, I guess you could say, it's not really a hot take.
43:08: It's just my thoughts on it as we've been sitting here and discussing.
43:14: And scripture is very clear.
43:17: It makes a clear emphasis on the importance of the office of an elder and the integrity that an elder should have to the word of God and to shepherding the flock.
43:28: And the fact that we have sermons being borrowed and passed off as their own.
43:36: Because no care is taken.
43:38: And another pastor willing to just hand a sermon off and say, use whatever bullets from my gun that you did fit.
43:45: Willing to do that shows a lack of care for the integrity of the word, for the study of the word, spending time and devotion as well as for their own flock that God has given to them to care for.
43:59: And one day both Greer and Lytton will stand before God and have to give an account as to what they have done here at the example they've set for other pastors, especially when you have so many, as was mentioned before, defending the practice of what they're doing.
44:14: That's a serious, serious issue concerning the state of two men who are prominent leaders of a very large organization that has influence over a slew of pastors who may find this to be okay practice, especially when they're not very repentant over what they've done.
44:32: They should have more integrity for the office in which they hold.
44:36: That's my thoughts on what is going on here.
44:40: And I'll pass it on.
44:43: Well, Kenny, I'm going to let Austin go last and I'm going to kick it to you.
44:47: And I know what you said earlier is true.
44:50: We want to be, not only do we want to be gracious, but we want to be, we want to take care with what we're saying.
44:57: We're not saying these men aren't saved or we're not saying that they should step down.
45:02: At least I'm not saying that they should resign.
45:05: But when it comes to the content of what's making it to the larger churches, what are your thoughts as we finish up the program? I did not listen to the whole sermon.
45:20: So again, it's another situation.
45:22: I want to be careful, not trying to give a cop out, but one of the points that I appreciated, I'll give that up front was, I think they said something along the lines of this is not the worst sin.
45:34: This is not the sin that everybody just needs to pinpoint this and forget about others.
45:38: Okay, great.
45:39: But I think that just played into the overall context of what I kept hearing was, let's make sure that anybody in this sin is just kind of, they know that there's other sins out there and this isn't the worst and God whispers about this, which he doesn't.
45:56: And he's loud about other stuff.
45:58: I mean, it's almost this kind of like, it's okay, but it's not.
46:03: And that's sin in general.
46:06: I hope this is not a tangent.
46:07: This is an illustration of a point that something that even happened at the convention where somebody wanted to propose a resolution or an amendment to one of the resolutions on abortion saying, we need to call this out for being a sin.
46:23: And they kind of said, well, we want to love these people.
46:27: Okay, but it's unloving to not call it a sin.
46:29: And I think the same thing's happening here.
46:32: And I think that this goes back to the very first thing I said.
46:36: The thing that bothered me most about the content of the sermon and the plagiarism itself is, this is not the case for Greer because it was his sermon in the first place as much as it is for Lytton where he didn't really pastor his church, in my opinion.
46:54: He stole content.
46:57: He didn't do the work of being a student of the word and faithfully dividing the word.
47:03: Even if the sermon is good, he didn't do that.
47:06: He just, he microwaved something and served it to his congregation instead of serving up the word as a feast for his people.
47:16: And it overall, in both sermons, it felt more like they were speaking to the culture than they were speaking to the church.
47:22: And that is happening far too often in churches that I'm seeing where pastors are not addressing their church first.
47:31: They're addressing the culture.
47:33: Let's make sure the culture knows what we're saying first.
47:35: And then I'll speak to the church.
47:37: And that's a problem.
47:38: That's not what pastors are called to do ultimately.
47:41: Amen.
47:42: And you win the prize tonight for some of the great one-liners.
47:46: I don't know if you noticed, but what you just said about microwaving, that was awesome.
47:50: That was good.
47:51: I stole that.
47:52: Well, I was going to say, I'm going to steal that.
47:56: As we joke about plagiarism, microwaving, because I've actually used that illustration with our people in regard to people who will tell me, well, I didn't make Sunday, but I listened to the live stream.
48:10: And I'm like, well, I'm glad you listened to the live stream, but it's like mom preparing a meal and you saying, well, I'm not going to be home to eat it.
48:18: I'll just microwave it later.
48:20: It's not the same if you're not there and at part of the body listening to the message.
48:25: So that whole microwave thing could be a whole other conversation.
48:29: There you go.
48:30: That's my gift to you.
48:31: Well, thank you.
48:34: All right, Brother Austin, you're going to walk us out of here.
