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
0.12UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.08UNLIKELY
Fear
0.15UNLIKELY
Joy
0.65LIKELY
Sadness
0.57LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.61LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.12UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.48UNLIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.43UNLIKELY
Extraversion
0.11UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.67LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.3UNLIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Intro
Good morning Casey Church family, and Happy Sabbath!
I want to start by saying, thank you so much from the bottom of my both Hayley and my hearts for giving us such a warm welcome over the past few weeks.
Funnily enough I’ve never had to walk into a church before as a minister so I was very nervous my first sabbath here, but that quickly washed away due to the friendliness of this church.
With all that aside, It is a real privilege to be here and have the chance to get to know you and serve you over the next few years.
Today I want tell you a little bit more about me and my story and my struggle in finding my identity in Christ.
However, before I do that would you bow your heads with me as we invite the Holy Spirit into this space.
My Story
Growing up I have always been in and around church, ministry and pastors!
Both my grandfathers are pastors, Dad is a pastor and so as a little kid I can remember going along to Bible studies, pathfinders, getting to church super early, funerals, weddings etc.
My 9th birthday was celebrated in my 9th house, a different house for every birthday.
I was born in Adelaide, Lived in New Zealand for 2 years where my little brother was born.
Then we came back to Australia and lived in Gippsland where dad was the pastor of Bairnsdale and Sale churches and then Dad was called to Lilydale church where my 3 sisters have all been born.
For those keeping up, that makes me the eldest of 5. From left to right is Tiarey, She is 15 years old, then Rylan who is 20, then Amity who 8 and on the right is Lacey who is 17.
If you talk to anyone from my extended family, and asked them what I would be doing when I grew up they would probably say he was always going to be a pastor.
When I about 3 or 4 we lived in a little country town called Stratford.
The head elder of one of the churches lived 3 or 4 houses down the street from us.
I would scare mum and dad half to death because I would disappear and walk down the street, and end up at Ray and Glenice’s.
I would make them sit down in the living room, get out this little stool and make them sit through church.
I would get the hymnal out and make them sing Jesus loves me, and then preach the story of Noah.
I did this regularly!
While I was growing up there was times where I talked about wanting to be a lawyer or a pilot.
Oh, and of course I always wanted and still do want to be the Captain of the Australian Cricket team.
But when I really thought about it I always wanted to be a pastor.
I felt very blessed because the majority of people who you ask in senior high school, what do you want to do when you grow up reply with, “I don’t know, or I’m not sure.”
There is nothing wrong with this but I just always knew.
I’m going to tell two stories that have shaped me to who I am today.
College story
It was the beginning of 1st semester of my second year at Avondale.
The beginning of second year means a lot of things.
However, the big thing means your sort of feel that you belong and understand how uni works.
However, when you are studying a bachelors degree of ministry and theology at avondale, 1st semester 2nd year is when we study greek.
Most classes at uni your first class for the semester is easy.
The lecturer will give an outline of what the semester will entail, maybe run a get to know you activity for the class and then thats it!
Not Greek.
The first lesson you are given a piece of paper outlining what is to come in terms of the semester and then a piece of paper that has the greek alphabet.
We are then subsequently told that tomorrow is our first test, we will be tested on the greek alphabet.
Well I went back to my dorm room and studied for maybe 4 hours, trying to memorise this alphabet.
I walked into class the next day and I was feeling confident, I had done the work, I knew my stuff.
Sure enough, 100%!
From that point onwards we had weekly tests, and for some in the class they picked it up easily.
I, church family, was not one of those people.
So while the grades were good in the first few weeks, as the greek became more complex, the more time I needed put into it and the worse my marks became.
We got to mid semester break and I was exhausted, I felt I had failed the big mid semester test for greek and I felt so overwhelmed when it came to study.
When I got got back from mid semester I felt like now was the time to really put my head down.
However, it continued to go downhill.
The more work I put into greek the worse by grades seemed to get.
