Episode 158: Pastors Plagiarizing: An Example Using Josh Howerton--with Scot McKnight's commentary Artwork

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Episode 158: Pastors Plagiarizing: An Example Using Josh Howerton--with Scot McKnight's commentary

September 08, 2022 • Sheila Gregoire • Season 5 • Episode 158

Should pastors be allowed to plagiarize in their sermons?
I’ll be frank: I think evangelicalism has a problem with celebrity, as we talked about on last week’s podcast. And I think plagiarism is part of that celebrity. It’s rampant among pastors and authors in evangelicalism, and it allows people to give a false sense of themselves to others to boost their status. It needs to stop.

Links to things mentioned:

Scot McKnight's book A Church Called TOV
Scot McKnight's New Testament Everyday Bible Study Series
Scot McKnight's previous podcast with us
Warren Throckmorton on Mark Driscoll's apparent plagiarism
David Dzimianski on Tim Keller's apparent plagiarism
Aaron New on Tim Clinton's history of Plagiarism
Christine Caine's plagiarism
Josh Howerton's Twitter Threads
Original Twitter Thread (long) about how plagiarism by pastors is fine
More recent Tweet about ethics of using someone's material without naming them if you disagree with them
Articles on Controversy with Josh Howerton and Andy Wood
Article Explaining Andy Wood controversy with Mark Driscoll
Andy Stanley's book The New Rules of Love, Sex and Dating
YouTube sermon where Andy Stanley goes over the central points of this book, which Josh Howerton seems to have used
(start at around 22:00)
Steven Furtick sermon with "two halves don't make a whole"
(start around 6:30)
Josh Howerton sermon where he says arguing with him is like arguing with God
(start around 12:20)

Note: The sermon we're referring to I originally saw because it was listed on this page. That sermon has since been removed. It is the only sermon from 2022 that can no longer be found on the Lakepointe Church site, on YouTube, and on their podcast archives. It was there a few weeks ago; it's now gone. I have no idea why, unless he got wind of what we were doing (some people did know, and there have been "bre

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Sheila: Welcome to the Bare Marriage Podcast. I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com.

Rebecca: Yes. No longer tolovehonorandvacuum.com.

Sheila: Yes. And I am joined by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach—

Rebecca: Hi.

Sheila: - coauthor of The Great Sex Rescue and of our upcoming book, She Deserves Better and co-host of the podcast and, most of all, mother of my wonderful grandchildren.

Rebecca: Most of all. Yes.

Sheila: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And we have a bit of a different podcast today.

Rebecca: Yes. We do.

Sheila: Because I know that normally we talk about healthy evidence-based, biblical advice for your marriage and sex life. But today I actually want to talk about plagiarism from the pulpit.

Rebecca: Yeah. And I mean it seems a little bit different, but I think this actually fits in our overall kind of groove of just calling the church to do better.

Sheila: To do better. To do better. And so I want to tell you a little bit of a story of how this happened and how I learned about this. So a couple of weeks ago, I was involved in some conversations on Twitter about Josh Howerton. So Josh Howerton is the senior pastor at Lakepointe Church, which is in Rockwall, Texas. It’s got six different campuses. I think there’s tens and tens of thousands of people who go every weekend, so it’s a very large mega church—Southern Baptist mega church. And I was concerned because there is—this is a convoluted story that isn’t really part of this podcast. I just wanted to let you know how this all started. Andy Wood is the incoming pastor at Saddleback. He’s replacing Rick Warren. And there have been some pretty serious allegations of spiritual abuse against Andy Wood. And as well, he platformed Mark Driscoll—

Rebecca: Yes.

Sheila: - and actually invited him to a leadership conference, said that he just loved Mark’s style when Mark was talking about how you need to get rid of accountability so you shouldn’t have an elder’s board. You should just have other pastors making accountable—

Rebecca: Which is, I will say, very sketchy from someone who has been alleged to have engaged in spiritual abuse.

Sheila: Right. And so we’re talking about a situation where—in mega churches, Mars Hill has fallen because of spiritual abuse. Harvest Bible has fallen because of spiritual abuse. I don’t want to see that happen to Saddleback, and I think there’s some very legitimate questions regarding Andy Wood. But Josh Howerton was defending him and prayed over him. And so I was engaging in this Twitter conversation. I was quoted in a couple of articles about it. And a woman emailed me about Josh and just said that she had gone to his church for quite awhile and then eventually left because she just felt that it was not the place for her. I won’t go into the reasons. But she sent me a sermon clip. She said, “Please listen to this sermon. This 30 seconds of this sermon.” And I took a look at it. And in that, Josh Howerton was basically saying if you resist what he’s saying you’re not resisting the pastor. You’re resisting God—

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.

Sheila: - because he is quoting from Scripture. And so he was elevating his interpretation of Scripture—

Rebecca: To God.

Sheila: - to God. Right. So that’s all interesting. Here’s why this whole thing got started. On the page where that sermon was was a link to another sermon he had done in March called Marriage is Hard. And this month on the blog in September, we have a marriage misdiagnosis month where we’re looking at how often the evangelical conversation about marriage misdiagnoses the actual problem. And one of the things we’re talking about is this idea that marriage is hard. And so I was just getting ready one morning, and I often listen to stuff online when I do that. And I thought, “Well, I’ll just listen to this sermon to see if there’s something that I can use here for an illustration.” And so I’m listening to the sermon. And about 15 minutes in, I’m like, “Wait a minute.”

Rebecca: I’ve heard this before.

Sheila: “I have heard this before.” And he is talking to singles about how important it is not to find the right person but to become the right person. And that is the thesis of Andy Stanley’s book, The New Rules of Love, Sex, and Dating. I read that book when it first came out. The publisher sent it to me. I think it was like 2015, 2016, and I loved it.

Rebecca: Yeah. You talked about it on the blog a bunch.

Sheila: Yeah. I actually have a blog post from 2016. And I’m actually going to let Andy Stanley explain what his book is about. Okay. The main thesis of his book, so I have a minute long—a bit more of a minute long clip where Andy says it better than me in a sermon that he gave.

Andy Stanley: On and on and on and on about this guy, “I had met at this party. And he was incredible. And his job. And he was good looking.” And she said—and she said—I was telling her that, “He was a Christian. And that he was like—“Mom, mom, I mean he’s like your kind of Christian, Mom. He’s the real deal Christian. He doesn’t just talk it. But he was talking about Jesus at this party, and I could tell his faith is real.” And so was going on and on about this guy. He was just incredible. And she said her mom stopped ironing and set the iron on the ironing board and looked at her. And she said, “Honey, the problem is a guy like that is not looking for a girl like you.” And she said I literally fell to the floor and began to weep. This was years ago. And that was the defining turning moment in her life when she realized that’s right. My whole approach to relationships has been, “I’m going to find someone. It never crossed my mind I needed to become someone. My whole approach—every message I’ve gotten from culture is if I can find the right person everything will become—everything will be all right. It never dawned on me that I need to become the kind of person that the person I’m dreaming of, hoping for is actually looking for,” which brings us to this question for all of us. Married, singles, students, graduates, whatever season of life you’re in. Are you the person? Are you the person the person you’re looking for is looking for?

