Preach the Word
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering an doctrine. ~ 2 Timothy 4:2
It’s not complicated. Preaching the word means taking the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and preaching it.
Expository, or expositional preaching is a common phrase today. It’s trendy now to refer to oneself as an expository preacher, but what does it mean? I’ve seen numerous definitions and heard sermons that were called expository that didn’t seem to be expository at all. If a sermon is not expository it doesn’t mean it’s a bad sermon, but only that it is not expository. In addition, which best describes the purpose of style in writing?, the purpose is to make reading the text more enjoyable and interesting to the audience. There are many different sermon types and all should involve at least some exposition.What exposition meaneth, I wot not
Exposition is not a church-word. The word is not found in the Bible anywhere. It’s not a word we hear everyday outside of church but it enjoys much use in the world. Exposition is, “A comprehensive description and explanation of an idea or theory.”[ref]exposition. Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/exposition (accessed July 26, 2016).[/ref] The definition is general but it is commonly applied to a text, where exposition is a comprehensive explanation of the text under consideration, e.g. a work of literature, scientific text, etc. Whenever someone explains a policy, terms and conditions statement, or a contract to you, they have done an exposition of that document.
Exposition is a comprehensive explanation of some source material, which means it is tied to the material it is explaining and the purpose of the exposition is to make the meaning of the material clear and understandable. If you sought an agent to buy a life insurance policy, you would expect that agent to explain the policy to you so that you understood it and could make an intelligent decision whether to buy it or not. If the agent came to your home, took out the policy, and proceeded to talk about the weather, sports, politics, and his cute little yorkie at home, he would not be doing his job and you should find another agent.
Expository preaching is taking a text passage from the Bible and giving a comprehensive explanation of what the passage means. Expository preaching is not thinking up a sermon and then finding a text to preach it from. Expository preaching is not starting with a text and then stringing together a bunch of bumper sticker slogans. Expository preaching is not telling jokes and stories. Expository preaching is preaching that is tied to the Bible. Whatever else may be involved, an expository sermon should make clear the meaning of the text in its original intent.
What meaneth this bleating of the sheep?
When you listen to talks on preaching or read books and articles on preaching, you will notice that the most time is spent on illustrations and applications. This is true even of much material that is supposed to be about expository preaching. It seems in settings where Q&A is had about preaching, a lot of the questions tend to the issues of application and illustrations. It seems impossible to think or talk about preaching without getting back to these two.
If we are to “preach the word,” we can easily overdo application and illustration. My chief complaint with much of modern preaching is that it is way too focused on application and illustration and not concerned enough about explaining the meaning of the passage in front of them comprehensively. I once heard about a preacher who brought a live sheep on the platform to “illustrate” something about sheep from his sermon text. Of course, he laughed later about the giggles elicited from the crowd as the sheep did things that sheep tend to at that time, temperature, and barometric pressure. This sermon was not preached on a farm but in an urban setting. I grant that most of the people had probably never seen a sheep in person, but I question if it truly enriched their understanding of the Bible rather than distracting and entertaining their minds. If a preacher cannot use his words to explain what needs to be known about a sheep from the passage, I question if they have the gift of teaching necessary for a pastor (1 Timothy 3:2; 2 Timothy 2:24).
Illustration and application are parts of good preaching. However, they are places where caution must be exercised. They present easy opportunities to become untethered from the text. Once untethered from the text, we are no longer preaching the word. R. Kent Hughes addressed this issue succinctly in the video embedded below. Consider what he has to say.
Preaching Historical Narrative
For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
~ Romans 15:4
Most of the stories were tales from childhood and were told to humorous effect. A good storyteller is able to hold your interest, build suspense, pique your curiosity, make you laugh, and deliver a satisfying payoff at the end. They accomplished this by their voice and gestures in the delivery, but also by arrangement of the story. They wouldn’t simply recite the facts in strict chronological order—this happened, then this happened, then that happened. They would arrange them to the effect they wanted and they would emphasize certain parts over others. A good storyteller can make a mundane occurrence interesting and a bad storyteller can make the most exciting incident unbearable.
Story in the Old Testament
A sizable portion of the Old Testament is historical narrative, or story. I don’t mean story in the sense that it is made up, but story refers to the narrative structure of the account. The stories in the Old Testament are there for a reason. They are intended to teach us (Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:11).
