Sermon Central And A Pastors Integrity

2nd Check Your Motives

Make sure you are using these resources for a good reason. If you are borrowing sermons from someone because you believe that it is relevant to your congregation and will speak to them, equip them, and facilitate growth in your congregation, then these are noble reasons. If you are borrowing because you were too preoccupied to adequately prepare a sermon then this motivation is at best questionable. An emergency is one thing; lack of discipline is another all together. Lacking discipline and laziness are not traits becoming of a pastor (if you can’t say amen, then say oh my).

I will readily confess that I am the embodiment of the absent minded professor (or should I say pastor). If not for my wife keeping my head on straight, a planner, and multitudes of post it notes, I would be a mess. But the point is, I know this about myself and thus make sure that I tell my wife things, write in my planner, and use post it notes like a mad man, so that I do not neglect what is required of my position. Doing this I am able to devote the time needed to adequately prepare a sermon.

However; there have been times in my ministry when something unexpected came up and I was not able to come up with a sermon. What I’ve found is that if I’m open and honest with my congregation and I explain what has occurred they have no problem with me pulling an old sermon from my file, or using one of the great sermons of the past that is applicable to them today. And it has been my experience that in the long run a congregation will appreciate your honesty, integrity and character even more so than your preaching ability.

Are you using another’s sermons because you feel inadequate? You must ask yourself why you are so concerned with others views of yourself? One of the great problems I see within the church today is that many pastors want to be the leader of the next mega-church, and so they use their current church as a stepping stone. “I’ll preach here for awhile until the opportunity presents itself for me to move up in the world.”

Please remember that God calls us not always as a means of promoting us, but to preach His Word to His people, be it in a small country church or in a 20,000 + member mega-church. We would also do well to remember that ours is the greater judgment (See James chapter 3 verse 1).

3rd Make Sure it’s Right for Your Congregation

Even when we use another’s book, study guide, or sermon – we as pastors still have the responsibility to prayerfully consider what we are preaching. We should carefully and prayerfully meditate over the text to ensure we properly understand it. We should be aware of the context, the meaning, the message and the application. Otherwise we are simply parroting. The preacher of the Word of God, only has authority as a messenger of the Lord as long as he is preaching the Word of God as it was intended. And so even in using another’s sermon, or book, or other resources we must ensure that those resources are doctrinally sound. And being that we are speaking God’s Word to His people we must take the utmost care to ensure that we are presenting it in the way that God desire us to.