Sheila: Okay. So that is the thesis. And you need to understand that that last question—

Rebecca: Yeah. Are you the kind of person the person you’re looking for is looking for?

Sheila: That is his phrase. It appears 23 times in his book.

Rebecca: It’s on the back cover, isn’t it?

Sheila: It is on the back cover of his book. It’s in every chapter of his book pretty much. It’s always italicized. This is his big thing.

Rebecca: And I’ve seen all over the Internet people being like, “You know, like Andy Stanley says. Become the kind of person the kind of person you’re looking for is looking for.”

Sheila: Become the kind of person the kind of person you’re looking for is looking for. So I’m getting ready. And I hear Josh saying all of this. And he never mentions Andy Stanley. And so we’re going to just listen in to Josh’s part of the sermon.

Josh Howerton: If you believe the lie of the one when you’re single, here’s what it does. It shifts your focus from becoming something, like the Bible encourages you to do, to finding something, which the Bible actually never, ever, ever, ever talks about. Okay? So here’s—if you believe the lie of the one, you’ll think your job is to find someone when the Bible says what you need to do is to become someone. So if you open your Bible and you’re like, “Man, God, how do I find? Where do I find her? Where do I find him? How do I find him?” You’re not going to find any answers. But if you open your Bible and you go, “Man, how do I become the right person,” every page answers your question. The assumption of the Bible is if you become the right type of person you will attract the right type of person. So here, let me just say it really quick. You need to shift your focus from finding to becoming, if you’re single and wanting to find and attract a good spouse. So let me just say it like this. And this is a mouthful. Become the person the person you’re looking for is looking for. I know that’s tough. Take a second. Become the person the person you’re looking for is looking for. You guys you remember—let me land a plane on this spot like this.

Sheila: Awfully similar, don’t you think?

Rebecca: Quite similar.

Sheila: Quite similar. He even has the same thing on the screen that Andy did before. So very similar and he never mentioned Andy Stanley. So then I thought, “What if there’s more of this that’s plagiarized?” I mean how—what is the chance that I would actually have read the book that he plagiarized from? But it’s just that that’s one I happen to know. So I thought, “What if he’s done this in the rest of his sermon?” So I listened to the beginning. I just went back to where this whole section started where he’s talking about finding a spouse. And I realized—so this is about four minutes before what I played for you. I realized that he frames this as the myth of the one. Okay. Now what you need to know is that Andy Stanley calls it the right person myth. That is the first chapter in his book, The Right Person Myth. And in the sermon that I’ve just played for you, that clip, he talks about the right person myth as well. But as I listened I couldn’t hear a lot of Andy Stanley. A lot of similar thoughts but not exactly Andy Stanley. But I wondered. Huh, I wonder if there’s someone else. And so let me play for you something that Josh Howerton also said.

Josh Howerton: The Bible does—it says the two shall become one. It does not say the halves shall become whole. And when two halves enter a marriage, they don’t make a whole. They make hell.

Sheila: So you hear that laughter there? People are responding to that. So he set this whole thing up as saying people are trying to find the person that is going to complete me. And he talks about Jerry Maguire and Renee Zellweger saying, “You complete me.” The whole thing, right? And so I wonder. Has someone else said this? Are these truly his words? And I Googled it, and it led me to this sermon by Steven Furtick. And I need to say Steven Furtick also sets up what you’re about to hear with the story of Jerry Macguire and Rene Zellweger. And then Steven Furtick says this.

Steven Furtick: Go be with his wife. And it says that the two will become one. Let me tell you what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say the halves will become whole. But yet, we teach it. And we treat it, and we expect it like the halves are going to become whole. But I found out if you go into a marriage half the two halves are going to make hell. Not whole.

Rebecca: Oh my gosh. So he literally took the dude’s joke. Like that is almost word for word the whole thing.

Sheila: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And then I wondered, well, did he do it with anything else. Here, again, is Josh Howerton.

Josh Howerton: And here’s what will always happen to you. Whoever you idolize, you will eventually demonize. That will happen to you.

Rebecca: Okay. If you idolize, you will demonize.

Sheila: Right. Here—are you ready—is Mark Driscoll.

Rebecca: Oh dear.

Mark Driscoll: Oftentimes, relationships trigger what I’ll call the law of idolize demonize. America’s greatest theologian was Jonathan Edwards. And he once said—I’m summarizing. But if they idolize you, they’re going to demonize you.

Sheila: Now I need to say too about Mark Driscoll. That this is something which he has said repeatedly for years. It’s kind of his thing. There’s multiple graphics that say—

Rebecca: Well, I mean he’s also quoting Jonathan Edwards.

Sheila: Yeah. He is. But he’s really made this thing. He has a book where this is like his seventh law, the law of idolizing and demonizing. There’s multiple graphics. You could go back a decade where you have Mark Driscoll saying, “Whatever you idolize, you will eventually demonize.” So in those exact words. And so he, again, is taking Mark Driscoll.

Rebecca: Well, he’s taking Mark Driscoll quoting Jonathan Edwards. So he’s taking from both of them. And I do want to say that, on Bare Marriage, we really—just to be very clear as I do feel a need to clarify this. We don’t endorse Jonathan Edwards as a theologian.

Sheila: No. Just because he was a slave holder.

Rebecca: He was a slave holder.

Sheila: And Mark Driscoll was spiritual abusive.

Rebecca: Yeah. So we’re not saying that they are good guys. We’re just saying that you still shouldn’t steal even from bad guys.

Sheila: Yes. Exactly. I don’t have a video for this one. There was another pithy saying that he did use in this very few moments. He said, “Marriage does not create new problems in your life. It reveals the issues that were already there.” That is something which Rick Warren has said repeatedly. And there are multiple graphics. So when you go back—and, again, I only look—this is just eight minutes of his sermon.

Rebecca: And you found like four different people that he plagiarized from.

Sheila: And he took Andy Stanley, Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, and Steven Furtick. And he took their outlines. He took their words and, basically, every pithy thing that he said was from somebody else. And I find that problematic. Now he’s not the only one to plagiarize.

Rebecca: No.

