A number of ethical difficulties keep rearing their ugly little heads in preaching. For example, when is it appropriate to cite a reference, and when should you try to pass off material as your own?
I am ruthless about the need for honesty here. I have always said, “Integrity is who you are when nobody’s looking.” “Grow strong in the seasons of life,” is the way I put it. Plagiarism will not restore your spiritual passion, nor will it order your private world. I always remind people, “Friday’s here, but Sunday’s a-comin’.”
Another delicate issue in this day of heightened authenticity is, How do you disguise the identity of people you use for illustrations?
Say, for instance, you have a terrific conversation about eschatology with your wife late one night when you’re both in bed. But you’ve been mentioning your wife too often in messages lately, so you decide to disguise her identity and say this is a conversation you had with a cranky old neighbor who lives across the street.
However, if you say, “I had a terrific conversation with a cranky old neighbor about eschatology late one night last week when we were both in bed,” some people could be distracted by the last part of your sentence and miss the point altogether.
You nip that problem in the bud by saying something like this: “I had a terrific conversation with a cranky old neighbor about eschatology late one night last week—but we weren’t in bed, that’s for sure!” This will set everyone’s mind at ease.
Then, there’s the preacher’s dilemma: What to do when someone comes up and says, “Pastor, I’m just not being fed”?
A while back this whole “Feed-Me” syndrome got so pervasive I decided to deal with it head on. “You people have a spiritual eating disorder,” I told the congregation. “You’re sermon bulimics. Binge and purge, binge and purge. The only people who can’t feed themselves are babies and people whose hand-eye coordination is so bad it’s not funny. Either this consumer-oriented, passive-listening, low-commitment, let’s-see-how-much-the-speaker-can-wow-me mindset goes, or I do.”
At my next church … I got smarter.
On a final ethical issue, many preachers are troubled by whether it’s appropriate to use slick, overblown, emotional appeals to manipulate people into giving money. Is it okay to play the congregation like a cheap violin to get something you want out of them?
Here too, I take a firm stand. I could, for instance, use this column to try to wring a larger honorarium ($5) out of the Leadership editors. But I won’t do it. I was saying to my sick little daughter just the other day, “I’m sorry, Honey, we can’t afford that operation the doctors say you so desperately need. I’m not going to use sympathy to try to manipulate people just for the health of my family.”
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John Ortberg is a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.
1996 Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP Journal
