ArticleAbstract Assignments 06 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

ArticleAbstract Assignments 06 - Essay Example The research applied quantitative research method in its implementation. The method is identifiable from two criteria, the type of explored data and applied research design. The research applied quantitative data in numbers of wins and losses, and a correlation study that are features of quantitative methods (Kumar, 164- 166; Lee, 77- 88). The article concludes that the Collective Bargaining Agreement has had a significant effect on competitive balance and led to greater inter seasonal parity. The major factors to the identified parity are â€Å"free agency and payroll cap† (Lee, 86). The paper makes a major contribution in identifying existence of a significant relationship between the agreement, and inter seasonal parity among teams. It therefore reconciles theoretical expectations that a change in the market system and team players would influence performance of league teams. It is also a breakthrough as the first research to identify a significant relationship between changed rules and competitive balance (Lee, 77- 88). The article is however criticized for failing to include essential elements of a research such as research hypothesis and research questions. It also fails to communicate, clearly, its applied methodology (Lee, 77-

Tutoring Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Tutoring - Assignment Example This means that the impact that education has on any one particular individual is so crucial in one’s life. I have been through this education system and therefore am talking from a background of vast experience. It is for this reason I want to teach people in a high-need school that they can achieve a lot despite them being from less fortunate financial backgrounds. I want them to learn to appreciate themselves and not look down on themselves due to their financial circumstances. Having being born and bred within this geographical locality, I believe I understand the educational needs of people from Chicago and therefore I feel that am ready to take up the challenge that there may be. I know that it may be an uphill task delivering as –per the expectations because I know that different students may have different education needs and that I may be required to apply different approaches with different students, but am all prepared for this. My previous job experience as a tutor at the America Reads as a reading and mathematics tutor accorded me enviable expertise in helping learners understand and complete their homework. In addition, my work experience at the Student Opportunities for After-School Resources places me at a better position for the task ahead.

Analysis of Contemporary British Preaching Styles

Analysis of Contemporary British Preaching Styles The concept of preaching Chapter Two Contextual Literature Review 2.1 Establishing a starting point. Sermons are not a kind of discourse given much serious public attention in twenty-first century Britain. The very concept of preaching often brings with it negative connotations. To accuse any contemporary commentator of preaching is to suggest that unsubstantiated opinions are being delivered in a tedious manner. That in such common usage preaching is almost invariably a highly critical or even condemnatory epithet indicates something of the social standing of the practice of preaching. Preaching is not an activity that is generally thought of as either intellectually or emotionally engaging. It is, rather, something that is considered to be at best passà ©, and at worst wholly untrustworthy. If challenged, those who speak of preaching in such pejorative terms will often cite the cultural distance in practice and understanding between contemporary society and the sermon form as the basis of their judgment. Mention will be made of the social irrelevance of the content of typical sermons, the perceived authoritarian position of the preacher, and the strangeness of the environment in which sermons usually occur. It is also likely that the methodology employed will be judged anachronistic, static, long-winded, and overly didactic for people used to the methods and time-frames of electronic media. The implication is that preaching is somehow out of place in modern society and that, therefore, the negative attitudes displayed in the colloquial use of the term preaching is something new. It is fashionably contemporary to adopt a contemptuous or at best a jocular attitude towards preaching. I use the term fashionably to emphasize that preaching is not the only discourse to receiv e such widespread opprobrium: advertising is similarly widely scorned yet, given the vast sums of money spent on it, is evidently effective nonetheless (Kilbourne, 1999: 34). Voiced contempt of preaching as a worthwhile actively is not necessarily to be taken at face value. As has been stated in the introduction, this thesis seeks to present an analysis of contemporary British preaching as a practice of social mnemonics. As the idea of social practice in that terminology refers to the whole of society rather than an interest group or a few like-minded people gathered together, such a perspective may appear to be an oxymoron given that recent poling suggests only just over six per cent of the adult population of the UK are churchgoers (see Brierley, 2008). This literature review will, nevertheless, seek to establish that Christian preachers who have reflected in depth on their practice in recent generations have invariably assumed that homiletics is an aspect of public discourse rather than an institutionally confined and specialized type of communication. In recent times, justifying that assumption has become more and more difficult, as this review will demonstrate. It has to be admitted that preaching no longer has the place in society-wide awareness i t once enjoyed, despite the occasional headline making exceptions, such as Archbishop Robert Runcies sermon at the Falklands War Memorial Service on 26th June 1982 that reportedly so annoyed the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (Brown, 2000). Despite the decline in preachings social status, this study argues that there are always connections between homiletic theory and wider social discourse, and that discovering those connections is a mnemonic skill required of all preachers. That many studies (for example, Ford. (1979); Bausch, (1996); and Day, Astley and Francis, (2005)) have observed that since at least the 1960s the idea of preaching as a worthwhile arena of social discourse has been repeatedly and vigorously questioned is part of the contextualization with which this thesis is concerned. That the very word preaching brings with it negative connotations that touch even regular Christian worshippers, as N.T. Wright observes in his foreword to the Reader