That really frustrated me, I just couldn’t get my head around it.
However, the thing was because I was putting so much time and effort into greek ,without reward, I was putting less time into my other subjects with obvious effect.
My grades kept crashing down around me.
I remember sitting down to try and start writing an essay and I froze, I look back and realise that I was having a panic attack.
From that moment on for the rest of the semester I barely touched my studies.
When I thought about it, started doing it etc I would start to have this tight feeling all over my body.
I felt that my study was controlling me, I was so overwhelmed and so I threw myself into things I could control, Playing basketball, Reffing basketball, Xbox, and all the social aspects that Avondale provides.
Part of our study means that pretty much every semester we are placed at church were we get to be involved and help learn some practical aspects of ministry.
I was blessed enough to be placed at Avondale College Church for the majority of my time at Avondale.
I was under the mentorship of Pr Nimrod Maua and Pr Alex Green and I learnt so much from those two Godly men.
Every Friday, all the ministry students that were placed at College church would meet with the pastors for a catch up.
On this particular Friday Pr Alex was talking about the pressures of ministry and the amount of classmates he had that had dropped out of ministry very early on because of the pressures and expectations of being a minister.
He said a phrase that has changed my life.
“Ministry is what you do, it’s not who you are.”
In other words, as minster you are employed by the conference and that comes with expectations.
There are expectations from the church and then you have your own expectations.
If you identity is wrapped up in the ministry, then when you fail at something, or make a poor decision then you will view yourself as a failure or yourself as poor etc.
I can remember when Pr Alex was talking I felt a massive weight lift off my shoulders.
I realise now in reflection that my whole life I have been a pastors kid.
More than that I had for as long as I could remember had my sights on going to Avondale to be a theology student.
I realised that i had my identity wrapped up in the fact that I was a theology student at avondale, and I was failing at that.
So I was a failure.
When Pr Alex said those words I realised that for the first time I was able to seperate my failing grades and myself.
I felt on top of the world all of a sudden.
I had a newfound energy.
However, it didn’t last very long because after about 2 days I realised that I no longer knew who I was.
My identity had been in going to be a theology student and then being a theology student who was going to become a pastor that I didn’t know who I was anymore.
I got to the end of the semester and out of the 4 subjects that we take each semester, I had failed 3.
So the 6 week uni break while I was working full time I had to embark on a journey of finding out my identity, answering the question so many of us have to answer at some point in our lives, Who am I?
To answer that I went back to an experience that I had in year 9.
Rite Journey Solo Camp
I was homeschooled for the majority of my schooling and only ended up going to school in year 9 at Edinburgh College.
When I was there they ran a program during year 9 called “Rite Journey.”
This program recognised that here in Australia there is no ritual or ____ to acknowledge moving from being a child to adulthood.
Instead we have this weird teenage years that mesh into being a young adult and at some point you are expected to be an adult all of a sudden.
So it looks at what it means to be a christian man or woman in today’s world.
One of the camps we did during the year for it was a 24 hour solo camp.
We went to Camp Howqua and we all got given our own territory and we were on our own for 24 hours.
When I was 12 or 13 we had a massive storm rip through and it dropped 3 massive tree branches on our house.
It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
So there was a period where I really didn’t like thunderstorms.
I still don’t particularly like trees being near a house!
As the day starts to turn to night on this 24 hour solo camp you see massive clouds building over the mountain.
The thunder started rumbling and my nerves started to increase.
As the night came in I stayed out of my tent for as long as I could, because then I could watch what was going on.
However, as the rain got heavier and it got darker I had to get into my tent.
It is safe to say I was freaking out.
Before I had left I had requested to be allowed to take my Bible.
As you weren’t allowed to take anything.
I was allowed to and it was this little blue Bible in my hands.
I was praying and praying and I grabbed my Bible and I just opened it and put my finger on the pages.
This is where it landed.
Romans 8:31-39, I’m reading from the New Living Translation.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9