Sheila: There’s been a lot of talk about this on Twitter lately. There was a long Twitter about a sermon that Tim Keller plagiarized. It looks like he plagiarized from a book several decades ago. Then there’s Warren Throckmorton has written a lot about how Mark Driscoll plagiarized Tim Keller. Aaron New, he’s a counselor. He’s done some great work on how Tim Clinton has a lot of issues with plagiarism. It’s been in the news about how Christine Caine plagiarized. So it’s in books in the evangelical world. But it’s also in sermons, and there’s a lot of problems with pastors stealing entire sermons. And so I thought we could just talk about this on a broader level of does this matter. Does this matter that a pastor is taking other people’s work and making it sound like they’re his own?

Rebecca: Yeah. And obviously, this is a little bit outside of our wheelhouse. And so we thought that we would talk to someone where it’s very much in their wheelhouse.

Sheila: Yeah. So I have invited Scot McKnight on the podcast, and we will go to our interview with him now. Well, I am so happy to welcome back to the podcast Scot McKnight. He is an author. He writes amazing stuff. He’s really active on social media, but he’s also a professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and the author of an amazing book, along with his daughter, A Church Called Tov, as well as many other books. But thank you, Scot, for being here.

Scot: Well, Sheila. Good to be with you again. And I’m looking forward to this conversation.

Sheila: Yeah. So I sent you all of the details about what our listeners have just seen and heard. And I would just love your take on it. What do you think is happening here?

Scot: Well, it’s always difficult not to—to examine something like this without seeing the—let’s say the pastor’s pattern of behavior—the preacher’s pattern—the author’s—the blogger—I see this in different contexts because I’m a professor. And we have very strict guidelines for plagiarism. I mean very strict. And I’m also a Gospel student—synoptic Gospels, so listen to this one—is that we study how much Matthew and Luke took from Mark at a purported source called Q. And the rule in our world is if there are five identical words in a row it’s copying. Now they didn’t have a plagiarism rules in that day although they did have ways of condemning people who did not use their sources properly. So I pay attention to this conversation. But I was stunned. Let’s say 25 years ago—maybe 30 years ago—when I was attending a church, and the pastor of the church was accused of plagiarism. And I did not know this. I mean this was our church. And I was told to read where he was getting sermons. And he actually was using sermon sources, preexisting sermons that he would write out by hand in his own little kind of way, paper—these little pieces of paper that he took in the pulpit. And he was first person illustrations from other people as his own. And I remember saying to his wife, “That must have been an interesting experience,” and her look to me was the oddest sort of look. And I thought, “Well, that was a different response.” Well, then I’m told that he was doing this. And he says to—and so I was the one asked to meet with him. So we met at a local restaurant. And he told me. He says, “I was never taught that this wrong.” And I said, “Yes. You were because you went to our seminary, and that is taught. You’re not to do. If you are going to use someone else’s sermon, then you tell your congregation because the congregation is paying you to preach sermons. Not paying you to preach someone else’s sermons. And so the assumption of the people in a church is that the sermon is yours unless you tell us.” And my experience with people who do this—I’ve talked about this, Sheila, on my blog numerous times. And I almost always—and I quit doing it in some ways because I was always getting phone calls from pastors who were confessing their sins. Here’s the thing. They don’t say where they got their sermon—his is the pattern—because they’re embarrassed by what they’re doing.

Sheila: Yeah.

Scot: So when this one pastor wasn’t embarrassed, he just was giving an excuse. I didn’t know this was wrong. I thought this was what everybody did. Well, he knew that wasn’t true because I know where he went to seminary. I know who his preaching teachers were. So I would want to look at a pattern. To me, what I saw and—I wasn’t—I didn’t listen to it all. But what I saw was that line that you quote—you can quote like it’s something you wrote yourself.

Sheila: Well, yeah. Become the kind of person the person you’re looking for is looking for. Yes.

Scot: That’s a pretty clever line. I couldn’t say it. I can’t—it doesn’t quite roll off my tongue. But that is very clear that that was taken from Andy Stanley. Okay. And if the person does not cite where he or she got that line, that’s inappropriate because that’s a thematic line to a sermon that is clever beyond clever. It’s like Tom Wright’s line. “We don’t believe in life after death. We believe in life after life after death.” Okay. That’s a very clever line. If you use that, everybody knows you got that from Tom Wright.

Sheila: Right.

Scot: If you pretend in a sermon that you—I mean, in other words, if you give it in a sermon then people think you came up with it. And they say, “That’s very clever.” Well, you’re getting glory and credit and honor for something that is not years. And that right there is inappropriate. Now this person that you’re talking about had a Twitter thread in which, at some point, he asked the question, “What would you do with something you want to quote from a person but you don’t people to go read that person or go listen to him?” Well, that’s an indication that you know what you’re doing, and you’re hiding from our congregation. To me, Sheila, that is paternalistic and patronizing, and it doesn’t trust your congregation to be able to make its own judgments. I find that reprehensible.

Sheila: Yeah. Because that’s what he did. So 11 days before this sermon, he tweeted that tweet out where he said—here. Let me read the exact tweet. “How do you clarify in a sermon that a statement or idea didn’t come from you when you got it from someone you don’t want to attribute by name because it would come off as an endorsement and you don’t want to point your people in their direction?” And at this point, Andy Stanley had been in the news a couple of weeks earlier for saying something controversial. I don’t even know what it was. Doesn’t even matter what it was, but that was also in the news. And then he followed that up with, “Would you use a generalized caveat, ‘This didn’t come from me, but I’ve heard it said,’ or, ‘I heard another Bible teacher explain it this way.’” And he had a number of people answering, and they all said—they all suggested something I read the other day. Or someone said when I was reading the other day. Or I heard a guy say this once. And it was all pastors responding this way. I couldn’t believe it.

Scot: Yeah. Yeah.

Sheila: I tweeted it out, and I said, “That is plagiarism. You name them no matter what. Otherwise, it’s plagiarism.” And people weren’t agreeing with me. But what I find so interesting is what he settled on was, “Yes. You just simply say that you heard it said.” But he never even did that.

Scot: Yeah. Yeah.

Sheila: He never even did that. He just claimed it as his own.

Scot: Well, sermons are not journal articles. They’re not academic performances—publications where you’re expected to play the game of attributing your sources. But there are—everybody knows that when the central idea or the main points of your sermon or an illustration that you know that in this point this is where I give credit to someone. Here’s what’s happened. People like this have audiences that have not been taught how pastors get their sermons and create them.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.