on Preaching (Day, 2005: ix), is part of the social understanding this study aims to examine. The colloquial usage that applies the word preaching to the expression of any unsubstantiated opinions, or any speech delivered in a tedious manner, is not a prejudice that serious homiletic theory can simply ignore. That usage is widespread and is, for example, represented in the 1995 edition of the Oxford English Reference Dictionary where the second definition of preach is give moral advice in an obtrusive w ay. Similarly, the use of the word preaching as a highly critical or even condemnatory epithet is too frequent in newspapers to need much supporting elaboration. Andrew Rawnsley writing in The Observer on 13th July 2008 is but one example of a continuing journalistic convention. Rawnsley cited the drawbacks for politicians who preach in their campaigning via a long catalogue of negatives about the idea of preaching which included delivering patronising lectures from a position of immense privilege, wringing their hands about the sins of the world without offering any practical answers to improve society, and simplified to the point of parody. These kinds of associations related to the idea of preaching cannot be simply dismissed if it is to be argued that the practice of preaching within the churches is closely related to wider social trends. Instead, the contemporary bias that associates preaching with that which is intellectually lazy, emotionally sterile, untrustworthy, or simply passà ©, must be treated as a factor that needs to be addressed in considering the mechanisms of collective memory. That said, it must also be acknowledged that the assertion that preachings low social esteem is a modern phenomenon is not wholly true. Like the contemporary negative connotations of preaching, the characterization of preaching as formerly being held in great social esteem, is a generalization that obscures as much as it discloses. In the famous passage concerning preaching in Anthony Trollopes novel Barchester Towers the negativity usually judged as modern is apparent even at the so-called high-point of Victorian religious practice. Written between April 1855 and November 1856, Trollopes words contain the same kind of criticisms and sense of hostility encountered colloquially nowadays. He wrote: There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent, and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips. No one can rid himself of the preaching clergyman. He is the bore of the age, the old man whom we Sinbads cannot shake off, the nightmare that disturbs our Sundays rest, the incubus that overloads our religion and makes Gods service distasteful. We are not forced into church! No: but we desire more than that. We desire not to be forced to stay away. We desire, nay, we are resolute, to enjoy the comfort of public worship; but we desire also that we may do so without an amount of tedium which ordinary human nature cannot endure with patience; that we may be able to leave the house of God, without that anxious longing for escape, which is the common consequence of common sermons. (Trollope, 1995: 43-44) Only the assumption that Sunday worship is the norm and the invariable gender of the preacher signifies Trollopes diatribe as of another age. The notion of a static audience enduring a platitudinous and boring verbal presentation has an altogether familiar ring about it. As Colin Morris (1996: xi) points out, it is significant that the first series of the Lyman-Beecher Lectures on Preaching established at Yale University in the 1870s ended with a lecture entitled, Is Preaching Finished? Needless to say, the lecture firmly declared that preaching had a future; but, put alongside Trollopes criticisms, it demonstrates that negativity about sermons predates the age of mass electronic communication. In recent years, numerous influential homileticians have described preaching as being in crisis (for example, Jensen, (1993); Wilson, (1988); Morris, (1996)), but too often such worried analysis has overstated the contemporaneity of the problem. 2.2 The perception of a crisis in preaching. Three recurring emphases are common to the arguments of those who see the crisis in preaching as something of recent origin, namely: a widespread loss of confidence in institutions; a change in socially learnt communicative skills; and the all-pervasive influence of television and associated vehicles of mass communication. So, to amplify those three aspects, the argument is usually made in the following kinds of terms. First, not only has the severe decline in commitment to religious institutions in recent times resulted in far fewer people actually hearing sermons, even those who do experience preaching at firsthand are much less likely to treat sermons as being particularly significant than did their immediate forebears. Scepticism, and a questioning outlook that constantly raises issues of credibility, is part of the very air of social intercourse, and preaching has no social independence from such an atmosphere. Like every other voice, the preaching voice is one voice amongst a myriad of other voices, and is just as harried by questions of authenticity, doubt and competition as any other voice. Contemporary European society, it is said, has a fundamentally anti-authoritarian aspect to it that will not allow any single voice ultimate authority. Preaching, therefore, which is usually considered to require special and very particular authority being attributed to the preacher, is especially suspec t. This, in turn, has ramifications for those who preach, since as individuals they are just as much influenced by these contextual pressures as anyone else. This means that preachers, whatever they claim in public, almost inevitably have less confidence in the preaching task than even their recent predecessors. Second, in what the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo (2001: 230) has termed a society of generalized communication, the very nature of communication itself has profoundly shifted. It is as if everything in human experience has become an object of communication. This shift is often associated with consumerism because, it is argued, such a process of ever widening objects of communication allows more and more events, things, and relationships to become marketable commodities. This expansion, however, brings with it three difficult consequences: it vastly increases the number and range of communication events each person encounters day by day, with a resulting loss in focus, concentration, and time spent on each one; it so stimulates the psychological and physical experience of each person that peoples boredom thresholds have decreased dramatically; and it makes communication itself part of the constantly changing, consumption dominated, arena of style and fashion. These things are pa rticularly