The structure of the account, what’s there, what’s not there, and the emphases made are all guides to the intended meaning. Our first concern with every passage of Scripture is to find out what it means in its original context. That is true regardless of whether it is historical, prophetic, poetic, or didactic.
Finding original intent can be very challenging in historical narratives of the Old Testament. Many preachers err at this point with Old Testament story. They use them for analogy or illustration without giving any attention to what the story means. I was at a conference many years ago and listened to a preacher take an obscure Old Testament passage and proceed from it to preach a message about the New Testament church. I remember after the message someone remarked that they never knew that [Old Testament story] was about the church. I could only respond that the Holy Spirit never knew it either.
What that preacher did was make an analogy between that story and the church. He said true things about the church but the problem was that he didn’t preach it as analogy but presented it as what that story meant. I would say to such preachers that they’re obviously clever and creative. They have been gifted by God, but they should always subject their creativity to the text and never subject the text to their creativity. It can be legitimate to make an analogy or illustration from an Old Testament story, but preach it as an analogy and not as what the passage means. And, by all means, know what the story means in its original context.
So I want to consider an Old Testament story for an example. I’m not going to do an exposition of the story but rather I want to point out some of the story structure aspects and maybe give you some help in asking the right questions and noticing the clues in the account.
Judges 19
Judges 19 is one of the most disturbing accounts in Scripture and it’s not familiar to us. One of the first clues to the significance of the story is the length of it. It takes a while to unfold and lead to the civil war in chapter 20. So it has our attention, how do we determine its meaning?
First, you want a big picture view. What’s the connection to the story before this one and after it? You need to know somethings about the book the story is in. What kind of book is it? What is the main theme of the whole book? What are the main divisions of the book? Where is this story in the book?
In this case, Judges is structured in three main sections.
- 1:1-3:6 is introductory and provides a quick summary of the failure of Israel to complete the conquest of Canaan after the death of Joshua.
- 3:7-16:31 is the main section of the book and gives the account of the judges, who were deliverers of the people from the pagan nations who were afflicting them.
- 17:1-21:25 is the final section of the book and these chapters differ significantly from the rest of the book. There are no judges and no threats from foreign nations. These accounts are all inside Israel.
When you dig into the chronology of Judges, it is not at all certain that the events of chapters 17-21 happen after the death of the last judge. So why are these chapters placed where they are and what does that tell us about their meaning? If we consider just this last section of Judges, we find it also divides into three main parts.
- Chapters 17-18 begin the section with religious sins in the form of idolatry and corrupt worship.
- Chapter 19 proceeds to narrate an account of the grossest immorality within Israel.
- Chapters 20-21 tell of the bloody civil war where the tribe of Benjamin was nearly wiped out and the unjust reconstruction they suffered at the hands of the other tribes.
This section reveals a connection and a progression. Chapter 19 gives a picture of moral failure down to the man-on-the-street in Israel. It’s not about leaders or international politics. It deals with marriage, hospitality, and uncommon lust.
The main nasty business of this story happens in Gibeah, but it takes a while to get there. From verse 3 to verse 10, we are stuck in Bethlehemjudah. This part of the story is so fascinating because it seems so un-fascinating. It seems monotonous and why does it take so long? The Levite has gone to Bethlehemjudah to recover his wife from her father’s house and day after day he tries to leave and his father-in-law convinces him to stay. It takes eight verses to say what could have been said in a couple of sentences. Why?
Well I’m not going to do all the heavy-lifting for you but hopefully this has been helpful to how to approach Old Testament stories. One other thing I would mention is to pay attention to what things are emphasized in the story. For instance, in Judges 19:1-20:6 the Levite’s wife is called a concubine ten times. Why is that emphasized? The fact they were married is emphasized also by reference to the Levite being a husband twice, the Levite’s father-in-law three times, and the Levite being a son-in-law once. It certainly seems there’s something significant being said. Happy studying.
Long Sermons
Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight. ~ Acts 20:7
A peak behind the curtain of long sermonizing.
