Our Thoughts on Sermon Plagiarism

No Preaching Plagiarized Sermons!

If you’re looking for sermon preparation resources to help you share God’s word with your church, you are aware of the concerns about pastoral plagiarism. At Homiletics Online, we take pulpit plagiarism seriously and want to address the issue directly. 

We believe the pastor or preacher that plagiarizes their sermons has a problem with how they prepare their sermons. Truth be told, they don’t prepare. We know the majority of the work of your ministry is in your sermon preparation and that is where our sermon material comes in.  

With your subscription to Homiletics Online, you will find that all the ingredients for an effective sermon have been laid out on the table — commentary on the text, sermon illustrations, a cultural metaphor and interpretive idea — but you have to do the prep time, mix, stir and put it in the oven.   

• The sermon starters in each issue are not complete sermons — they are complete sermon ideas and more of a sermon outline. 
  
• These ideas are written with you, the preacher, in mind as the end-user, not with the congregation in mind.
  
• Often, we’ll suggest that certain Bible verses in the text be elaborated in more detail by you, the preacher.
  

In short, you don’t need to worry about plagiarism with your subscription to Homiletics Online, because you are doing the work. We like to think of it like this: We've done the grocery shopping. You’re doing the cookin’. We want to give you all the tools to effectively share God's word with God's people. With Homiletics Online, you’re not giving other people's material, it’s  your take  on the biblical text that you can share in your own way with your church members.  

By the way, as a subscriber, if you do want to use a part verbatim, you are free to quote material from Homiletics Online in your sermons and worship bulletins without further permission.

A Word on Our Editorial Basis

If you're considering our sermon preparation resources and you're concerned about plagiarized sermons, then you're also probably concerned about our editorial basis.  

Our roots are from a United Methodist minister, and our material falls squarely within the Wesleyan, not Reformed, tradition. But, it is more helpful to say that, going past the Reformation, we stand squarely in the historic tradition of the church as expressed in the Nicene/Chalcedonian Creed. 

When we first began publishing Homiletics Online in the late 1980s, we wanted a publication that was different than other preaching resources available at the time. Many of those publications had pre-written sermons that could be delivered verbatim by anyone.

Homiletics Online’s concept is to provide sermon-starters, themes, illustrative material and worship resources, not pre-written sermons. In fact, we don’t refer to them as sermons; we call them treatments so you can tailor the message to your congregation as inspiration moves you.

We believe that it’s up to each individual subscriber/pastor to craft their own sermon material — sermons they can truly call their own. Our main goal is to ignite a creative spark that inspires pastors when writing their own sermons as they work to share God’s truth and the good news of the gospel with God's people.  

Try Homiletics Online to see how it can improve your ministry today.

We love to inspire pastors and preachers to write good sermons week after week with our sermon material. We believe Homiletics Online can support your ministry, and we invite you to try it today. If you’re not satisfied, we will gladly refund your purchase, no questions asked.