problematic for preaching since they mean hearers have ever shortening attention spans, feel they need to be stimulated by what they hear, and employ fashion-like judgments to both their readiness to listen and their willingness to respond (Rogness, 1994: 27-29). Coupled with these changes comes an emphasis on technique in communication, and a preference for labelling unacceptable ideas or challenges as a failure in communication. As a result preachers face intense pressures to conform, both in terms of the content of sermons and the techniques of presentation, to what is socially acceptable simply to gain a hearing. Accordingly, it is argued that the requirement to attract attention and engagement is of a wholly more onerous intensity than it ever was in past times. In the distracted age that is contemporary society the static commitment and attention required of sermon audiences is so counter-cultural as to be almost unachievable. Third, the argument gives prominence to the absolute dominance of television as the popular medium, and characterizes contemporary culture as televisual and post-literate. It is said that through television, for the first time in the history of humanity, children are being socialized into image use prior to word use (see Warren, 1997). Consequently, the use of words is likely to no longer occupy the pole position in social discourse, but rather to occupy an inherently second order, commentary position. In other words, our culture has shifted from a reading-formed preference towards the ear over the eye, to an image-formed favouring of the eye over the ear, with an obviously detrimental effect on a word dominated form like preaching. Television also appears to be an open and democratized form of communication that offers the prospect of an absolutely free flow of information. It tantalizes with the notion that anything that happens will be almost instantaneously communicable; an impre ssion further reinforced by the Internet. Of course there are serious criticisms to be made of these judgments, but they are nevertheless widely persuasive, at least at face value, both because of the sensory immediacy of the medium and because of the entertainment factors closely allied with it. In comparison preaching seems a highly subjectivized personal choice in which the preacher demands of an audience assent without prior consent and justification, and in which the factor of entertainment does not figure at all. In a televisual world of a seemingly infinite number of stories, preachings insistence, as it is perceived, on the one story of Gods relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ seems partial and even tedious. Those who lived before the development of electronic media lived lives in which stories, colour, and pictures were rare and precious events; people of the televisual age inhabit a world alive with an ever changing array of images, colours and narratives. Is it any wonder then that preaching that developed as a communication technique in that pre-television world is thought of as having become outmoded? Such are the usual parameters of the argument—broadly stated, no doubt, and perhaps caricatured a little—of recent scholarly analysis of the social location of the practice of preaching in contemporary European society. Interestingly, it is apparent that the scholarly commentary not only echoes colloquial opinion about the recentness of the relative decline of the authority afforded preaching, but also the reasons given for that decline. One of questions which this thesis seeks to address is whether such judgments adequately represent what is actually going on in the act of preaching, and whether by an all too easy assumption of preaching as an essentially distinctive activity somehow distanced from other forms of discourse such analysis does not fall prey to the very forces it is trying to counter. After the hiatus caused by World War II, the BBC resumed television broadcasting in 1946, and the commencement of broadcasting by commercial stations in 1955 accelerated the use of the medium. By 1958 the number of British households with a TV exceeded those with only a radio (Mathias, 2006). Given the above discussion of the widely perceived influence of new electronic media and TVs escalating use, the 1950s seem an appropriate starting point for the consideration of publications dealing with preaching. Quite apart from this more commonplace sense of a shift having taking place, scholarly analysis of both Church history and homiletics tends to support the idea that very significant changes relevant to the thesis topic did in fact occur at this period. Those changes were not necessarily recognized at the time; perhaps an indication of the lag that occurs as the memories of one generation gives way to those of a succeeding one. One British preacher, however, was alert to the possibili ty that something profound was happening. That preacher was a R. E. C. Charlie Browne, a Manchester vicar, whose 1950s reflections on the preaching task turned out to be amazingly prescient of things that would become major concerns years later. Browne serves as a marker of change. It is sensible, therefore, to examine Browne in some detail before returning to the more general overview. 2.3 R. E. C. Browne as a marker of the changing social location of preaching. R.E.C. Brownes The Ministry of the Word was first published in 1958 in a series of short works entitled Studies in Ministry and Worship under the overall editorship of Professor Geoffrey Lampe. Lampes editorship lent theological credibility to a series that was notable on two counts. First, it was decidedly ecumenical (for example, two of the studies were by Max Thurian, who later became internationally known as the theological expositor of the ecumenical Taizà © community); and second, it was written from a perspective that only later would be widely termed applied or practical theology. Brownes book is the acknowledged masterpiece of the series and has been reissued three times since its first publication (1976, 1984 and 1994), as well as being published in the United States in 1982. Writing in 1986, Bishop Richard Hanson said of it: This is no little volume of helpful hints about preaching but a profound study of the meaning and use of language in relation to theology and to faith, and one that will outlast all the ephemeral booklets about how to preach. (in Corbett, 1986: v) Just why this work has been so frequently referred to in a wide variety of Christian traditions will be considered later, but for the purposes of the present discussion the crucial point is the historical context of its writing and publication. Browne wrote the book whilst he was Rector of the parish of Saint Chrysostum, Victoria Park, Manchester in the 1950s. Ronald Preston, in a foreword to one edition of The Ministry of the Word, describes Victoria