Cultural Rhetoric

I was not know I need to write a blog about speeches in chapel until last Friday, I was terrified. Because there were too many people had speeches in chapel, and I can't remember one whole speech... Then I remembered Mr.Demko who had a good speech in chapel, and we have a great relationship (that's only what I think ) . The funny thing is a week before he gave us a speech, we talked about science and religion at chapel after listened a speech. So when he showed up in chapel and had a speech, and some points in his speech are pretty much similar with what we talked about, I was so surprised. So I asked Mr. Demko give me his outline of the speech, I am very appropriate. His topic is Biblical Authority. He was trying to tell us that biblical authoruty is our last line of defense as Christians. As what he said in his speech, he wants us to believe that the presupposition that the Christian doctrine is necessary for any true meaning in life and our ultimate authority is our last l...

Recently, my dad, who is a pastor has been looking and preaching at different churches. This past Sunday, though, instead of preaching at a church, he went to the nearby YMCA to give a sermon on Sunday morning. His sermon was on the wise men that went to see baby Jesus. He started out by making the point that they were supernaturally led, they searched for Jesus thoroughly. After that he spent a few minutes talking about how the rich wise men humbly bowed down to Jesus and gave him treasures. They didn’t give him baby toys or something for him to play with, but they gave him things with a lot of value that they would normally give to a king. The next few points that he made were about what we can learn from the magi (wise men). The first point went over the fact that the wise men left their home. My dad then asked the question “What do we need to leave?” The answer is that we need to leave anything that might damage our relationships with Christ. The next point was about how the ma...

I heard rhetoric was used in a sermon , it was very useful to persuade people to agree their opinion. First of the sermon , there was a speaker talking about mid-autumn , because that time was in mid-autumn , and that festival is very important festival for Chinese , because have many great meaning and story about mid-autumn, so he used ethos to start. then , he described a scene that was a good weather , so they can see the moon very clearly , people think a family should stay together on that day , it means the family can together forever and hope everyone will be better , it was ethos and pathos , everybody trust this implied meaning ,and it appeal people emotion , because everybody love their family, so it was credible and authentic. after that , he mentioned moon again , he said :"although people are not together , but the moon people watched is same one , their hearts are together." I am a international students , it made me really miss home , I can feel that big diff...

As a pastor, learn how to use rhetoric to persuade people to believe in God, or tell messages from God to people is really significant skill. Actually most of people go to church every Sunday, about the speech and sermon in the chapel is not new. As international students situation is kind of different for us. I have seen a wonderful sermon for a non Christian, it comprehensively used persuasion. I had joined a new year party for Chinese students in Pottstown. Before dinner, the compere called five Chinese students together, I mean all of us. "Now I am going to introduce a special guest to you, he is my old friend, he is sixty five years old and he has been to at least ten countries to study different cultures. He born in China and he became a Christian for forty years, he will have sermon for you." He said, then an gentleman came up and shared a story about he studied in Japan. " my English name is Peter, my first time contact Christian since I was a student in Japan...

I could not remember any specific sermons that I’ve heard to write my blog post about. I decided to google sermons and see what comes up. I found a sermon from a series of sixteen sermons. I chose the tenth sermon that the author wrote about having peace by being justified by faith. The author starts out by quoting the passage of scripture that his sermon is about. His sermon is based off of Romans chapter 5 verse 1, “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The author’s whole idea is to say that the wicked have no peace with God. He proves that statement with logos by citing where he gets that idea in the book of Isaiah chapter 48 verse 22, “There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.” The wicked can be secure if and only if they do not know about God and their sins, but as soon as they find out about God, they will be miserable. He also uses logos by defining his terms. He defines justified as to be pardoned and accepted by God. He al...

At my church right now we are doing a series called “An Epic Life”. This past Sunday(1/17/16) my pastor preached a sermon titled “Epic Courage” about having courage modeled after that which David has in the Bible. In this sermon my pastor began by talking about how he was going to talk about a story that everyone knew, no matter if they were a Christian or not. In this way he was already relating to the audience. He then captured the audience by telling a story about three young men stopping a terrorist on a train and preventing him from killing dozens. He then went over the story of David & Goliath to talk about how little David rose up above all others and killed the giant with just a sling and a stone. His point here was that though we are small, God gives us his courage to go out and do things for him. That Jesus is our unshakable anchor and we are able to rely on him. I believe my pastor did a fantastic job of both making valid points and delivering his message. His p...