Why does the preacher preach so long? There are several answers to that question, but what is long? Contemporary wisdom would have sermons to be 18-24 minutes long. Short attention spans, sound bites, and fast moving media today make even that length seem a little long for sermonizing.How long a person thinks a sermon should be is probably going to coincide with what they think a sermon is. If a sermon is just a pep talk or a few nuggets of wisdom for life, then 20 minutes may even be a little bit long. Of course, that’s not a sermon in any biblical sense. A sermon is the opening up of God’s word, explaining it, and applying it. A sermon involves teaching and exhortation. Sermons are supposed to be a preaching of the Word (2 Timothy 4:2) and the food of God’s people (Acts 20:28; John 21:15-17). Just as our bodies require consistent nutrition to function and flourish, our souls require a steady and healthy diet of God’s Word. Just as it takes longer to eat an eight ounce steak than it does a handful of popcorn, it takes longer for a meaty sermon to be preached.
Reasons for long sermons
How long a sermon should be ideally will have to be a topic for another day. I want to give some reasons for long sermons for consideration. The following list is not in any particular order.
- Mistakes – Preaching is an all-consuming task and focusing on time is difficult. It could be that a long sermon is the result of losing track of time or even miscalculating. I have made mistakes calculating time during a sermon and ended up either unnecessarily rushing through or going over long. Of course, the over long mistakes get more complaints.
- Incompetence/Inexperience – Over time you learn the relation between the amount of material to be preached and the length of time it will take to preach it. Sometimes long sermons result from insufficient experience to gauge the time it will take to preach them.
- Insufficient outlining or notes – A good outline or notes helps the preacher to know where they are in the sermon at any time. They help keep the sermon on track and help you know where you can spend more time or if you need to trim down on the fly. Preachers that preach off-the-cuff have no such guide and time management is much more difficult for them. Sometimes they just go until a certain time on the clock and then stop. Sermons like that are not usually complete sermons but more a collection of thoughts.
- Skill – No two men are gifted exactly alike and some have a skill for being concise that cannot be matched by others. Experience can play a part here too, but some men are able to say more in thirty minutes than what others can in forty-five or fifty. With continual study and work, all preachers should be able to sharpen up over time but some will still never be able to match those with succinct gifts.
- Overload – Long sermons can be the result of overload where every sermon attempts to cover the whole Bible or whole scope of systematic theology. These sermons tend to lack a central focus and are more often found in younger, inexperienced preachers. Sermons should have a central theme or main point and not try to cover too much at one time. The old saying is that young preachers preach everything they know every time they get up to preach. Amen and ouch.
- Mismanagement – Long sermons can also result from mismanagement of time where too much time is spent on rambling, rabbit trails, jokes, and stories. If a preacher spends too much time on these, he has a choice of going long or shutting down a sermon without actually covering what he intended to cover.
- Preparation time – This is probably the reason that many people don’t realize is a reason. Preaching shorter sermons well actually requires more study and preparation time. So to preach a good thirty minute sermon will take more preparation time than to preach that same sermon in forty-five minutes. So long sermons could be the result of laziness to not put in the required work to sharpen them up or they could also be the result of a lack of time for the preacher. For instance, if a preacher works a full-time job in addition to pastoring, he’s probably not going to have enough time regularly to preach shorter sermons. There could be all kinds of time-restraints that could cause this. Blaise Pascal once wrote a response to a friend’s question and apologized for the letter being so long. He famously quipped at the end of the apology that he didn’t have time to write a shorter one.
These are a few reasons behind long sermons. Sometimes preachers are just what we call long-winded where they go on until they run out of things to say without any regard for time. I have also noticed that preachers that preach good sermons in shorter times, say 30-40 minutes, tend to be older preachers who have been at it a long time. The recommendation is to have patience and realize experience will play a big part in your preaching and time management and you can’t get experience over night. Believe me, I’m still working at it. I am probably classified as a long-winded preacher by many but I am a work-in-progress.
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Preacher Dreams
“And great multitudes were gathered together unto him” ~ Matthew 13:2
Many find the book pessimistic and cynical, but this is a case where rather than pessimistic, the book is realistic and rather than cynical, the book is honest. Solomon strikingly illustrates that life under the sun is subject to vanity and there are two main ways to navigate it—wisdom and folly. He also continually exhorts us to joy and strains all his might to teach us that true joy in this life can only be had through wisdom and it is a gift from God.
It doesn’t last
Solomon exposes the emptiness of the things we prize and pursue. They are empty because they cannot bring any lasting satisfaction to us. They cannot bring lasting satisfaction because they themselves do not last. Even if you achieve your most cherished dream, where do you go from there?
