thinking about audience

Whom do you want to reach? People interested in community service and missions, people who are looking for a church.

What is your audience’s background-their education and life experiences? My audience would be people who have background in some sort of religion or looking for a religion in which they want to belong to. People, who are interested in community service, people who are interested in evangelism and missions.

What are their interests? Helping the community, providing for people who need help, the old, the poor, those who cannot do or take care of themselves or their family. People who have an interest in getting the word of Christ out there to the public who might not know the message.

Is there any demographic information that you should keep in mind? I expect it people from the Louisville area would be interested in the piece, maybe older people or poor people who would need help would be interested in the community service programs that we do. People from the community who would be interested in what people are doing to make the community a better place.

What political circumstances may affect their reading? My audience might have more of a conservative or middle of the road point of view. I do think though all people are interested in helping others, especially in their particular community. It being a religious organization would definitely throw some people off from reading it just because of their view on religion itself. People in the neighborhood who might be needier than others might read this hoping they could receive some help. Organizations and the city itself might be interested in how we help the community and be interested in needing some assistance we might be able to provide or helping us accomplish our goals.

audience and genre

Audience, meaning who you are writing to, or for, is connected to the genre that you are writing in by what message you are trying to convey. The note in the beginning  of the piece from the mom to the son was just that, a memo(genre) to her son(audience) that conveys a message to him. If you are writing a report to a coworker or boss then it would be different than a note from mom to son. A proposal or other piece aimed at a wider audience would need to have more information in it as to educate the public about the message you are trying to get through to them. Some audiences you can assume will understand the information without needed explanation and that is why it is important to use the correct genre and understand who the audience is or will be when writing the piece. Also thinking about medium of the piece as some teachers want reports printed out and turned in while in this class all writing and brainstorming, and homework for that matter is posted to a blog on the internet. When posting we as students need to think about who might be reading the piece, not only the instructor but other students who probably have no idea the place that you are writing about, so much more information is needed than if you were writing to someone who already had background knowledge about your place. Knowing the audience or not knowing the audience will help you understand what you have to include in your piece, or any writing that you do. Writing to complete strangers might change the genre or the writing than writing an informal letter to close friend.

homework

The angle was to understand how the town felt about being the setting for the movie and why people came there to "celebrate" the movie. She was looking for how the people how people felt about the setting of the movie and about the movie a little, the ideas of the movie. Seems to me like Holson's conducting her research in person, talking to the people who have come from all over to be apart of this festival and talking to people in the town about there feelings about the movie and the festival and being a tourist stop now. She talked to people who knew the movie, people who were relevant to the places that were portrayed in the movie.


C. Place the individual's experiences and/or perspective within a larger historical or social context.
She using the experiences within the social context of the towns view of the movie and cult following and of the people who travel to experience the town and the festivals. 

oral history homework

Art Spiegleman's Maus talks is an oral history of the characters experiences in Europe during world war 2, fighting the Nazi's and being taken prisoner.Part 4 in the oral history research talks about accuracy of oral histories and that it is dependent upon the source to be accurate. The character in Maus on pg 46 talks about training in 1939 before being sent to the front in September. I would consider this more accurate than descriptions of war because a lot of time battle is hectic and things that were thought to of happened didn't really happen. On pg 48 he talks about how his father would wake him up early to make him unfit when he was young, not letting him sleep much at night so he could not goto the army. The oral history of him sitting there and retelling this story to his son, answering questions his son might have is a good example of an oral history.

questions

What do you want to find out? The history of community service and missions
What is the primary goal of this oral history? To have a better understanding of how missions work and community service work has helped strengthen the church.
 new questions
What kind of community service and local mission work has been done in the past?
 Talk about some recent or current community service projects and missions?
What kind of difficulties do you find in organizing these activities?
How has working together through community service and missions brought the church closer together?
What are some missions and community service projects being planned for the future, locally and around the country/world?

original questions
What has the church done in the past concerning community service?
Any plans for future community service projects?
How does the current community service projects help the church?
What are the goals of doing community service projects?
What difficulties have you found in trying to organize these projects?

3 people

So i have three people in mind right now i feel i could do a oral history with. One is my closest contact Blake who is a doctoral student at southern seminary and the pastor for education and evangelism at the church. The other two people are Dr. Cook who is the senior pastor and Dr. Elieff who is the senior associate pastor who runs the day to day operations of the church while Dr. Cook is a professor at seminary.

annotation 2

Metro Council Newsroom. "District 11, Ninth and O Baptist Church, MSD and Utility Companies                                 Partner to Remove Graffiti - 2007 - LouisvilleKy.gov  N.p., 16 Oct. 2007. Web. 19 June 2011.

IN 2007, Ninth and O undertook a community service project with support from Metro Councilmen Kevin Kramer to help clean up graffiti in district 11. They assisted local utilities such as MSD and ATT with the project, “I was pleased when Ninth and O approached us with a desire to help out in the district and appreciate the utility companies and MSD stepping up as well. Graffiti has become a significant concern in District 11, this partnership will provide us with the tools to address this problem more efficiently,” Said Kevin Kramer, District 11 Councilman. During my research coming across this helped me understand how dedicated they were to our community. Painting over graffiti is not an easy job and with the amount that was there it took quite a few volunteers to complete the job and keep it completed. This idea perfectly fit with what I was looking for in a church, almost reminding me of my Boy Scout days doing service learning projects. The more I can learn about what has been done in the past will help me know what to expect for the future, and what to look for. What needs to be researched now is how we can go further and continue to help our community. The current summer service project “honoring hero’s” does just that, and I am proud to be a   part of that project.

intregration unit 2

To know a place I usually try to understand the history of the place. When that place is special to me, it is even more important for me to try to understand that entire place. In the past year, year and a half, Ninth and O has become my place, even more so as we speak. “Our history is rich and blessed.  From before 1916, Ninth & O Baptist Church has reached out to the local community and the world.  We have sent missionaries to the four corners of our globe.  We have fed the hungry and clothed the needy.”  This here even before I ever attended the church told me a lot of what I was looking for. I think about this statement when I think about why my place is special to me, this is what we do, and this is what we have done.