Recently I had attended a church service where the priest discussed 1 Corinthians 13. This is a very common topic of discussion when it comes to services and masses, but the priest that presented the chapter of Corinthians seemed to use many different versions of rhetoric to move his main idea across the mass’ attendance. When he first began his homily, he appealed greatly to the credibility of the Bible and used ethos to explain how God is the author and creator of all things, in which case we should therefore listen and follow this passage. The priest then went on to explain that if we do not strive follow the passage in the way that we love and act, then we would not be virtuous followers of Christ, presenting us with the bifurcation fallacy. Near to the end of his homily, the priest began to use pathos by trying to pull at the spirits pf the audience only to uplift them. He told the congregation that if they do not always look to live in such a way as 1 Corinthians 13, they would...

I watched a sermon on YouTube. A Korean minister preached a fiery sermon about faith. The guy in the video talks about faith for receiving. He asked a lady “Do you have faith for money?” and she said yes. And then, he said there is no money around us. Nobody see money. Faith says, or tells us that you have it before it appears. Faith says I have it because the Word of God says, or tells us it’s mine. The minister was able to get attention by asking a question to the lady. Also, he could make audience want to listen. He said “In my spirit, through the eyes of faith, I could see money was mine and it is same with any promise in the Word of God. If we put faith in the Word of God, God is going to make it happen. Faith is receiving the promises from God. God wants us to trust him to the point of actually receiving things from His word before we see them. I found a Bible verse that saying ‘Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will...

Last friday during school chapel, I heard the sermon addressed by Jeremiah. It is a very interesting topic,it told us how will what we said affect other people, and how does it related to our faith inside of our heart. The speaker tried to persuade us to think whether it is appropriate to speak that way before we talk badly about other people, because it will hurt them; to believe that what we said is actually come out from our hearts, that if we talk mean to people, it means inside of our hearts are full of mean things; and to make us to control our tongue, control our body, so that we can control the faith inside. Logos is used throughout the whole sermon, the sermon follows the logical order, points and reasons at first and the conclusion in the end. The speaker also used ethos, he quoted from Martin Luther King to support the point that our faith will be affected if we curse or make fun of people and faith can affect our action as well. In the middle of the sermons, there was a m...

Matthew Parker, from Church at the Mission, gave a sermon on January 19, 2016 about being God’s masterpiece. He starts his sermon with various questions about people’s likes and dislikes. After discussing the questions he goes on to talk about what people appreciate and how humans commemorate those things with things such as a Hall of Fame. While on this topic he explains what the point of a Hall of Fame is and lists a few people in the music Hall of Fame. He then states that “most of us will not be in the Hall of Fame” and that “God wants to make each of us His masterpiece”. He then claims that all of those famous people are just regular people like us, who have succeeded in a chosen field with the help of someone who sees our potential. He says that they all had someone in the background encouraging them and helping them. God is that person to us and wants to see our full potential. He says that the only way to get to our full potential is to let God do it. As a conclusion, he adds i...

We will begin with a quick passage Psalm 43:5 that say “why are you downcast, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall yet praise him, My Savior and my God.” Why we are sad, depress? Is because we lost our faith on God? No, we the followers of Christ are depress because we see the Christian world how is turning in a world of darkness. Sometimes I’m sad, because I know I didn’t contribute to the world of God when I curse my friends or when I said lies I’m hurting the world that God creates and that hurt me, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t contribute with his world when I help my mom or when I help a friend with his homework I’m helping my neighbor, I contribute with the world that God want. We are sons of god, he loves us, he is our father we can’t be sad or have pain in the soul because God feel the same pain at we feel, we have to prevent the hurting the neighbor, don’t used the name of God in vain. We are sons of God and we will have to act like his...

This Sunday my pastor gave a sermon about the wedding at Cana. It is a Bible story where Jesus attends a wedding with his mother, Mary, and turns water into wine. My pastor used this story to give us the message that we cannot just say that we are Christians; we have to show it through our actions. There were a couple ways that my pastor used rhetoric. He used a quote from an old movie called Jerry Maguire, which is about a sports agent. In the movie he says “show me the money” to a shareholder over the phone. He is demanding that the shareholder prove that he is trustworthy through an action, rather than just talk. My pastor used this quote to relate to the wedding at Cana. Mary told the servants at the wedding to just trust Jesus and do what He says, because he knows what he’s doing. Likewise, we should trust God and show that we are faithful Christians by reflecting him through our actions. This was good rhetoric because he used a relatable quote to get his message acros...

Mark Twain the very distinguished author said that, “No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.” This statement has some truth behind this, and yet has some inconsistencies to it. Mark Twain is going down the path in this statement that you cannot comprehend the whole concept of the Bible in just a short amount of time. Twain is trying to get to the point that there is more than just a short sermon to grasp what you truly believe. Many people can get onto a ‘spiritual high’ and just believe what they hear and go right back to their old ways. Twain may have been trying to get at this point also and how it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks. With Mark Twain’s statement there are times when statement may be false. Many people’s lives can be changed when they truly believe in God. God can work in people’s lives greatly and can truly change their lives. It does not take time for everyone for God to be brought into people’s lives, although for others it may t...