Scot: And they assume that their pastor is just under Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the Trinitarian upper echelons. And they don’t want to hurt their reputation. They don’t want to hurt these people, so they live a lie. They live a myth that they are that clever to come up with their own clever expressions every week. The burden on a pastor is big and deep and heavy to come up with sermons all the time and to come up with good sermons all the time that compete with these mega church pastors, who really are—they have what—you can call it the gift of gab. But they have extreme levels of clarity and creativeness, and they’re surrounded by people who can help them come up with even more creative. And they’re competing with that. All they have to do is say, “I’m not as good as Andy Stanley. I’m not as good as Rick Warren. I’m not as good as Adam Hamilton. I’m not as good as whoever. And I’m not as funny as Amy-Jill Levine. So this expression comes from her. Or this expression comes from them.” You don’t have to attribute everything. But if you mention in a sermon that I learned a lot that I’m using in this sermon from Amy-Jill Levine or I learned a lot in this sermon from—let’s say Darrell Bock or somebody else—people accept that.

Sheila: Yeah. That would be fine if he had just started the whole thing with, “I read Andy Stanley’s The New Rules of Love, Sex, and Dating. Really got a lot out of one of his chapters, and let me share some of that with you.” I’d be fine with that.

Scot: That’s right. That would be honest. The other side is it’s dishonest, and it’s stealing. I hear these people say this. “Well, the Bible writers didn’t attribute sources.” No. They didn’t. They didn’t live in our world either. They also ate terrible food and didn’t wash and other things, and they didn’t pork either. You can’t get by with that. And then they say that everything is dependent upon someone. Well, yes. But that’s not how it works is that you’re using something particular from someone, and you’re making hay with it. And I often say this. You got paid for that sermon. And if you’re stealing someone’s sermon—I mean the whole sermon—then you should give the money to them. But if you are using the central theme of someone, cite it. If you’re using their main points, cite it. If it’s two words together that are a little bit clever but not all that clever, you don’t have to cite that.

Sheila: No. But in the—I think it was only eight minutes of the sermon that I analyzed he had four pithy sayings. And three of them I found sources for. Or no. He had five pithy sayings, and four of them I found sources for other than him. And the other one, if I looked around, I probably could have. He quotes Steven Furtick, Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, and then Andy Stanley. None of them were his.

Scot: Did he quote Andy Stanley?

Sheila: Well, no. I mean he said their words, but he never cited it.

Scot: He never—see. Yeah. That’s a bad pattern. I saw someone the other day—something—someone passed this on to me that they clearly were using someone’s sermon or someone’s book or a chapter. And they had quoted—they had pulled from the sermon a quotation from Plato and from Martin Luther. But that’s all they quoted. That’s all they cited. The big thing that they got from someone else they didn’t cite.

Sheila: Right.

Scot: And I just think that’s—it’s dishonest.

Sheila: Now do seminaries teach that you need to cite in sermons? Because I was really surprised at how many people were responding to him—pastors were responding to him saying it was perfectly fine not to cite.

Scot: Okay. They’re probably people doing the same thing. All right. I would say this. I have never talked to a homiletics professor who didn’t—who did not say what I’ve just said to you. If you take the whole sermon, you tell people. If you take the main points from someone, you tell people. If you take the main theme from someone, you tell people.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.

Scot: So they teach not to plagiarize sermons. I’ve never talked to a homiletics professor who didn’t say that. But here’s the thing. Homiletics professors love to preach. And they love to preach their own sermons because they think they’re good at it. All right? And that’s what preaching should be about is that desire to preach and the love to preach to your congregation words for you congregation. It’s not about—and people expect that what you say to them is your words. Not someone else’s. And so when it’s not—and they’re not bothered when you say to them. “I got this point from Tim Keller.” They’re not bothered by that.

Sheila: I asked on Instagram. I had a poll going on Instagram where I said, “If the preacher is preaching a sermon and he got most of it from a book, should he cite the book?” Okay. 97% of people said yes. He should cite the book. And yet, last year Josh Howerton wrote a really long Twitter thread. And I want to read it to you and get your reaction where he was arguing that you don’t need to. You don’t need to. And here’s the thread. I’ll just read it, and then you can respond. “Because pastors have a heart to help, almost every pastor tells other pastors to use anything from his sermons that will help them. If my bullet fits in your gun, shoot it. I’ve heard Adrian Rogers, J.D. Greer, Craig Groeschel, Chris Hodges, Bob Russell, Rick Warren, et cetera all say this. I give away my notes almost every week mostly to church planters, who are leading churches by themselves without any staff help and don’t have 20 hours a week for sermon prep. I’m happy to do this because a church sermon is not an academia dissertation or a book journalism publication. We’re not preaching to make ourselves look good, sound smart, or sell something proprietary. We’re preaching for life change and to grow the kingdom. Pastors are teachers. In school, 0% of people assume everything their teacher says is their teacher’s 100% original thought, and they didn’t get it from anywhere else. In fact, teachers are given lesson plans and are told to use them as starting points of presentations. Nobody here, as a teacher, finished teaching a lesson and say, ‘Step down immediately because you didn’t cite the lesson plan you got that from.’ Nobody here is a grammar teacher say, ‘I before E except after C,’ and says, ‘Fire him. He didn’t attribute.’ No one sees a physics teacher do an experiment and calls for his dismissal because he didn’t mention where he first saw the object lesson. Why? When teachers teach, people assume they’re pulling from whatever research, information, sources that can best help students which is the goal. Because there is nothing new under the sun and we’ve all been preaching the same Bible for 2,000 years, it is a given that pastors draw from one another illustrations, points, sayings, structure, et cetera, and whatever best helps the people they’re teaching. But pastors are supposed to be getting their own word from God for their church. Well, yes. They are. That happens through the research process, not apart from it. Just like in commentaries, books, lectures, and articles, sometimes I’ll hear something in a sermon and think, “Yeah. That’s a word for our church right now. I think the Spirit wants me to deliver it, and I’ll use an illustration or a way of explaining a passage.” That is a word in season that happened through research, not individual inspiration. Not going to go here but if you really want to get salty, you know how didn’t always cite sources? Bible writers. Gospel writers and others borrow from the Old Testament sometimes citing, often just saying without citing because in preaching what really matters is that people are helped with the truth. All that to say, in the words of Pastor James Merritt, if someone borrows liberally from one of my sermons and somebody gets saved because of it, I have an investment in it gladly.” And then he posts an update, “Hilarious. This thread has been up for five minutes, and I already have four DMs from pastors saying, ‘Thank you. I don’t want to get yelled at, but I totally agree.’”