Park as having moved rapidly since the 1920s from the remains of enclosed and privileged nineteenth-century affluence to near disintegration (in Browne, 1976: 10). He notes also, however, that the St Chrysostums relative proximity to the university and the citys main teaching hospital made it a base from which Brownes influence spread widely. Hanson records that it was a parish where the personality and abilities alone of the incumbent cleric could attract worshippers (Corbett, 1986: iv). In other words, several aspects of the social world that historians like Hastings (1986), Welsby (1984), and Hylson-Smith (1998) have characterized as typical of the 1950s were clearly likely to have been there in Brownes experience of the ministerial life. For example, Welsby commenting on t he monthly journal Theology in the two immediately post-war decades notes how it was widely read by parish clergy and acted as a connecting bridge between the concerns of academia and local church life, and concludes: It is significant, however, that fundamental matters, such as belief in God or in Christ were seldom discussed in its pages, as though these theological foundations were secure and might be taken for granted. This could be a symbol of much of the theology of the forties and fifties. There was a self-confidence and security so that even those who did write about God, Christology, of the Church did so as though the basis of belief was unquestionably right. (Welsby, 1984: 67) Elsewhere in the same book Welsby notes that the seeds of radical change were present in the 1950s but went unperceived, and he describes the atmosphere in the Church of England as one of complacency and an apparent unawareness of trends already present which were to burst to the surface in the sixties (1984: 94). Browne most certainly did not share that unawareness and frankly acknowledged the difficulties of communicating the gospel despite the relatively secure social position of theological thought and institutional belief. Far from being in an unassailable authoritative position, he described preachers as living and preaching in an age when there is general perplexity and bewilderment about authority, and as all too unwittingly signifying that perplexity in the language and thought expressed in the pulpit (Browne, 1976: 33). Browne would probably have concurred with Adrian Hastings opinion that in the ebb and flow of the intellectual tide in the twentieth century, the 1950s marked a high water point of sympathy for the Christian faith in contrast to the high point for secularism immediately after World War I (Hastings, 1986: 491), but he nevertheless argued that effective preaching required new symbols because new human knowledge has disabled the old ones (Browne, 1976: 107). Hastings, looking back on the times in which Browne wrote, asserts: There was never a time since the middle of the nineteenth century when Christian faith was either taken so seriously by the generality of the more intelligent or could make such a good case for itself. (Hastings, 1986: 491) Browne himself is rather more querulous in his reflections and quotes approvingly from Emmanuel Mounier: There is a comfortable atheism, as there is a comfortable Christianity. They meet on the same swampy ground, and their collisions are the ruder for their awareness and irritable resentment of the weakening of their profound differences beneath the common kinship of their habits. The prospect of personal annihilation no more disturbs the contented sleep of the average radical-socialist than does horror of the divine transcendence or terror of reprobation disturb the spiritual digestion of the habituà ©s of the midday Mass. Forgetfulness of these truisms is the reason why so many discussions are still hampered by naà ¯ve susceptibilities. Emmanuel Mounier, The Spoil of the Violent, Harvill Press, 1955: 25 (as cited in Browne, 1976: 109) Browne was conscious that amongst the comforts of wide social acknowledgement and respect other more challenging forces were becoming apparent. Browne is wary of any intellectual triumphalism on the part of preachers and insists that in attempting to address the atheist, or the wholly religiously indifferent unperturbed post-atheist, it is always necessary to establish pastoral rapport first (1976: 110). Sometimes, he admits, such rapport will be impossible to establish (1976: 110). Paradoxically, as Hastings notes (1986: 492, 496), the 1950s were at one and the same time an era in which religion was considered seriously by a number of the great cultural and intellectual figures of the day (such as Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), Carl Jung (1875-1961), Graham Sutherland (1903-80), Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), to name just a few) and in which the radical agnosticism and secularism born of earlier times also flourished (for examples see the works of A.J. Ayer (1910-89), C.P. Snow (1905-80), A.J.P. Taylor (1906-90) and Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003)). Perhaps it was that Browne realized i n a way other preachers did not, that although these two worlds of thought existed side by side the competition between them was not in any way equal. As Hylson-Smith observes, by the end of World War II the environmental context of all cultural activity was essentially secular (1998: 212). That point was a matter of essential concern to a preacher like Browne who regarded sermons as an artistic activity requiring similar processes of social understanding and interaction as those necessary to the production of music, poetry or painting (Browne, 1976: 18). Browne writes rather ruefully: Christians have the naà ¯ve idea that the arts, specially drama, could and should be extensively used for the proclamation of the gospel. In the first place Christian artists cannot easily and quickly find a way of expressing Christian doctrine in a community which is not moved by Christian symbols. Indeed at present there is no common symbolism Christian or otherwise and Christian artists are found incomprehensible and disturbing by their fellow Christians who cannot justify the authority of new forms and somehow feel that old forms might be patched and brought up-to-date. In the second place whenever the church tries to use art as a method of propaganda her integrity and authority are severely questioned by just those whose conversion would be most significant. (1976: 35) There is here an early recognition of that social forgetfulness of Christian symbols that would a generation later become a commonplace assessment of religious traditions in contemporary Britain. For Browne the preachers purpose was to seek answers about the most profound aspects of human concern and experience with the single-mindedness and commitment of an honest artist. Easy answers to difficult questions, or formulaic responses to