48:38: What are your final thoughts on all of this? The whole God whispers, what was it? Whisper about what the Bible whispers about and shout about what it shouts about.
48:51: To me, when you're talking about a holy, holy, holy God, and when you think about our salvation and the fact that Christ cried out on the cross, my father, why have you forsaken me? The seriousness of sin.
49:09: I agree with the fact that he said that sometimes we get over focused on individual sin.
49:16: I disagree making light of sin at all from the pulpit.
49:21: And when you say a phrase like we're going to whisper about these sins because the Bible whispers about these sins, there are no sins that are whispered about.
49:33: Tell that to a holy, holy, holy God who in his divine nature both hates the sinner and gives grace to the redeemed.
49:44: God, that phrase, and it's been a discussion that I've had with some of the young men on my staff even.
49:55: Well, and supposedly, I'm reading this site, he said he cited Jen Wilkins in that statement.
50:02: Note that she was one of the favorite Bible teachers.
50:05: She was quoting from the late R.C.
50:06: Spurl in his book, What is in the Bible? Co-authored by Robert Walgemuth and the chapter on creation.
50:15: Now, I have not done the legwork yet, but I'm planning on getting that book and reading what R.C.
50:22: Spurl said in Creation.
50:23: Because one thing I know about R.C.
50:25: Spurl is he was obsessed with the holiness of God.
50:28: And I don't see him making light of sin.
50:32: And if she did quote, if Jen was quoting him and J.D.
50:37: Greer was quoting Jen, they certainly were not quoting.
50:42: I almost feel like J.D.
50:44: Greer threw in R.C.
50:45: Spurl's name just to try to get it accepted by more people.
50:49: Yeah, I get where you're coming from on that.
50:52: Again, we don't know for sure, but it certainly feels there's a feeling there.
50:55: If I can offer a quick insight into that, I've heard Jen Wilkins talk about that before in reference to creation.
51:03: And it was simply in reference to there are some questions people have about creation and the Bible just simply doesn't give us answers.
51:10: The creation account wasn't intended to give us this answer.
51:13: And so it was a completely different subject than saying, well, we've got this many verses that talk about this sin and this many that talk about that sin.
51:20: So that means this isn't as big of a deal as that.
51:22: I mean, it's just a complete misapplication of that quote in general.
51:27: Yeah.
51:27: I mean, think about how many sins you can justify with that attitude.
51:33: I mean, pedophilia.
51:35: Yeah.
51:35: How often does the Bible speak about certain sins that we know are heinous? Maybe not as much as we as others.
51:45: And yet the Bible is not whispering.
51:48: And there was a not to open up another conversation in the middle of as we close, but there was also the statement that I know homosexuality doesn't send someone to hell because heterosexuality doesn't send somebody to heaven.
52:01: That is bug me more.
52:02: Well, that bug me, but it's also that is a canard.
52:06: That is a red herring.
52:08: How much trouble would you get in college for using an argument like that? Absolutely.
52:14: I tell you what, if I said that my two elders would be standing at the back door, ready to DDT me into the concrete.
52:21: If I said something like that, they would not tolerate that kind of nonsense.
52:25: And I'm thankful that at least I got guys who wouldn't.
52:30: And well, gentlemen, I am so thankful.
52:33: I had a lot of fun.
52:34: I know that all of you are up late and I appreciate you being with me tonight and being here for our audience.
52:41: And I hope to do this again sometime.
52:43: It was fun to go back and forth.
52:46: The next time somebody does something really, really bad, we'll all be there to talk about it.
52:49: I'm just kidding.
52:51: Maybe next time we'll do something a little more positive, but Richard, thank you for being here.
52:56: I appreciate you giving us the perspective from the pew, the deacon perspective, nothing more dangerous than a Baptist deacon.
53:05: So I'm glad I can be your spare tire.
53:11: Well, we're grateful to have you, Austin.
53:13: I'm grateful for our friendship, and I appreciate you being here as well as for you, Kenny, and for your friendship and your ministries and your churches.
53:20: Love you all and appreciate you all being here.
53:23: And to the audience, I want to say this, if you'd like to see more of this, if you'd like to have these guys on more, if you have a question you'd like for us to address, I'm sure the guys would love to come back on.
53:32: And you can send those questions into calvinispodcast at gmail.com.
53:37: Again, that's calvinispodcast at gmail.com.
53:40: Thank you for listening today to Conversations with a Calvinist.
53:43: My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
53:47: May God bless you.
53:49: Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
53:52: If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe.
53:55: And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on our future program, please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
54:04: As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
54:10: All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
54:16: He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
54:22: May God be with you.