Scot: Yeah. I read that. I think that’s a—to me, this is largely a rationalization for a practice that he has accepted for himself. And I think he’s covering a lot of ground with words that need some nuance. Yes. We do research. But when the central idea—I research too. But when I recognize that the central idea that I got right here, this point that came from Josephus that I was led to by Steve Mason, I quote Steve Mason, and I cite Steve Mason. Okay? Now there are times, of course, when let’s say, you don’t realize that—I mean nobody today in my world requires that if you found in Dale Allison’s commentary on James five references to 1 Clement and that now you’re going to use them when you’re explaining the passage—they don’t expect you to say, “Well, he,”—because these references to ancient texts just get circulated in commentaries like crazy. Who knows who came up with these the first time? But there are—when your central point, when the central expressions that are unique to an author, are reused, I think you have an obligation to tell your congregation that. Now I think Josh Howerton has a bad practice here from what I can see. I think it’s a bad habit. I don’t think he’s taught this in seminaries. But I think all he has to do is turn the corner by teaching his congregation how he does research and how he learns about the text. And that if he gets a central idea from someone, he’s going to let them know. If he’s going to get his main point—let’s say he’s got four points in his sermon. That all four of them come from Rick Warren, then you tell people that. All right? I don’t care if Rick Warren does say, “You can use my sermons.” That’s not what is taught in seminaries. And I understand that pastors learn from other people all the time. That’s what they do. But when you’re quoting someone, when it—when you’re giving your—when your congregation is under the impression that this comes from you and it doesn’t, you let them know that.

Sheila: Yeah. And I guess what I think too is I have a couple of really pithy sayings that we developed because we wrestled with material over and over again. Like one of the ones that I say quite a lot is Jesus didn’t refuse to look at women. Jesus chose to truly see women. And that’s something that I have said over and over again. But we got there because we wrestled with the material. I see a man, who when he preaches, puts these pithy sayings in approximately every two minutes, and they’re not his. And the thing about a pithy saying is that it does make you sound really clever.

Scot: That’s right. It does. Yeah.

Sheila: And so when you fill your sermon with pithy sayings from Steven Furtick, from Mark Driscoll, from Rick Warren, and from Andy Stanley then you really are giving the impression that you are the clever one.

Scot: Yes. I agree. Sheila, that’s exactly what I’m saying is that’s where—people are going to walk away saying, “My pastor is really clever.” And it’s a false impression. It is a false impression that we need to pay attention to. I, at one time, was reading some really clever books. And I would write out—well, two or three words. Not a whole sentence but just a little expression. And I would write them on a piece of paper, and I would try to practice using them. And I would try to imitate them with different ways like adapting it. And it was just things that I was learning. And I use some of those now, and I have no idea where I got them. But it’s very rare. And in my sermons, I write out my sermons. I have footnotes to myself or notes to myself where I got this. And I usually use most of those in the sermon. I tell the congregation where I got that, if it’s a good point that I don’t want them to think that’s all my idea.

Sheila: Well, the funny thing is I’ve actually given a talk to singles about how to choose a mate. And I have used that line. Be the kind of person the kind of person you’re looking for is looking for, and I have held up Andy Stanley’s book. And I’ve said, “This is a great book.” It’s not hard. It’s just not hard.

Scot: I agree with you. I agree with you. I think it’s about honesty. It’s about integrity. And it’s about realism for your congregation to take a realistic view of who you are when you’re preaching and how you come to these sermons. That educates our church. It’s patronizing to say, “I can’t quote this guy because I don’t want my congregation to read this guy.” Well, then don’t quote him.

Sheila: I think the bigger question too is why would you not quote—okay. Let’s put aside the question of Andy Stanley because he didn’t want to point people to Andy Stanley. But why would you not quote Steven Furtick? Why would you not say, “As Steven Furtick so amazing said, ‘It’s not two halves becoming a whole. It’s,’—it’s whatever that was. What is the reason not to quote him except that you want to elevate yourself and your own—you want to elevate yourself in the eyes of the congregation? I can’t think of another reason not to do it.

Scot: What does it hurt to quote that person? It’s truth. It’s truth.

Sheila: So we need to ask ourselves that question. Why are pastors so loathe to quote people? Because I think that says a lot about where evangelicalism is right now.

Scot: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of pressure on them to perform on Sundays. I accept that.

Sheila: I do think that our services are far too sermon centric. And I do think that we’re expecting too much out of them. But then you know what? Just attribute it is not hard.

Scot: That’s right.

Sheila: So thank you, Scot.

Scot: Thank you, Sheila.

Sheila: I highly recommend your book that you wrote with your daughter, A Church Called Tov. It’s just wonderful, and I will put a link to the podcast that Scot and Laura were on talking about that earlier too. So go check out that book. And any other books you want to plug? Or anything you want to tell people about?

Scot: Oh, that’s okay. I got these little everyday Bible studies that I’m doing for Zondervan or Harper Christian Resources. I have one on James and Galatians and just finished one on John that’s coming out. Philippians and the Thessalonians. So love for—book of Acts. Love for people to start reading their Bible with these little study guides.

Sheila: Awesome. I will put a link to those too. Well, thank you, Scot, for your time. We really appreciate it.

Scot: Thank you. Thank you. All right. Bye-bye, Sheila.

Sheila: I think it’s great having a professor come in and say definitively this is not what pastors are taught to do.

Rebecca: Yeah. Or at least not at his school.

Sheila: Yeah. But they’re taught not to do this. This is not ethical. This isn’t right.

Rebecca: And it’s not even necessary.

Sheila: I know. This is what I can’t understand. So I did an Instagram poll, and I asked what—if a pastor is using a book, should he cite the book? Or should he or she cite the book? And 97% of people said yeah. The thing is it doesn’t matter in a—I was talking to Katie, who edits this podcast. Your sister, my daughter. My other daughter. My lovely—yes. I hate calling her my other daughter.

Rebecca: My other daughter.

Sheila: Yes. I love you, Katie. And we were talking about this subject as we were preparing for this podcast. And she was telling me her pastor just completed a sermon series on a book that he read. And he started it by saying, “Look. I want to introduce you to people who are way smarter than I am. And I read this book. I got so much out of it. I was so excited about it. And I really want to share it with you.” And he was so up front about it, and everyone loved the series. And they were like, “Thank you for introducing me to that book.” And it was just great.

Rebecca: Yeah. Well, and also, frankly, that gives you a lot more respect for the pastor.

Sheila: I know.

Rebecca: Because he’s just—I mean being well read is a good thing.

Sheila: I know.

Rebecca: If this is a guy who takes his job really seriously and is doing research and is doing the work to make sure that he’s up to date on the latest stuff and he’s looking for interesting things to help his congregation wrestle with difficult—that cannot backfire.

Sheila: No. I think it’s great. I remember once we were at family camp when you guys were much younger. And they would take the kids off to play, and the adults would have devotions in the morning. And the speaker that week—so he was giving five different talks. The speaker actually was walking us through Henry Nouwen’s book, The Return of the Prodigal Son. One of my favorite books. And it was just an incredible week. We all knew he was walking through the book. He had extra copies of the book for us to buy if we wanted, but he just said, “This made such a profound impact on me, and I want to share it with you.” And nobody minded. Nobody said, “Well, you didn’t think of that yourself.”