deep questioning, were to Browne a betrayal of preachings very purpose. For him nothing less than the artists earnest wrestling to express the inexpressible was good enough. It is hard to imagine that Browne was untroubled that the things of artistic expression, with one or two notable exceptions, seemed less and less concerned with religious ideas, and that the churches appeared indifferent to the fact (Hylson-Smith, 1998: 212). As favourable to inherited ideas of religious expression as the climate of the 1950s appears viewed from the beginning of the twenty-first century, Browne, as a preacher active during those years, offers an altogether less sanguine appraisal. That his book dwells extensively on the issue of meaning and the use of language in relationship to the expression of faith indicates that he did not share the easy certainties regarding the communication of religious ideas that were still prevalent within the institutional church of his day. Brownes commitment to preaching as a necessary part of Christian community life is absolute, but his insistence that its practice is most like the creation of a work of art or a poem makes plain its inherent limitations: the sermon can no more readily define the truth in absolute terms than can the artist or poet (1976: 18). Such an insistence shifts the authority given to preaching from one of power, described as six foot above contradiction, to the altoge ther different position implied in later years by terms such as Fords communicative expertise which is self-authenticating (Ford, 1979: 235), or Taylors fragile words (Taylor, 1998: 121). Like such later homileticians, Browne believed preachers should not claim too much for their efforts. That reserve, however, should not be mistaken for a hesitation about the necessity or value of preaching. In his work there is no hint of the thought of later theorists who sought to abandon preaching completely. Brownes reserve is a perceptive awareness that, to use the terminology of Adrian Hastings, although the comfortably traditionalist church of his times was undergoing a period of confident revival (1986: 504) it was in fact finding it harder and harder to connect with the generality of people in terms of shared symbols and meanings. Browne was ahead of his time in his recognition that the changing social context of ministry had direct ramifications for the power and authority of the preacher. He wrote: What ministers of the Word say may seem too little to live on, but they must not go beyond their authority in a mistaken attempt to make their authority strong and clear. That going beyond is always the outcome of an atheistic anxiety, or a sign that the man of God has succumbed to the temptation to speak as a god, to come in his own name and to be his own authority. (Browne, 1976: 40) Such sentiments are echoed in the more recent application of contemporary philosophy to preaching by the American scholar John S. McClure (2001). Nevertheless, in terms of homiletic theory in Britain in the twentieth-century, Brownes was a voice that offered a new appreciation of the actual communicative environment in which sermons were placed. His book demonstrates that the radical calling into question of the methodologies of preaching pre-dates both the crisis noted by such commentators as Ford (1979) or Jensen (1993) and the colloquial assumption that in the 1950s, before the widespread use of television, the place of the sermon was assured. This concern about preachings power to engage attention indicates that the shifts that will be analysed when this study returns to the consideration of collective memory must extend wide enough to include responses such as those of Browne. The unease with homiletic methodology that Brownes work expressed provides a justification for this review using his analysis as its historical starting point. Consequently, there now follows an overview of trends in preaching since Brownes book that aims to provide both general orientation and a framework within which works discussed later can be placed. 2.4 Trends in the theory and practice of preaching since the mid 1950s. O.C. Edwards in his A History of Preaching notes that the 25 year period ending in 1955 turned out to be the high-point of the social standing and influence of traditional Protestant churches (2004: 665). Whilst that judgment may seem too effusive and unqualified when applied to the United Kingdom, it does, nevertheless, indicate the reality of the institutional confidence that was prevalent in churches on both sides of the Atlantic at the time. That confidence had direct ramifications for preaching: as Hastings puts it, in the immediate post-war years preaching as both art and edifying was still alive and cherished (1986: 462). The comment comes in a passage in A History of English Christianity 1920 1985 (1986: 436-472) that deals with the Free Churches, in which Hastings cites the influential preaching ministries of Leslie Weatherhead (1893-1975), W.E. Sangster (1900-1960), and Donald Soper (1903-1998)—all of whom drew large numbers to hear them preach. In the same section of his book, however, comes this stark conclusion: The mid-1950s can be dated pretty precisely as the end of the age of preaching: people suddenly ceased to think it worthwhile listening to a special preacher. Whether this was caused by the religious shift produced by the liturgical movement or by the spread of television or by some other alteration in human sensibility is not clear. But the change is clear. (1986: 465) Hastings is perhaps a little too hesitant in his judgement about what prompted this change. Although numerous theological and social factors were obviously significant, the turn towards television as a predominating pastime must surely have been the crucial prompter of change in the way people spent their time. That preaching, at the beginning of the 1950s at least, remained dominated by agendas and styles drawn from previous generations is evident in the fact that a number of books from those earlier times remained in frequent use. Bishop Phillips Brooks had delivered his eight lectures on preaching at Yale Divinity School in the Lyman Beecher Lectureship of January and February 1877, but his advice was still considered pertinent enough to warrant the publication of a British fifth edition in 1957. Similarly, Harry Emerson Fosdicks Lyman Beecher lectures of the winter of 1923-4, entitled The Modern Use of the Bible, were last re-issued in their published form as late as 1961; and Leslie Weatherheads Lyman Beecher lectures of 1948-9, although only published in part in his book Psychology, Religion and Healing in 1957, was re-issued in 1974. Two crucial points are suggested by the longevity of these works: first, although the 1950s do indeed mark a watershed in preachings social location, it is clear that the consequences of that