The development of the Internet has provided opportunities for abundant spiritual information for believers. A mouse click can give a person access to the content they need.
For plagiarists, the network is a gold mine that supplies endless message, through which they fish for fame, compliments and fortune. Taking advantage of the convenience from the Internet, some Christians, including a portion of pastors and preachers, plagiarize the information they want. They copy and paste the content they discover and pass it off as their own. Their articles are published in their WeChat official accounts and in various church magazines. Even those plagiarized sermons are preached in the pulpit in the name of "a voice heard from the Holy Spirit", which gives the preachers praise from their congregations.
Why are there so many plagiarists in the church?
The possible reasons are as follows: first of all, some people who are mediocre and have a hunger for reputation often search the Internet to hunt for their "prey". In addition, some pastors and preachers busy with church affairs have little time to prepare for sermons. As a result, they are forced to commit plagiarism. Third, some Christians believe that it doesn't matter that Christian articles or posts that benefit evangelism are released without informing the original authors. Under this "guideline", plagiarism is widely practiced by a large percentage of WeChat platforms, microblogs and Christian magazines, who publish articles under their own names.
Plagiarizing and stealing someone else's achievement violates one of the Ten Commandments: "You shall not steal." (Exodus 20:15) Christians shall not sin even for evangelization. For some pastors who don't enough time for sermon preparation because of their busy schedule for church work, a perfect church management system will solve the problem. Don't arrange too many things for pastors to do. Instead, set aside half a day or one day for them to prepare sermons.
It's fine for a pastor to use others' sermons, but they should explain the original source: such as something like "Pastor X says...", "Theologian X holds..." or "I agree with the view of X". They should not claim it as his own or an idea from the Holy Spirit.
(The author is a Christian of a church of Fujian.)
Translated by Karen Luo