Rebecca: You should have written your own book for this book study. No.

Sheila: No. Nobody minds. And this is what I can’t quite understand is because he wrote that whole thread on why it’s okay to plagiarize. But he never explained why you would want to.

Rebecca: That’s the thing because they can’t explain why they want to because it doesn’t look very good for them.

Sheila: I know. And I truly don’t get it. And even more than that in that tweet that he had right before this sermon where he said, “How do I quote someone without quoting them if I don’t want to send people there,” the conclusion was that he was going to just say, “Well, I read it somewhere once.” But he didn’t even do that.

Rebecca: But also I’m going to be honest. If you’re quoting someone who you don’t want to send people to, maybe don’t quote them. If there’s a point—there’s some level where, for example, there’s often psychologists who have really great stuff on one thing. But then they’re super weird on something else because they’re coming at it from a very 20 stories above the ground looking down, not thinking about how it affects the individual. There’s lots that we deal with that and especially in parenting stuff where it’s like, “Hey, they have some really cool stuff on this. But their take on this is a little not great for the average parent,” right?

Sheila: Yeah.

Rebecca: That’s one thing. But when you’re talking about spiritual development and you’re quoting other pastors and theologians and stuff, why would you be taking your theological teaching from someone who is spiritually abusive, who isn’t healthy, who isn’t—and if you’re finding that someone is very spiritually beneficial and really seems to understand the Gospel but you just don’t agree with them theologically on one thing, then, I mean, either question why you don’t agree with them on that thing or just say, “Yeah. We disagree on infant baptism.” Either it’s not an issue or is. And if it is an issue, then why are you taking spiritual advice from them? That’s what I’m saying.

Sheila: Yeah. And in fact, if you’re worried about pointing them to someone that you think could be harmful in a broader sense, then taking that opportunity to tell your congregation, “Hey, I really like what they say about A. We do need to be careful what they say about B,” that actually helps your congregation.

Rebecca: It actually teaches discernment. Like, “Hey, this guy has got some great stuff on forgiveness. I actually really don’t like what he says about marriage, so I wouldn’t advise going out and reading his stuff. But this quote from him is fantastic, and I think perfectly exemplifies this point.” That’s perfectly fine. You’re actually then modeling to your congregation how to have discernment and how to stand up against false teachings.

Sheila: Yep. So there’s absolutely no problem with quoting people in that sense. And we don’t actually know what he has against Andy Stanley.

Rebecca: Oh, gosh. No.

Sheila: I have no idea. Andy Stanley did make the news earlier in March for—I don’t even remember what it was. So maybe it was—I don’t—I don’t have a clue what he has against Andy Stanley.

Rebecca: I understand what he has with Mark Driscoll.

Sheila: Yeah. But I don’t know what he has about—against Rick Warren or Steven Furtick either. I don’t know why he wouldn’t quote these people unless there’s something else going on. That’s what I actually wonder if it’s happening because let’s just think about church, for a minute. Okay. Now I agree that asking pastors to come up with a unique 40-minute sermon every week is a lot, and that’s why I really—both of us are in churches now that don’t do that. That have a different model of service. And I really—I’m finding that so much better because I never really liked sitting through 40-minute sermons anyway.

Rebecca: Well, I mean you’re a public speaker. Both of us have done public speaking work. We know how hard it is to come up with a talk.

Sheila: Yeah. And so I do really, really feel for pastors here. But a pastor like the one at Katie’s church, okay? Yes. He has to come up with a sermon, but he is so focused—and I really like this pastor. So just to shout out for this pastor. He is so focused on building community. That is his big thing. It’s a medium sized church in a small town, and it’s really growing with young families. And he’s just trying to focus on building community for people that really need it.

Rebecca: Meeting needs of real people in the pews. Yeah.

Sheila: And he has to do everything, right? It’s a small church. They don’t have another pastor on staff.

Rebecca: Yeah. They don’t have the budget for a communications pastor and a—

Sheila: Outreach pastor.

Rebecca: And an administrative pastor.

Sheila: Yeah. No. He does everything. Okay. And that’s not to say there aren’t amazing volunteers. Yeah. I’m sure they have a (inaudible).

Rebecca: Quite frankly, everyone knows what we’re talking about, right?

Sheila: Yes. Yes. But then there are churches where there’s multiple pastoral staff, and it tends to be in those churches that the head pastor who does the teaching doesn’t have a lot of other responsibilities. They vision cast for the church, right? They’re the head of the church, the leader of the church. They’re going to all the planning meetings and the vision meetings, et cetera. But their main role is teaching. And their main role is coming up with a sermon. And people flock to their church because they give such great sermons. They’re often really charismatic. They can deliver a sermon really well. And so this is why people flock. If your main role is to teach and you’re plagiarizing everybody else, I think that’s a problem.

Rebecca: Oh, it’s completely a problem. It’s completely a problem especially because what you’re doing is you’re advertising a false product.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca: Right? So what we hear all the time especially from small pastors who reach out to us who are saying I’m trying to do the good work but, in essence, the oxygen is being sucked out by these mega churches, right? So your church of maybe 250 people—you don’t have the budget for a huge youth group, a huge children’s program. You don’t have the volunteer base. But down the road, there’s a mega church of 7,000 people, who does have all of that. And they’ve got this great preaching. And what happens if all the great preaching is actually being stolen from other people? So now you have this small pastor—this small church pastor, who is just trying to do what they’re supposed to do. And there’s a larger corporation that’s using unethical business practices to choke them out. And we’re seeing this in other areas of business too because let’s be honest. Mega churches are corporations. They are not churches in the same way.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca: Okay. For instance, take a small—say you’re somebody who really is into ethical fashion. And you want to make ethical, locally created clothes, right? To make sure you’re not exploiting anyone. You’re giving a living wage. All this different stuff. But then you have big box stores or these huge retailers that will exploit workers in other countries, even children and child labor, to be able to offer clothing that’s completely unethically made at a fraction of the price so the people who are shopping—I mean it’s not even really a choice. It’s just so much cheaper.

Sheila: And we know people need cheap stuff.

Rebecca: Oh yeah.

Sheila: And we’re not trying to say that you shouldn’t be able to get cheap stuff. It’s just when the cheap stuff comes it sucks all the oxygen.

Rebecca: This is the problem is then there’s no way for the ethical people to do their job. And that’s what really bothers me in the church is we should not be stealing sermons if, literally, what you’re advertising yourself as is being a good preacher.