change were not apparent with the same force, nor at the same rate, Analysis of Contemporary British Preaching Styles Analysis of Contemporary British Preaching Styles The concept of preaching Chapter Two Contextual Literature Review 2.1 Establishing a starting point. Sermons are not a kind of discourse given much serious public attention in twenty-first century Britain. The very concept of preaching often brings with it negative connotations. To accuse any contemporary commentator of preaching is to suggest that unsubstantiated opinions are being delivered in a tedious manner. That in such common usage preaching is almost invariably a highly critical or even condemnatory epithet indicates something of the social standing of the practice of preaching. Preaching is not an activity that is generally thought of as either intellectually or emotionally engaging. It is, rather, something that is considered to be at best passà ©, and at worst wholly untrustworthy. If challenged, those who speak of preaching in such pejorative terms will often cite the cultural distance in practice and understanding between contemporary society and the sermon form as the basis of their judgment. Mention will be made of the social irrelevance of the content of typical sermons, the perceived authoritarian position of the preacher, and the strangeness of the environment in which sermons usually occur. It is also likely that the methodology employed will be judged anachronistic, static, long-winded, and overly didactic for people used to the methods and time-frames of electronic media. The implication is that preaching is somehow out of place in modern society and that, therefore, the negative attitudes displayed in the colloquial use of the term preaching is something new. It is fashionably contemporary to adopt a contemptuous or at best a jocular attitude towards preaching. I use the term fashionably to emphasize that preaching is not the only discourse to receiv e such widespread opprobrium: advertising is similarly widely scorned yet, given the vast sums of money spent on it, is evidently effective nonetheless (Kilbourne, 1999: 34). Voiced contempt of preaching as a worthwhile actively is not necessarily to be taken at face value. As has been stated in the introduction, this thesis seeks to present an analysis of contemporary British preaching as a practice of social mnemonics. As the idea of social practice in that terminology refers to the whole of society rather than an interest group or a few like-minded people gathered together, such a perspective may appear to be an oxymoron given that recent poling suggests only just over six per cent of the adult population of the UK are churchgoers (see Brierley, 2008). This literature review will, nevertheless, seek to establish that Christian preachers who have reflected in depth on their practice in recent generations have invariably assumed that homiletics is an aspect of public discourse rather than an institutionally confined and specialized type of communication. In recent times, justifying that assumption has become more and more difficult, as this review will demonstrate. It has to be admitted that preaching no longer has the place in society-wide awareness i t once enjoyed, despite the occasional headline making exceptions, such as Archbishop Robert Runcies sermon at the Falklands War Memorial Service on 26th June 1982 that reportedly so annoyed the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (Brown, 2000). Despite the decline in preachings social status, this study argues that there are always connections between homiletic theory and wider social discourse, and that discovering those connections is a mnemonic skill required of all preachers. That many studies (for example, Ford. (1979); Bausch, (1996); and Day, Astley and Francis, (2005)) have observed that since at least the 1960s the idea of preaching as a worthwhile arena of social discourse has been repeatedly and vigorously questioned is part of the contextualization with which this thesis is concerned. That the very word preaching brings with it negative connotations that touch even regular Christian worshippers, as N.T. Wright observes in his foreword to the Reader on Preaching (Day, 2005: ix), is part of the social understanding this study aims to examine. The colloquial usage that applies the word preaching to the expression of any unsubstantiated opinions, or any speech delivered in a tedious manner, is not a prejudice that serious homiletic theory can simply ignore. That usage is widespread and is, for example, represented in the 1995 edition of the Oxford English Reference Dictionary where the second definition of preach is give moral advice in an obtrusive w ay. Similarly, the use of the word preaching as a highly critical or even condemnatory epithet is too frequent in newspapers to need much supporting elaboration. Andrew Rawnsley writing in The Observer on 13th July 2008 is but one example of a continuing journalistic convention. Rawnsley cited the drawbacks for politicians who preach in their campaigning via a long catalogue of negatives about the idea of preaching which included delivering patronising lectures from a position of immense privilege, wringing their hands about the sins of the world without offering any practical answers to improve society, and simplified to the point of parody. These kinds of associations related to the idea of preaching cannot be simply dismissed if it is to be argued that the practice of preaching within the churches is closely related to wider social trends. Instead, the contemporary bias that associates preaching with that which is intellectually lazy, emotionally sterile, untrustworthy, or simply passà ©, must be treated as a factor that needs to be addressed in considering the mechanisms of collective memory. That said, it must also be acknowledged that the assertion that preachings low social esteem is a modern phenomenon is not wholly true. Like the contemporary negative connotations of preaching, the characterization of preaching as formerly being held in great social esteem, is a generalization that obscures as much as it discloses. In the famous passage concerning preaching in Anthony Trollopes novel Barchester Towers the negativity usually judged as modern is apparent even at the so-called high-point of Victorian religious practice. Written between April 1855 and November 1856, Trollopes words contain the same kind of criticisms and sense of hostility encountered colloquially nowadays. He wrote: There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent, and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips. No one can rid himself of the preaching clergyman. He is the bore of the age, the old man whom we Sinbads cannot shake off, the nightmare that disturbs our Sundays rest, the incubus that overloads our religion and makes Gods service