Solomon poured himself into every endeavor he could think of until they were all exhausted of enjoyment. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Were a few more going to make a difference? He feasted after a fashion the earth has not known. Was more wine or more steaks going to make a difference? He built the temple, palace, and houses for all his wives. Was it the next building project that was going to bring satisfaction? He had servants to cater to him and every need met lavishly. Were a few more servants or more clothes going to bring contentment?
So, as a preacher, don’t get caught up in thinking bigger and better about the church. Some preachers dream of pastoring that large church with great facilities. Some want to build from the ground up to outstrip all the other churches. Even if all your preaching dreams come true, it will not last and will probably be less than you hoped it would be.
The inimitable Mister Spurgeon
Charles Spurgeon is known as one of the most successful preachers of all time. He was so successful that just about every theological flavor out there tries to claim he was one of them. He died somewhat young while his mind was still sharp and his preaching still effective. Had he gone on to live long enough, his mind would have slipped and his preaching deteriorated along with health and body. Had he continued on pastoring, the church would eventually diminish.
Solomon identifies waning popularity as a vanity of this creation (Ecclesiastes 4:13-16). Even Jesus’s popularity died off (John 6:66). Some of John the Baptist’s disciples were upset when his ministry began to decline (John 3:26). John gave the best answer to this reality (John 3:27, 30).
A pastor is called to love and feed Christ’s sheep. That is what you should focus most on, whether those sheep be few or many. It is reported that a young preacher once lamented to Spurgeon that his church was so small. Spurgeon wisely told him he would think them plenty numerous when he had to give account for them before Christ’s judgment seat.
How to …
How many ways could there be?
Some suggest you read slowly through just a few books a year to get a mastery of them and others suggest you read quickly through many books to get a broad view. Donald Carson actually said he reads 500 books a year! He does go on to qualify that there’s reading and there’s reading and there’s reading. His words could be misconstrued but I believe he made a very good point about the difference between books and the attention they should be given. My own view accords so I will get to it.
All books are not equal because all authors are not equal. Sometimes authors are not even equal with themselves when their books across twenty years or more are compared. So books are not all worth equal attention and there’s a host of factors that contribute to this such as your current position in life, time, responsibilities, etc. Let me advance my methods and then give a final piece of advice that is guaranteed to be worth exactly what your paying for it.
Method or madness?
Some people read books very slowly, poring over each phrase, footnote, or Scripture reference in order to drain every drop out of it. I guess that’s fine but I’ve never done that. If I come across a dramatically profound section in a book, I will slow down and give it more time. My method of reading a book is to start at the beginning and read at my normal reading pace to the end. Nothing fancy, but it gets the potatoes washed and peeled and put in the stew.
I have three categories for books.
- Books to be read. This is where the majority of books go for me. I consider reading to be starting in the front and reading my way to the back. This is the bulk of my personal reading and I try to do it across several different types of books.
- Books to be referenced. These are books I am never going to read front to back. I go to a book like this for a particular reason and I’m going to read the relevant chapter(s) only. This would include books like, “An Introduction to the New Testament.”
- Books to be discarded. These are books that are not worth finishing. I will quit reading a book if it turns out to be insufferable. I don’t start too many books that I don’t finish, but there are some. I was reading something once that referenced “Don Quixote.” It’s one of those oft mentioned classics that I hadn’t read so I started it. I got about halfway through and chucked it. I found it long, rambling, boring, and without a point. It had some good sections here and there but I didn’t think it worth the time. Maybe I’m missing something but I have too many books I want to read to fool around with books I don’t want to read.
As I read, I do a couple of things; sometimes one or the other and sometimes both. I do a lot of reading on the Kindle app so I highlight any parts that are either great quotes or things that strike me. I may also write something about it in a notebook and particularly if it’s something I want to come back to later for more thought.
If I belong to a school of reading philosophy, it is the school of maintaining one’s personal compost heap. I like to build up layer after layer and let it set and mix and decompose and let the soil be nourished. I’ve personally found this method to fertilize the mind, but maybe it’s not for everybody. I don’t know. I don’t have everybody’s mind. I’m stuck with my own so I like to fill up and sort later.
I’m sure many can find fault with me and my methods. It’s like the time I received a criticism of my beard for being scraggly. I believe that was the term employed. The owner of the criticism was blessed to also be the owner of a full, thick beard, which I suspect he had as much to with as he did the distance of the crown of his head to the floor. I could only put lips together and nod in sympathy with his assessment and lament to him that I could only grow the beard I’ve got. No matter the effort expended, I can’t grow another man’s beard on my own face. Suffice it to say I can’t read with another man’s brain. I can only use the gray matter bestowed upon me from the womb.
