Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Good evening, welcome to Harvest Students.

If you’re new here my name is Junior, I am the Assist Pastor of discipleship here at hbc, and i am excited that you have chosen to be here.

If you do not have a bible or outline just raise your hand and one of our leaders will help you get one.

Alright, so today we deal with #4 of the 12 ways your phone is changing you series.

As i was asking you some questions last week something became clear to me; that our attention span has a lot to do with what we remember, the more attention you give to something, the more it sticks with you.

I don’t know if any of you are into science but the human brain is just remarkable, it turns out that if you give something enough attention you can grasp it to a mastery level.

Why is this important?

What you learn and apply can shape the rest of your life for good or bad, and not only that it can shorten or add years to your life.

So what i’m gonna ask you to do is when a question or comment pops into your mind, take a note of it and during the sg time share your comment or ask your question.

So use that as an ounce of wisdom.

No. 4 We Lose Our Literacy.

In a survey of over 8000 christians, two questions asked:

1.

When asked how many non-fiction books (of 100 pages or less) have you read in the past 12 months?

when asked how many non-fiction books (of 100 pages or less) have you read in the past 12 months?

Slide

Men 0-2 books 41%, Women 0-2 books 47%, Men 3-6 books 33%, Women 3-6 books 34%, Men 7+ books 26%, Women 7+ books 20%.

The second question asked:

2. Do your smartphone and social media use cause you to read more books or fewer books, or not cause any noticeable difference in the number of books you read?

Slide

Far more commonly, smartphone users are reading fewer books.

A large portion of the survey said their use of their phones negatively impacts the number of books they read.

Reinke, Tony.

12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (p.

80).

Crossway.

Kindle Edition.

For the purpose of our time we want to be clear about what we mean by Literacy.

What is literacy?

Dictionary.com -

Literacy noun

UK ​ /ˈlɪt.ər.ə.si/ US ​ /ˈlɪt̬.ɚ.ə.si/​

the ability to read and write:

C1 the ability to read and write:

Far more resources are needed to improve adult literacy.The country has a literacy rate of almost 98%.​

knowledge of a particular subject, or a particular type of knowledge:

Computer literacy is becoming as essential as the ability to drive a car.

With the percentages of those who said their smartphone use has caused them to read fewer books (black) or more books (gray) broken down by age/ gender demographics.

So what i would say is that this is a basic definition of literacy.

Because for Christians we have a higher goal.

We don’t want just to be able to read some marks on a page.

So here’s a definition i got from the author of this book:

Literacy is the act of reading books through a Christ-centered worldview, with the aim of discovering truth, goodness and beauty, leading to life change, pleasure and worship.

Tony Reinke

This is an excerpt from the people who develop your curriculum:

Students who do the English course will explore receptively and expressively three major literary modes, Drama, Poetry, and Prose Fiction, in order to become aware of the many functions and purposes of language.

In doing so, they will discover that the four facets of language arts, namely, listening, speaking, reading and writing, are closely linked together and are interdependent.

The English Syllabus is organised for examination as English A and English B. The former emphasises the development of oral and written language skills among students through a variety of strategies.

The latter provides opportunities for students to explore and respond critically to specific literary texts as they observe and appreciate the author’s craft.

What is this saying literacy must go beyond just knowing how to read and write, we must be able to wisely choose literature that is central to not only our development but also the development of our society.

I hear of so many of you listening to music, watching videos, and reading and writing posts that demoralizes human being on a whole.

Our young women spoken of as things to be had, our young men are used as vehicles for ignorance, your parents and any authority who says otherwise are regarded as ignorant or haters.

Now I know that this may not bother you, but it should.

Here’s why:

Persons with very little or no literacy skills are more likely to be violent and aggressive to others.

Stats show that areas where literacy is on the low, crime is on the rise.

Majority of teen pregnancies are more likely to happen to persons with very little literacy skills.

Christians who struggle with sin, are most of the time struggling with reading and studying their bibles.

I hope you see the relationship there between illiteracy and so many of the problems our society and more closely our church and families face.

In any situation you have two options, you can either be part of the problem, or part of the solution.

We want to help you bring resolutions to problems.

Main Point: Poor smartphone habits causes us to lose our literacy.

The majority problems in our society, Churches, and problems at home derive from ignorance.

Main Point: Poor smartphone habits causes us to lose our literacy.

The majority problems in our society, Churches, and problems at home derive from ignorance.

The damage of smartphones to reading -

all of our social media compete for more and more of our attention, at the cost of the sustained focus we need to read books.

This is because texts, snaps, and tweets are part of an endless party.

If you have ever tried reading in a party you’d know that you can’t retain much if anything at all.

When you read slowly you are not as concerned with each individual piece of data, “You’re more concerned with how different pieces of data fit together.

How this relates to that?

You’re concerned with the narrative shape, the synthesizing theory, or the overall context.

You have time to see how one thing layers onto another, producing mixed emotions, ironies and paradoxes.

You have time to lose yourself in another person’s environment (similar to watching a movie with in vr), one writer calls this discipline “crystallized intelligence”—“ the ability to use experience, knowledge, and the products of lifelong education that have been stored in long-term memory.

It is the ability to make analogies and comparisons about things you have studied before.

calls this discipline “crystallized intelligence”—“ the ability to use experience, knowledge, and the products of lifelong education that have been stored in long-term memory.

It is the ability to make analogies and comparisons about things you have studied before.

Crystallized intelligence accumulates over the years and leads ultimately to understanding and wisdom.” 3 Such a skill requires separation from the digital cocktail party so we can activate our sustained linear attention and engage our minds.

The fragmentary nature of the online world makes this type of concentration difficult to maintain— all by design.

Crystallized intelligence accumulates over the years and leads ultimately to understanding and wisdom.”

Such a skill requires separation from the digital cocktail party so we can activate our sustained linear attention and engage our minds.

The fragmentary nature of the online world makes this type of concentration difficult to maintain— all by design.

Reinke, Tony.

12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (p.

82).

Crossway.

Kindle Edition.

It is so important for you to stay distracted because companies make billions off of your distraction.

Corporations are refining the art of attention capturing with a growing field of technological expertise called “captology,” a nickname for “computers as persuasive technology.”

Captologists study ways of using smartphones to capture attention and to adjust behavior patterns.

Reading electronically vs reading - Studies show

Reading electronically vs reading - Studies show

One trick works like this: the more I like and click online, the more precisely web algorithms feed me images, ideas, and products tailored to my previous engagement.

It may seem I am simply stumbling over a litany of randomly scattered things online, but what’s offered up to my eyes today is increasingly aligned to the bread-crumb trail I left behind in my digital diet yesterday (for good or ill).

So what I see now has been tailored to what I liked in the past, creating a custom-built vortex of content, a swirl of new objects, filling my screen as I flick and scroll, all with the aim of keeping my eyes glued to the screen by feeding very specific appetite patterns of my craving heart and ultimately reinforcing my smartphone obsession.

Reinke, Tony.

12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (pp.

82-83).

Crossway.

Kindle Edition.

Four helps to build Literacy:

How do we regain our literacy?

Set aside times for reading.