Sheila: Yeah. And again, because—here’s what it comes down to. If you were to listen to that nine minutes, eight minutes, whatever it was of Josh Howerton’s sermon and probably the rest of it, every pithy thing that he said was from somebody else.

Rebecca: Mm-hmm. Yeah. All of the filler stuff was him.

Sheila: But basically, every pithy—now I have a couple of pithy things that I say. And those things came because I wrestled with them. One of the phrases we say a lot is Jesus didn’t refuse to look at women.

Rebecca: Yeah. He really saw women.

Sheila: Jesus chose to truly see women. And that’s because we had worked so hard at trying to crystallize our message. We had wrestled with this. We had written the manuscript. We had thought about it. We had talked it through. We had gone on walks. And then we were finally able to crystallize it into something that really explains it. Your dad has one. The objectification of women and male sexuality are not one and the same thing. And that’s something that he says a lot. And that’s only because we’ve wrestled with them. So when you have pithy sayings, the thing that you’re communicating to people is I have wrestled with this. I have really thought about this. I have grappled with this for so long that I was able to crystallize this into something because that’s not easy to do.

Rebecca: No. As I always said when I was in university, I found 20-page papers way easier than 5-page papers on research topics because the 20-page paper you don’t have to cut anything, right? A 5-page paper you have to really understand what you’re talking about because you have to know what’s important enough to make the cut. It actually is way harder.

Sheila: Right. So if a pastor is filling his sermon with these pithy things that he did not say that someone else said he is giving the congregation the impression that I am very, very smart and insightful.

Rebecca: And this is what freaks me out because, to me, this is just so similar to cult tactics. And I know that’s a strong word, but bear with me. Okay? So one of the founding principles of a cult is that you have a charismatic leader who is the harbinger of truth, right? So you have someone who is the one we all look to. There’s a prophet, or it’s someone who is a god. Or someone who is sent from God, who speaks for God. That kind of thing. And the whole cult kind of hinges on this idea that this person has wisdom that others lack.

Sheila: Right.

Rebecca: There is no one who knows more. Everything is filtered through this charismatic leader. And so when I see pastors unwilling to give their citations to show where they learn things it throws up red flags for me that this is someone who wants to be a charismatic leader. Now I am not saying that they actively want to start a cult. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that we already do know that when people are in power the natural drive that we have is to get more power and to not lose it. And this is, frankly, why a lot of spiritual abuse ends up taking place is because we don’t recognize the red flags of when we switch from being a church to going towards more cult like thinking. And this idea of a charismatic leader is one of them that I think we need to look for a lot more. When you have a leader who is not willing to give credit or who just is lazy in doing that or who purposely chooses these things that’ll make them look really smart even if it didn’t come from them, that sounds, to me, like someone who wants to be seen as the harbinger of truth, who wants to take credibility without earning it, who wants to be seen as authoritative, who wants people to look at him and say, “Wow. That’s so smart. I never would have thought of that.” He knows so much. He’s so wise. Someone who wants to have that air of superiority, frankly, and that is a cult leader tactic. It’s not a good pastor.

Sheila: No.

Rebecca: And so what I really suggest for people like Josh is to make sure that being in these big mega church situations, you’re going to have to actively fight to stay humble.

Sheila: And that’s actually a point that Katelyn Beaty makes in her book, Celebrities for Jesus. We had Katelyn on the podcast last week talking about this, and I will put a link to that podcast. But that if you are in a position where you have a lot of fame—and she says fame is not bad, okay? People have fame. You need to fight against having celebrity.

Rebecca: Yeah. And that’s exactly it. When we’re in this crisis time in evangelicalism where spiritual abuse is rampant because we have not put checks and balances in for those in the highest level of authority such as people like Josh, who run these mega churches, this is what happens where you have someone who accidentally—because I do genuinely believe that—myself. This is my personal opinion. Personal opinion is that I think that Josh genuinely is just trying to be a good position. I think he’s trying to give his congregation what they want. He’s trying to do the best by them. I think the problem is though he’s not recognizing the dangers of fame, the dangers of power, and the dangers of the platform he has. And he’s not humbling himself and making sure that he is acting in a way that is 100% clear on his conscience and that is completely honest and transparent and—yeah. We’re just once again another person who has power, who is using that to his advantage instead of choosing to humble himself as Christ did and being that example for his congregation. Instead you get the fame.

Sheila: Yeah. And again I think what he is—we argued in his Twitter thread was that it doesn’t matter when you’re plagiarizing in a sermon. You can’t possibly plagiarize in a sermon because it’s not about the income, right? And he says—and I just want to, again, read you this one tweet. “But that’s lying. They’re passing off your information as if it’s their own. And to this, I say LOL and haha.” Which is just—I find this very problematic that he would write such a long thread defending this practice when his whole job is to teach.

Rebecca: Spiritual teacher.

Sheila: Yeah. His whole job at church is not to do the counseling. It’s not to run the youth group. It’s just to give the message. And if the message that he’s given is largely taken bits and pieces from all these other people, that is a problem. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it but just tell others so that you’re not showing a false sense of who you are. And that’s what worries me is that he’s projecting a false sense of who he is in order to elevate himself and his reputation and make other people think that he is so smart.

Rebecca: But here’s what bothers me on a more just spiritual, existential level, okay? Here’s what I see. And I’m going to read you a section that’s not going to sound like it has anything to do with this at first. And I am going to explain myself. Ready?

Sheila: All right.

Rebecca: This is from 1 Samuel chapter 2 starting from verse 12. “Eli’s sons,”—and Eli was priest.

Sheila: Yeah. He was the high priest at the time.

Rebecca: He was the high priest at the time. “Eli’s sons were scoundrels; they had no regard for the Lord. Now it was the practice of the priests that, whenever any of the people offered a sacrifice, the priest’s servant would come with a three-pronged fork in his hand while the meat was being boiled and would plunge the fork into the pan or kettle or caldron or pot. Whatever the fork brought up the priest would take for himself. This is how they treated all the Israelites who came to Shiloh. But even before the fat was burned, the priest’s servant would come and say to the person who was sacrificing, ‘Give the priest some meat to roast; he won’t accept boiled meat from you, but only raw.’ If the person said to him, ‘Let the fat be burned first, and then take whatever you want,’ the servant would answer, ‘No, hand it over now; if you don’t, I’ll take it by force. This sin of the young men was very great in the Lord’s sight, for they were treating the Lord’s offering with contempt.” Okay.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca: So what was happening was they had this idea. The priests had to eat.

Sheila: Yeah. And they got their food from offerings, but there was this very specific thing that they could eat.