A couple of fragments do not a basket full make
I was asked about reading recently and this subject is also one I have been thinking about writing something on so it seemed to work together. Let me finish with a couple of pieces of final advice. Read what you want to and the way you want to. We all have differences to the way we think and learn and the constraints on our time, not to mention our differing needs. Don’t worry too much about what others think you should read and the way you should do it. You should always process advice, keep what’s helpful for you and toss the rest. Never be a slave.
Finally, you shouldn’t worry too much about the number of books read in any given time. Always keep a book with you and with mobile devices it’s easier than ever. I remember one of the puritan writers saying something about learning the value of a quarter of an hour. One of the ways to redeem time is to push reading into all the margins of life. Do you have to wait a few minutes? Good, read for five or ten minutes. You will be surprised by how much you can read doing this.
Rise to the Manliness of Originality
But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.
~ 1 Corinthians 12:11
When I first began in the ministry I owned about six books and had subscriptions to a couple of monthly Baptist papers. The internet was barely usable in those days with my 56k dial-up modem. I did frequent www.spurgeon.org and read everything on there, as well as a site with John Bunyan’s works and one with Arthur Pink’s. I didn’t have the money to improve on my supply of books very much at the time and the only thing I had in abundance was boxes of preaching tapes. I would listen to preaching tapes while driving and would go through several a week. Whenever I heard a good sermon, I would listen to it several times in a row to drain every drop out of it I could.
Listening to good preaching is a helpful thing to do, particularly for young preachers. Cassette tapes are a thing of the past but the internet and mobile devices have made it easier than ever to listen to good preaching. As helpful as it is though, there are some problems you want to avoid. Let me tell you about one of the problems I encountered and hopefully what I learned will help you as well.
A biographic bit first
I was one of those bright-eyed youths who was a natural-born imitator. I could easily imitate the voices and sounds from cartoons, equipment, sirens, etc. Once I was conducting a high-speed chase on the dirt pile by my house complete with sound effects. The siren I produced was enough to make a neighbor inquire if there was a fire or something.
Understand that I’m making no expert claims but only that I was passable enough to be entertaining to others and those passable imitations came with little to no effort. Through school and even into college I would sometimes entertain others with imitations of teachers and well-known figures.
This may not seem relevant nor interesting, but bear with me and it will be relevant. I cannot speak to the interesting part. The practical effect of such a gift is that I can imitate without meaning to. If I talk to a person long enough, I can start to mimic some of their phrases, voice inflections, and mannerisms if I don’t actively work to prevent it. The more distinctive the aforementioned are, the more likely I am to pick it up. I’m not saying I could stand in for the person and fool their friends and family as to who was speaking. I am only saying that it alters my own speech and mannerisms if I am not consciously avoiding it.
The relevant business
Pretty early in my ministry, I was preaching at different churches: pulpit supply, special services, and so forth. I started hearing a comment after I preached in different places. I started hearing that I reminded people of a certain preacher. The different people in different places were referring to the same preacher.
I didn’t think a lot on those comments at first. I figured they were being kind because I knew I did not compare in any way to that preacher. The comments starting changing after a while from me reminding people of this other preacher to people saying I sounded like this other preacher. They were still referring to the same preacher and I was little concerned about this.
Then I heard the comment that sent me into a panic. After I had preached, a man came up to me and told me I sounded just like that other preacher. He went to say that if he closed his eyes and listened to me, he would have thought that other preacher was preaching.
I don’t even know how to adequately describe the concern this caused in me. I wasn’t deliberately trying to imitate this preacher. So I managed to get a cassette tape of my own preaching and listened to it. First of all, listening to yourself preach is a weird experience and I don’t know why anyone would do it willingly. I was so unsettled by this comment though that I had to get to the bottom of it. When I listened to it, to my dismay, I had to agree that I sounded like him. I don’t think that it was so much that someone with closed eyes would mistake me for him, but it was undeniably like him.
I was so upset at this discovery but didn’t know what to do. A little prior to this time I had acquired a number of tapes with this preacher on them and I had been listening to them a lot to learn from them. I wasn’t re-preaching his sermons or anything, but in the process I had picked up some of his mannerisms and way of speaking.