distasteful. We are not forced into church! No: but we desire more than that. We desire not to be forced to stay away. We desire, nay, we are resolute, to enjoy the comfort of public worship; but we desire also that we may do so without an amount of tedium which ordinary human nature cannot endure with patience; that we may be able to leave the house of God, without that anxious longing for escape, which is the common consequence of common sermons. (Trollope, 1995: 43-44) Only the assumption that Sunday worship is the norm and the invariable gender of the preacher signifies Trollopes diatribe as of another age. The notion of a static audience enduring a platitudinous and boring verbal presentation has an altogether familiar ring about it. As Colin Morris (1996: xi) points out, it is significant that the first series of the Lyman-Beecher Lectures on Preaching established at Yale University in the 1870s ended with a lecture entitled, Is Preaching Finished? Needless to say, the lecture firmly declared that preaching had a future; but, put alongside Trollopes criticisms, it demonstrates that negativity about sermons predates the age of mass electronic communication. In recent years, numerous influential homileticians have described preaching as being in crisis (for example, Jensen, (1993); Wilson, (1988); Morris, (1996)), but too often such worried analysis has overstated the contemporaneity of the problem. 2.2 The perception of a crisis in preaching. Three recurring emphases are common to the arguments of those who see the crisis in preaching as something of recent origin, namely: a widespread loss of confidence in institutions; a change in socially learnt communicative skills; and the all-pervasive influence of television and associated vehicles of mass communication. So, to amplify those three aspects, the argument is usually made in the following kinds of terms. First, not only has the severe decline in commitment to religious institutions in recent times resulted in far fewer people actually hearing sermons, even those who do experience preaching at firsthand are much less likely to treat sermons as being particularly significant than did their immediate forebears. Scepticism, and a questioning outlook that constantly raises issues of credibility, is part of the very air of social intercourse, and preaching has no social independence from such an atmosphere. Like every other voice, the preaching voice is one voice amongst a myriad of other voices, and is just as harried by questions of authenticity, doubt and competition as any other voice. Contemporary European society, it is said, has a fundamentally anti-authoritarian aspect to it that will not allow any single voice ultimate authority. Preaching, therefore, which is usually considered to require special and very particular authority being attributed to the preacher, is especially suspec t. This, in turn, has ramifications for those who preach, since as individuals they are just as much influenced by these contextual pressures as anyone else. This means that preachers, whatever they claim in public, almost inevitably have less confidence in the preaching task than even their recent predecessors. Second, in what the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo (2001: 230) has termed a society of generalized communication, the very nature of communication itself has profoundly shifted. It is as if everything in human experience has become an object of communication. This shift is often associated with consumerism because, it is argued, such a process of ever widening objects of communication allows more and more events, things, and relationships to become marketable commodities. This expansion, however, brings with it three difficult consequences: it vastly increases the number and range of communication events each person encounters day by day, with a resulting loss in focus, concentration, and time spent on each one; it so stimulates the psychological and physical experience of each person that peoples boredom thresholds have decreased dramatically; and it makes communication itself part of the constantly changing, consumption dominated, arena of style and fashion. These things are pa rticularly problematic for preaching since they mean hearers have ever shortening attention spans, feel they need to be stimulated by what they hear, and employ fashion-like judgments to both their readiness to listen and their willingness to respond (Rogness, 1994: 27-29). Coupled with these changes comes an emphasis on technique in communication, and a preference for labelling unacceptable ideas or challenges as a failure in communication. As a result preachers face intense pressures to conform, both in terms of the content of sermons and the techniques of presentation, to what is socially acceptable simply to gain a hearing. Accordingly, it is argued that the requirement to attract attention and engagement is of a wholly more onerous intensity than it ever was in past times. In the distracted age that is contemporary society the static commitment and attention required of sermon audiences is so counter-cultural as to be almost unachievable. Third, the argument gives prominence to the absolute dominance of television as the popular medium, and characterizes contemporary culture as televisual and post-literate. It is said that through television, for the first time in the history of humanity, children are being socialized into image use prior to word use (see Warren, 1997). Consequently, the use of words is likely to no longer occupy the pole position in social discourse, but rather to occupy an inherently second order, commentary position. In other words, our culture has shifted from a reading-formed preference towards the ear over the eye, to an image-formed favouring of the eye over the ear, with an obviously detrimental effect on a word dominated form like preaching. Television also appears to be an open and democratized form of communication that offers the prospect of an absolutely free flow of information. It tantalizes with the notion that anything that happens will be almost instantaneously communicable; an impre ssion further reinforced by the Internet. Of course there are serious criticisms to be made of these judgments, but they are nevertheless widely persuasive, at least at face value, both because of the sensory immediacy of the medium and because of the entertainment factors closely allied with it. In comparison preaching seems a highly subjectivized personal choice in which the preacher demands of an audience assent without prior consent and justification, and in which the factor of entertainment does not figure at all. In a televisual world of a seemingly infinite number of stories, preachings insistence, as it is perceived, on the one story of Gods relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ seems partial and even tedious. Those