Sunday Score Calibration

How the Sunday Score is calibrated. The Sunday Score is anchored to Jesus' own teaching. His ten major discourses set the top of the scale (target 94–99) and the apostles' teaching tests it (Scripture should not fall below 85). Points come off for mishandled Scripture and for patterns of control. Move any control and every score below is recomputed.

Scale

What earns points

Strictness curve

1.00 is straight-line. Higher values leave the top alone and spread out everything below it.

What takes points off

Handling of Scripture

Each misread text

Each stretched text

Each warning flag on a weak claim

Flags: proof-texting, reading into the text, "the Bible says" with no source, tradition preached as plain Bible, a story treated as doctrine.

Too little Scripture: below

… points per 10% short

Patterns of control

Markers allowed before it counts as a pattern

Each marker beyond that

Only when the markers span two or more categories

Panel vote

Rules

A serious red flag caps the score at 69 Jesus pointing people to himself is never a control marker Scripture's own words count as Scripture (the "too little Scripture" check applies to sermons only)

Control markers with no clear beneficiary count at

Bands

Sound at or above Mostly sound Mixed Strained

#	Teaching	Score	Band	0 – 100	Text · Panel · Jesus · Cons · Own	Off	Control

Measured against Jesus

Each part is scored as a share of what Jesus' own discourses get on that part, capped at 100%. A sermon that handles the text as well as the rubric credits his teaching gets full marks on text. Words of Jesus and own creed stay on their own 0–10 scale.

Why anchor the scale

On the raw rubric no weighting puts Jesus at 94+ unless the Words of Jesus measure carries about 60% of the score, and that lifts every pastor too. The rubric's parts are not scaled to Scripture, so the scale is anchored to it.

How the calibration texts were scored

Each passage ran through the same prompts, rules and 20-seat panel as a sermon, with the biblical speaker treated as the preacher, so the rubric's own misfires show. Click any row to see the panel vote and the claims that lost points.