Every Sunday, we always go to the church. A sermon is a persuasive speaking used rhetoric in their own belief. I heard the sermon last sunday and noted what kinds of rhetoric he actually used. On last Sunday, the preacher talked about sacrifice of Jesus. His sermon was for us to actually understand why it is significant. In the beginning of the sermon, I thought it would be basic story of Jesus that I heard a lot of times. However, his main topic actually was that the fact that we are saved by the grace of God. He used both pathos and logos in the sermon. The speaker started the speech with his personal example. A month ago, he had a conversation with married couple. They were raised in Christian family and believed in God for long time. They however could not answer the question about Jesus. They knew Jesus died for our sin, but questioned how is it important. They believed in God so that they would receive his grace and goodness. By telling this story, he related to us that there a...

At Christ Church of the Valley they try to relate to every age that attends this church. They do this with examples that relate to every age. Brian Jones is the pastor for the adult service. He does a good job at relating his sermon to his audience which is made up of, ages from ninth grade to senior citizens. When giving a speech a big part of it is knowing who you are speaking to, and being able to relate to them. Brian does a good job at knowing who is speaking to. During his speech he repeats important topics or main points. By doing this it makes it clear that you should pay attention to it, this is an example of style. Also an example of style that he uses he is speaking his main points clearly. Another way he relates his sermon to his audience is by relating us to the Bible. He says, “Everyone in this room has failed, and so has Peter.” When he says this he is relating us to Peter. Another example of a rhetoric, is arrangment. He starts his speech off with a story, to get th...

I found a sermon on sermoncentral.com from a pastor by the name of J Jeffrey Smead. The main purpose of his sermon was that God loves us. He opens up his sermon with a story, about a little boy. The little boy is playing with a boat, he made, on a lake and the boat starts to leave his hands. He loses grip and it starts to float away, he jumps in after it and gets soaking wet, but does not get the boat. A few days later he is walking down the street and sees his boat in a store, and asks to have to have it back, but the store clerk says he has to pay for it. But he has no money so he was offered a job to work for him and get the boat. And he took it, after all the work he got his boat and was very happy and he said “You were mine the first time because I made you, and now you’re mine again because I bought you. The pastor uses this as an example for how God led the people out of Egypt, and the fact that he created us, loved us, and remembered us. I think this pastor used a grea...

Today during chapel, Jeremiah gave a speech was trying to persuade us that we should know our tongue is extremely important because it represents our heart. He used the verses in James 3:6 to convince us what he had said. The speaker was also trying to persuade us to learn to control our tongue, to say something which will encourage someone but not frustrate someone. He said that our tongue is a tool can be used either good way or bad way, it all depends on how we are gonna use it. What we said is from our heart, so try hard to control our tongue, don't hurt people. In this part of the speech, he used Luke 6:45 in the Bible which says: for the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. Then he called a volunteer for his speech to go the the stage and gave that volunteer a water bottle with water in it but no lid. If someone shakes the water bottle and something comes out of the water bottle, it must be water. Then he said that the water in the water battle represents what we think i...

Admittedly I did not write about a sermon I heard in person, but instead about one I read online. I looked up short sermons online and it came up with a 16 sermon study guide. These sermons were made in the 1800’s by the American Tract Society. I did not have time to read them all, so I thought I would read the last one to see what the main point of the 16 sermons was. The 16th sermon was on Hebrews 2:3 and it was called “How shall we escape, if we neglect great salvation.” In the sermon they are showing that there is no way to salvation, without Jesus Christ. They ask how a person is supposed to escape if they reject the savior. They say a careless sinner is guilty of this. They say if you die like this you can never see the face of God. They quote Hebrews 10:26 it says “There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin.” The argument they are making is correct, and I agree with it. You need to accept that Jesus Christ died on the cross, and accept him as your lord and savior to reach the...

Theme : Sermon/Chapel Abby: Justified by Faith Anna: Wedding at Cana Brennan: Hebrews Carlos: Pathos Clayton: Mark Twain Dean: Presuppositions Eva: The Tongue Hannah: 1 Corinthians 13 Jin: The Sacrifice of Jesus Hill: Everyone Has Sin Kyleigh: God's Masterpiece Mason: Storytelling Mauricio: God's Sons Micah: 'Twas a While After Christmas Peter: Speech Rachel: Relateability Young: Faith Zach: Epic Courage