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Riley: Motivated by God

Just this past Monday in chapel, a man named Ty Fischer, came to speak at the school, and as he walked up he said, rather awkwardly, “Well…I see it says ‘Ty Fischer’ up there, and…that’s my name, so I guess it’s my turn to speak.” This was a rather awkward kickoff to an equally awkward presentation I was not particularly moved by. I understand that this could have been at least a mildly amusing joke to break the ice and establish ethos with us, the audience, but it was poorly executed, and ended up working against him. He continued on as normal, but he seemed very disorganized, cobbling together a bunch of common Bible messages that you hear frequently, then trying to make it more relatable to students by tying it in to homework, saying that we should be more motivated knowing what God has done for us.

After he had finished, I found myself more baffled as to what his intended meaning was than contemplative of what he had said. I found his lack of organization distracting, and his failure to establish ethos initially made it hard to take into account what he was saying as I struggled to find reason to to care. He remained very still throughout his talk, using little to no gestures, or even inflection, nor did he use any kind of visual aid either. None of this helped me as I tried to track with him, and I ultimately left without a clue towards his meaning. For any who thought his message was helpful to them personally, I respect that, but as for myself, I struggled to take anything significant away from it.
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  1. AnonymousFebruary 25, 2017 at 2:36 PM

    Using the quote at the beginning of this post was a great way to start your post, not to mention that it reminded me of the speaker you were referring, Ty Fischer. His lack of ethos really did make it difficult to take what he was saying seriously.

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