Skip to main content

Epic Courage

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 points were all logical; he demonstrated how the Bible story related to our everyday lives by giving different life examples and he backed all of his points up with Scripture. I believe his Rhetorical technique was very effective as he used Pathos, Ethos, and Logos. He was using scripture for his points, relating to the audience constantly to build a connection with them, and he made very clear syllogisms. He used some humor as well to engage the audience more. One final thing that was effective is his structure was very well laid out, he had an introduction, the main story, the message, and then gave applications for the message. It was a very well done presentation that I and many others benefited from.

Comments

  1. This sounds like a powerful sermon. It is always uplifting and helpful to hear the
    'David and Goliath' story every once in a while. I wish I was there to hear it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think it is good that the preacher used all the rhetoric techniques to get his point across. It is always good to use humor to engage your audience and make them want to listen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's great that he used Pathos, Logos, and Ethos in a proper way. It is always good to use the right amount of each so that you can get the proper point across.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wiener Stampede

In this Heinz condiments commercial, aired during the Super Bowl this past year, a group of dachshunds are shown in hot dog costumes running towards humans in Heinz ketchup and mustard costumes who end up catching the dogs as they leap into the humans’ arms and lick their faces. This commercial is a specific appeal to pathos as the dogs are dressed up and are meant to be cute. The phrase at the end of the commercial is “it’s hard to resist great taste” and this is stated while the dogs are licking the humans implying that the dogs like Heinz and that humans should buy it as well because the cute dogs in costumes did.

Marilyn Monroe's Shampoo

While browsing on Google I found an old advertisement.  The ad was for Lustre-Crème Shampoo. It featured Marilyn Monroe, known for her beauteous looks and her parts in different movies. One of her movies was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Lustre-Crème was attempting to sell their shampoo through the use of fallacies. By saying that Marilyn Monroe that tells you nothing about the actual product: it simply attracts you to the pretty face in the picture. Using this as an argument of why someone should buy your product is quite illogical. Just because Marilyn Monroe uses it doesn’t provide assurance of its abilities. They attempt using snob appeal by trying to make the audience believe that they could be like Marilyn Monroe if they use the same product as her. They use appeal to illegitimate authority by using Marilyn Monroe to promote their product. Although she herself is a customer, this is still rather irrelevant. She herself has no type of expertise in hair products and knows nothing t...

Weight of Glory

In Mr. Cline's class a few weeks ago. We took the day off in a way from our normal classes. Instead of continuing to read the books we were assigned and discussing them, he read us the sermon by C.S Lewis "The Weight of Glory." Its a long sermon, but one worth reading. It is about the confusion many people have on the topic of what we desire the most. He explains after much background information, that we all desire true happiness. And through that happiness, we long for heaven, our true home that we were designed for. He explains that glory is not what many people think of as being "famous" in heaven. But more that we are honored by our Lord and Father. For it to be like the scripture passage "Well done, good and faithful servant." C.S Lewis does a fantastic job at being persuasive here, and if read by the right person aloud, can have an excellent effect. He clears up lots of points that people bring up that are not true. Such as the point of glory...