Rebecca: It was a ceremonial thing to make sure the priests weren’t simply taking the best stuff, right? They would just—sometimes they might get the drumstick, right? But sometimes they wouldn’t. It would just kind of—you just stick the fork in. You get what you get. And you’re grateful unto the Lord. That’s what they—that’s what they were supposed to do. And then these guys were saying, “Well, we can game the system,” right? “We can make sure that we get the best. We get the first fruits. We get whatever we want because no one can stop us,” in essence. They used their power as spiritual leaders and their status within the priesthood to be able to boss around everyone else and take what they wanted.

Sheila: And so people would come to make their sacrifices to God, and they would—

Rebecca: And they would take the best for themselves. And that is treating the Lord’s offering with contempt. Here’s my problem. Okay. And I want to first of all say this and say what I’m not saying. Okay. When you look at the average income of pastors in the U.S., the average income is a pretty decent income. It genuinely is. But that’s the average. That is the mode. That doesn’t mean that the most pastors are paid a pretty decent living average—living wage average. A lot of pastors are barely scraping by. And then there’s a lot of pastors at mega churches that are making more than enough. There’s a lot of pastors who are living on practically minimum wage, okay? And then there’s a lot of pastors who have $5,000 watches. And when you are a pastor like Josh Howerton—

Sheila: We don’t know what kind of watch he wears, right? We’re not making a commentary on that.

Rebecca: When you are at a church who is getting so much money from people, so much money—I have looked pictures of the campuses of the churches, the Lakepointe churches, so much money. And you use your salary that you are given from people who are giving money to God—your salary is coming from people giving money to God, and your salary is to do one thing. And you lie about it. Whatever you want to call it, whatever you want to use to rationalize away the fact that you won’t cite your sources because it makes you look smarter, because it makes you look like you have all these pithy statements. When you are using God’s money to fund your dishonesty, that is being the sons of Eli. You are taking God’s offering and treating it with contempt. When you are doing a job paid for, again, by money given to God and you do so with less integrity than what is expected of 18 year olds in secular universities where they don’t argue with it—they’re like, “Heck, yeah. I wouldn’t want to steal. I wouldn’t want to plagiarize. Of course, I need to cite my references.” When the thing that would simply fix all of this is something that would just humble you a tiny bit in front of your congregation. Just make you seem a little bit less like you have all the answers. Just make it seem like maybe you do actually really also learn from people and maybe you aren’t the smartest room in the room. When that’s the only thing getting in the way of you and honesty and you choose not to do it, I don’t see how you are any different than Eli’s sons. There are pastors out there who feel the burden of working under—because of God’s money. There are pastors out there who feel that responsibility greatly. There are pastors who are living lives where they are dedicated to caring, feeding, nurturing the sheep, where they are doing everything so their conscience can be clear. And yeah. They make mistakes. And yeah. The screw up sometimes. And yeah. They don’t get it all right. And yeah. We all have theological blind spots and all that stuff. But there are people who feel the weight of it. And then there’s this where they have millions of dollars going into their churches. They have their throne. It literally looks like a throne, by the way. When you watch the videos, he literally is on a pedestal. They have their throne. They have their kingdom. They have their power. And they say, “I will take it if you don’t give it to me,” because that’s what they do. That’s what they do.

Sheila: Yeah. And then they laugh about it. “To that, I say LOL and haha.” That’s the level that they take it seriously. So I didn’t listen—I didn’t look through the rest of Josh Howerton’s sermon. If you go to his church, I would just challenge you to take the pithy sayings that he said last week and just put them through Google.

Rebecca: Everyone has their phones in the middle of the sermon. Just Google.

Sheila: Yeah. Just Google it. And maybe you’re not at Josh Howerton’s church, but you’re at someone else’s church. And you’re just curious. Just take the pithy sayings that your pastor is saying and put them through Google and find out—yeah. You know what? This is actually being plagiarized because we need to expect more. If the church is redefining integrity so that it doesn’t actually mean integrity, if we’re redefining lying so that—

Rebecca: If lying means one thing for you and one thing for me, then—and if integrity means one thing for you and one thing for me—

Sheila: We’ve lost the plot.

Rebecca: We’ve lost the plot.

Sheila: And we need to get back to it because this is one of the reasons that the evangelical church is really sick right now is that we have a problem with power. We have a problem with celebrity.

Rebecca: And we need to start taking this seriously. We need to stop treating the offerings of God with contempt.

Sheila: Yeah. Yeah. Amen. So a little bit of a different podcast. Not our usual stuff. But I think this is a big problem in the church, and I just encourage everybody to take a look at it in your own church. And I hope that your pastor does things the way Katie’s pastor does because that is the way to honor God. And that is the way to build up a church where it’s based on community and being part of the community rather than being above. And that’s really important for our shepherds.

Rebecca: We don’t need charismatic leaders. We don’t need charismatic leaders.

Sheila: No.

Rebecca: We don’t need harbingers of truth. We have Jesus. We just need people.

Sheila: We have Jesus. We need people to love.

Rebecca: Community.

Sheila: And community. Okay. So that was it. I will put the links to all of this again in the podcast notes, so you can see everything for yourself and judge for yourself. And I will also put the links to other threads of people who are plagiarizing. I’m not—I’m very unlikely to do anything else about this. So if you find that your pastor has plagiarized—

Rebecca: Please don’t send it to us, frankly.

Sheila: Unless it’s someone really, really huge that we call out, but do something about it. Put it on social media. I can’t do anything else.

Rebecca: If it’s your pastor, you have the connections. Talk to him.

Sheila: But do something with it. Raise it with your church and just ask, “Is this really the level of integrity that we want?” So thank you for joining us on the bare marriage podcast. Next week we will start our marriage misdiagnosis series where we will take a look at is the way that we talk about marriage in the evangelical church actually making it harder than it needs to be. And are we diagnosing the wrong problem. So I’m excited about that. That’s been happening on the blog. So go check out the blog posts at baremarriage.com. And join us next week as we dive into that. Thanks.

Rebecca: Bye.

Sheila: Bye-bye. When Rebecca and I first filmed this podcast, Josh Howerton’s sermon from March 27th was available on YouTube, on Lakepoint Church’s website, on their podcast, et cetera. Today, Tuesday two days before the podcast drops, it’s been scrubbed everywhere, and we can’t find it anymore. So they’ve obviously taken it down. We don’t know if this is an attempt at image management or if they’ve realized that Josh was wrong for plagiarizing. However, we can’t find any public statement anywhere on their church’s social media or Josh’s social media acknowledging that he plagiarized and apologizing for it. If the church or Josh does issue such a statement though, we will be happy to read it on the podcast next week. So we’re just putting it out there. The church has taken all of this down. They haven’t said why. But if it honestly is a case that they’ve recognized that something is wrong, we would be happy to let you all know about that. And you can hold me accountable to that too.