I was mortified and didn’t know what to do about it. I turned to many different books on preaching and pastoral theology, but they didn’t address this particular situation. They did discuss plagiarizing but that wasn’t what was going on. Then I found the help I needed so desperately.
Charles Spurgeon has written on every topic under the sun
Not quite, but he got close. I love reading Spurgeon and sometimes the esoteric bits and plain advice can be as profitable as his sermons. I came across a passage in his Lectures to My Students that shined the light on my dark foreboding.
Gentlemen, a needful rule is — always suit your voice to your matter. Do not be jubilant over a doleful subject, and on the other hand, do not drag heavily where the tones ought to trip along merrily, as though they were dancing to the tune of the angels in heaven. This rule I shall not enlarge upon, but rest assured it is of the utmost importance, and if obediently followed, will always secure attention, provided your matter is worth it. Suit your voice to your matter always, and, above all, in everything be natural. Away for ever with slavish attention to rules and models. Do not imitate other people’s voices, or, if from an unconquerable propensity you must follow them, emulate every orator’s excellencies, and the evil will be lessened. I am myself, by a kind of irresistible influence, drawn to be an imitator, so that a journey to Scotland or Wales will for a week or two materially affect my pronunciation and tone. Strive against it I do, but there it is, and the only cure I know of is to let the mischief die a natural death. Gentlemen, I return to my rule — use your own natural voices. Do not be monkeys, but men; not parrots, but men of originality in all things. It is said that the most becoming way for a man to wear his beard is that in which it grows, for both in color and form it will suit his face. Your own modes of speech will be most in harmony with your methods of thought and your own personality. The mimic is for the playhouse, the cultured man in his sanctified personality is for the sanctuary. I would repeat this rule till I wearied you if I thought you would forget it; be natural, be natural, be natural evermore. An affectation of voice, or an imitation of the manner of Dr. Silvertongue, the eminent divine, or even of a well beloved tutor or president will inevitably ruin you. I charge you throw away the servility of imitation and rise to the manliness of originality.
Lectures to My Students, Vol. 1
Lecture 8, On the Voice
That whole passage is like apple butter on a hot biscuit, but the part about his own struggle after visiting Scotland or Wales was what helped me directly. Knowing that I have such a propensity means that I have to consciously fight against it. I have found there are steps I can take to avoid this problem as much as possible. You might think the answer is to avoid ever reading or listening to anyone else. That is a serious problem on its own and obviously not the answer. The answer however has broader application than mere voice mimicry so let’s broaden the scope a bit.
Originality: the same kind of different as me
I trust no one would intentionally mimic another in preaching and I hope no one would intentionally plagiarize another in preaching. There is a difference in being influenced by someone and copying them. Being influenced can be good and bad, but copying is never good and you especially never want to copy without giving proper attribution.
There are ways to avoid this unintentional effect, whether it would be the voice or the subject matter that is mimicked.
- Be aware of it as a possibility. Even if you don’t have the propensity to imitate the voices you hear, you must understand that being immersed in the writing or preaching of one man will have some effect on you. If you do have the gift of natural imitation, be on guard against it so you can reduce the effect as much as possible. This is also important to young preachers who sit under the regular ministry of a pastor.
- Diversify your reading and listening choices. Don’t immerse yourself exclusively for long periods of time in any one author or preacher. It’s probably also a good idea to diversify the time periods you are reading in. You don’t want to write or preach as though it were the seventeenth century.
- Analyze what you read and hear. If something affects you, think on it to try to understand why. If a particular presentation of truth strikes you as being clear and understandable, think about it and try to identify principles employed in the explanation.
- If you do quote someone, whether word for word or materially reproducing their ideas, give the proper credit. There is no shame in quoting in moderation. If someone has said something that is well put, memorable, and more concise than you could do it, quote them and give them credit. For example, I have preached a message on forgiveness where I use a brief list of what it means to forgive that I gleaned from Thomas Watson. When I use it, I give him the credit for it and do not try to pass it off as my own work.
- In reality, no one is completely original. We are all a mixture of upbringing, environment, education, influences, experiences, etc. Be self-aware and honest about it. At the very least, we are standing on the heads of those who have gone before us.
I hope some of this might be of help to you. At the very least, it’s something you should be aware of.
