Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.11UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.07UNLIKELY
Fear
0.49UNLIKELY
Joy
0.63LIKELY
Sadness
0.51LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.73LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.56LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.81LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.82LIKELY
Extraversion
0.23UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.82LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.68LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
What Did It Feel Like?
What did it feel like the first time you walked into a new church?
Was there excitement, anxiety, a sense of peace or nervousness?
Maybe doubts, fears, or comfort and homeliness.
Regardless, when a new person enters a church for the first time, it can be an intimidating thing.
We don’t know the people, don’t know how service normally goes, we are afraid of doing something “wrong”, or maybe a feeling of judgment.
The author mentions some of these feelings he had when he would go to church.
Now, granted, they did not attend regularly and he said if felt as though every time they went to church “everyone else was judging us, wondering why we hadn;’t been there the prior week(s)”.
Why?
As a church, do we put off a judgmental aura or as a human do we instinctively know we are out of place?
To some extent I think it can be a guilty conscience.
A guilty conscience, in my opinion, is the conviction of the Holy Spirit on our spirit when we are out of the will of God.
Paul set the matter straight by reminding his readers of the Lord’s teaching that purification is largely a matter of the internal rather than the external.
Too often we worry about the external.
The author states he was surprised when he started to see other teenagers excited about Jesus and the church.
He assumed you had to be strange, a kind of outcast, to enjoy church.
Other teens were happy, but he was not.
We can do all the outside “stuff”, and still not be changed “inside”.
That is what makes things foreign to us!
Do you think this might be why some adults have little joy when they are in the church?
So on the lines of inside change...
What is your testimony about coming to faith in Jesus Christ?
On page 32, what does the author say “fills us with joy”?
Through faith in Jesus Christ as a result of our repentance and forgiveness for our sins.
At the point of the author’s salvation, he then knew what it was like to finally be free from the bondage of sin and he had JOY, FREEDOM, and PEACE with God.
We are assured of salvation upon confession in 1 John 1:9:
It was then when he recognized why he had a negative view of the church growing up - he had not been “converted”.
He then realized that his family ONLY expected dutiful attendance BUT NOT wholehearted participation.
This is when we realize where we truly belong.
BUT…the reaction we have when entering a new church can be daunting.
Many of us have attended the same church for years.
We have grown accustomed to the “routine” of our church, and think nothing of it.
What would it feel like to a complete stranger when they enter our sanctuary for the first time?
Where do you sit?
What do you say?
Who do you talk to?
Are you wanted there?
Are you supposed to wear a mask?
All these things can enter a persons mind rapidly as they enter a sanctuary for the first time - EVEN IF they are a Christian.
Then, for someone who may have never attended church, they hear words like prelude, offertory, benediction, pew, doxology, even the music is 100 years old and we call it “modern”.
How many people listen or sing to a piano anymore?
Then the other senses - the hardness of the seat.
The feel of the carpet or wood flooring.
The sounds that permeate the sanctuary.
The smells.
The author makes this comment “Someone could bottle the smell of musty carpet, cheap coffee, hair spray, and snuffed candles, and sell it as nostalgia”.
Things are just different for a new comer - either saved or unsaved - and what can we do to keep them from running out the door and never coming back?
The analogy is used that attending a new church feels like crashing another family’s holiday.
You are a stranger.
It’s not what you are used to.
That’s how visiting a church can feel, even when that church is open, welcoming, and are excited for you to visit and join their fellowship.
You see, even though we may be from a different “branch” off the tree, we are still all family as a body of Christ.
We should not feel uncomfortable when we enter another sanctuary as long as Christ and the free offer of salvation is being taught and preached.
But to be part of the family, we can either be born or adopted into it.
What does this verse teach us about the corporate nature of salvation?
Born of Water and Spirit
We are taught about a spiritual birth.
But how many of us understand that fully?
Even Nicodemus struggled to get his mind around that in John 3:1-7:
Nicodemus was a learned man, a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, who came asking a question of the man he knew had come from God. Christ uses the analogy of being “born again”.
And, as with most, it was confusing - what does it mean to be “born again” as we know we cannot physically go through the birthing process again.
Christ goes on to explain it is not a PHYSICAL re-birth that must take place buy a SPIRITUAL re-birth that must occur.
Jesus wanted Nicodemus to understand that entering into the kingdom required an individual to be spiritually reborn.
As the apostle Paul explains it, all people are dead in their trespasses and sins, and only God can give us spiritual life (Eph 2:1–5).
Could Christ have also been using an example from the Old Testament to describe the need for “cleansing” when he speaks of being born of water?
Regardless, Christ reminds Nicodemus the same as he reminds us today, that there must be a change in our family status.
There must be a change in our spiritual identity.
And when that occurs, we are adopted into the family of God.
What do adopted children receive from their adoptive parents?
In what ways is conversion similar to adoption?
New Living Translation (Chapter 1)
5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ.
This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.
The Good News Translation (Chapter 1)
5 God had already decided that through Jesus Christ he would make us his sons and daughters—this was his pleasure and purpose.
Praise God, we have already been CHOSEN by our Heavenly Father, He already has the adoption papers ready when we are willing to agree to them.
For those that do not: John 3:36
Maybe that’s where things get weird.
As pointed out on page 35: Who can visit a church building for a worship service?
The answer is, anyone!
But who can belong to the spiritual family called the church?
Only those who have entered the kingdom of God.
Only those who have been born of water and the Spirit, according to Jesus—that is, only those who have been born again and been baptized.
Many church buildings display a sign that reads, “All Are Welcome.”
In what way is this statement true?
In what way could it be misleading?
To understand what truly happens “in” a church, you must be a part “of” the church.
Saved from what?
The consequences of sin, which are eternal death and separation from God.
This is truly a gift from above…if we ask.
Look at the following verses in which Paul writes to the members of the churches of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, and Colossae.
What word does Paul use to describe believers?
If Paul were writing to your local church, how might he describe the members?
I can take a stab at it… To the church of 2022, I don’t even know where to start.
Gathered to Worship
When we gather, we gather to worship.
Too often we forget the purpose of the gathering of believers.
We have flaws within the church.
We grow frustrated by those flaws.
Then we allow the flaws to become our focus…instead of worship.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9