                Writing about something that is emotionally special is not an easy task. My place is special to me, it is a place that is emotional, spiritual, and is of satisfying essence. As I am thinking about it though words are hard to come by.  Sitting there tonight was a feeling of joy and of controlled chaos as we started our summer of service projects that will honor and celebrate our local hero’s, firemen and police officers. The controlled chaos is three different groups in one room trying to plan out ten weeks of service, it was exhilarating. The thought of putting in all this work to give back to those who risk their lives to serve and protect us, the thought of using what little precious time I have free to do something to help others is a tiring but invigorating feeling.

            Trying to find documented pieces about what kind of community service has been done in the past was not easy with the very limited amount of time I had to do it in. I found a piece from the local metro councilmen’s website about a service project done back in 2007 “I was pleased when Ninth and O approached us with a desire to help out in the district and appreciate the utility companies and MSD stepping up as well. Graffiti has become a significant concern in District 11, this partnership will provide us with the tools to address this problem more efficiently,” Said Kevin Kramer, District 11 Councilman. Our current project isn’t then same but it is every bit as important as this project was to our community,

            I’ve done service projects for most of my life through the boy scouts and through Junior ROTC in high school. I’ve always got such a great sense of satisfaction with helping people who need help and helping to serve my community, wherever that may be. The idea that I could find a place that would fulfill my spiritual needs and my need to serve and help others was not something I thought I would be able to find. It all brings me back to the emotions I feel just being in my place.

           

There are so many emotions in a church, which for me are fairly new. My family didn’t start going to Ninth and O till last summer, shortly after my daughter was born. We knew we need more direction in our life, as things were not going as well as we wanted. I remember the first time we went, on a Sunday night because I was working first shift on Sundays at the time, I was very nervous. We didn’t know anyone there, didn’t know what to do or expect. We didn’t know where to go, but was greeted as welcomed guests from the second we walked in there. Blake warmly greeted us, with his young daughter in his arms, not much older than our Addyson and helped us get aquatinted. Turns out he was the educational and evangelism pastor and son-in-law of the senior pastor, someone good to make friends with the first day. 

I sit in the worship hall or the fellowship group and of course I pay attention, but I also tend to get lost in my own thoughts. Mortality plays a lot into my thoughts and as it encompasses what the church represents to me; birth, rebirth, and death. The thought of death dwells on me, not that I am afraid of it, but I am afraid of losing those around me, those I am close to, those who mean the world to me. No matter how smart, successful, and rich I ever become death is not something I can conquer in this life. My faith helps me deal with my fear, hoping those I love will share my faith, and my fate.

This place is but a building without the people that are in it. The leisurely hustle of the older people, the young people chasing after the little kids, and the little kids outrunning their parents. The nursery is my favorite place; memories of when Addyson was just a little baby and watching her grow into a toddler running around the room with the other one year olds. Sitting in class and listen to the word of Christ and praising the lord through fellowship of our new friends, watching my wife, who is so enthusiastic about just being there, brings great joy to me.

This church is unlike most churches I have been in before. Definitely it does not look like a normal church. The worship hall is not the same as sitting in traditional church pews. It feels so welcoming, so warm for its size. It’s like everyone knows everyone, and everyone is family, even outsides, as my family was. It is like how church should be, no hierarchy, no upper class, just people coming together to celebrate the word of god. I’ve been to church before, but this feels more like what church should be about, not only about hell, fire, and brimstone, but about how great life is and how great life can be. It is a southern Baptist church, and most of our new friends do attend southern Baptist theological seminary, but they welcome the chance to help us learn as they have learned. They do not act as though they are better than us because they obviously know more than us. Everyone is welcoming and everyone is sincerely friendly.

My mind wonders back to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and wonder if this is my cave, or is this me since I have left the cave. Is this my ascension?  I tend to now think so.  A friend of mine would argue that harshly to the end saying this is now my cave, this is now my cult. That I have drank the kool-aid and will be forever under its spell. I am not one to push my beliefs on others, and I don’t feel the need to, but I do feel sadness for him. I guess how a place can mean so much to one person; it can mean so little for another. This special place has brought me to a much better place in my life, and brought my family to a much happier place. This now brings my mind to the Karl Marx Quote “Religion….Is the opium of the people” and as true as it might be, is it a bad thing. If one is to live just for this life, not the next, shouldn’t one be happy in doing that. I ponder these thoughts as I look around at the people, going about their business, and it reminds me again what my place means to me.

           

Works Cited:

Metro Council Newsroom. "District 11, Ninth and O Baptist Church, MSD and Utility Companies                                                 Partner to Remove Graffiti - 2007 - LouisvilleKy.gov  N.p., 16 Oct. 2007. Web. 19 June 2011.

"Ninth & O Baptist Church / Welcome / history." Ninth & O Baptist Church / Welcome / Welcome. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 June 2011.