who lived before the development of electronic media lived lives in which stories, colour, and pictures were rare and precious events; people of the televisual age inhabit a world alive with an ever changing array of images, colours and narratives. Is it any wonder then that preaching that developed as a communication technique in that pre-television world is thought of as having become outmoded? Such are the usual parameters of the argument—broadly stated, no doubt, and perhaps caricatured a little—of recent scholarly analysis of the social location of the practice of preaching in contemporary European society. Interestingly, it is apparent that the scholarly commentary not only echoes colloquial opinion about the recentness of the relative decline of the authority afforded preaching, but also the reasons given for that decline. One of questions which this thesis seeks to address is whether such judgments adequately represent what is actually going on in the act of preaching, and whether by an all too easy assumption of preaching as an essentially distinctive activity somehow distanced from other forms of discourse such analysis does not fall prey to the very forces it is trying to counter. After the hiatus caused by World War II, the BBC resumed television broadcasting in 1946, and the commencement of broadcasting by commercial stations in 1955 accelerated the use of the medium. By 1958 the number of British households with a TV exceeded those with only a radio (Mathias, 2006). Given the above discussion of the widely perceived influence of new electronic media and TVs escalating use, the 1950s seem an appropriate starting point for the consideration of publications dealing with preaching. Quite apart from this more commonplace sense of a shift having taking place, scholarly analysis of both Church history and homiletics tends to support the idea that very significant changes relevant to the thesis topic did in fact occur at this period. Those changes were not necessarily recognized at the time; perhaps an indication of the lag that occurs as the memories of one generation gives way to those of a succeeding one. One British preacher, however, was alert to the possibili ty that something profound was happening. That preacher was a R. E. C. Charlie Browne, a Manchester vicar, whose 1950s reflections on the preaching task turned out to be amazingly prescient of things that would become major concerns years later. Browne serves as a marker of change. It is sensible, therefore, to examine Browne in some detail before returning to the more general overview. 2.3 R. E. C. Browne as a marker of the changing social location of preaching. R.E.C. Brownes The Ministry of the Word was first published in 1958 in a series of short works entitled Studies in Ministry and Worship under the overall editorship of Professor Geoffrey Lampe. Lampes editorship lent theological credibility to a series that was notable on two counts. First, it was decidedly ecumenical (for example, two of the studies were by Max Thurian, who later became internationally known as the theological expositor of the ecumenical Taizà © community); and second, it was written from a perspective that only later would be widely termed applied or practical theology. Brownes book is the acknowledged masterpiece of the series and has been reissued three times since its first publication (1976, 1984 and 1994), as well as being published in the United States in 1982. Writing in 1986, Bishop Richard Hanson said of it: This is no little volume of helpful hints about preaching but a profound study of the meaning and use of language in relation to theology and to faith, and one that will outlast all the ephemeral booklets about how to preach. (in Corbett, 1986: v) Just why this work has been so frequently referred to in a wide variety of Christian traditions will be considered later, but for the purposes of the present discussion the crucial point is the historical context of its writing and publication. Browne wrote the book whilst he was Rector of the parish of Saint Chrysostum, Victoria Park, Manchester in the 1950s. Ronald Preston, in a foreword to one edition of The Ministry of the Word, describes Victoria Park as having moved rapidly since the 1920s from the remains of enclosed and privileged nineteenth-century affluence to near disintegration (in Browne, 1976: 10). He notes also, however, that the St Chrysostums relative proximity to the university and the citys main teaching hospital made it a base from which Brownes influence spread widely. Hanson records that it was a parish where the personality and abilities alone of the incumbent cleric could attract worshippers (Corbett, 1986: iv). In other words, several aspects of the social world that historians like Hastings (1986), Welsby (1984), and Hylson-Smith (1998) have characterized as typical of the 1950s were clearly likely to have been there in Brownes experience of the ministerial life. For example, Welsby commenting on t he monthly journal Theology in the two immediately post-war decades notes how it was widely read by parish clergy and acted as a connecting bridge between the concerns of academia and local church life, and concludes: It is significant, however, that fundamental matters, such as belief in God or in Christ were seldom discussed in its pages, as though these theological foundations were secure and might be taken for granted. This could be a symbol of much of the theology of the forties and fifties. There was a self-confidence and security so that even those who did write about God, Christology, of the Church did so as though the basis of belief was unquestionably right. (Welsby, 1984: 67) Elsewhere in the same book Welsby notes that the seeds of radical change were present in the 1950s but went unperceived, and he describes the atmosphere in the Church of England as one of complacency and an apparent unawareness of trends already present which were to burst to the surface in the sixties (1984: 94). Browne most certainly did not share that unawareness and frankly acknowledged the difficulties of communicating the gospel despite the relatively secure social position of theological thought and institutional belief. Far from being in an unassailable authoritative position, he described preachers as living and preaching in an age when there is general perplexity and bewilderment about authority, and as all too unwittingly signifying that perplexity in the language and thought expressed in the pulpit (Browne, 1976: 33). Browne would probably have concurred with Adrian Hastings opinion that in the ebb and flow of the intellectual tide in the twentieth century, the 1950s marked a high water point of sympathy for the Christian faith in contrast to the high point for secularism immediately after World War I (Hastings, 1986: 491), but he nevertheless argued that effective preaching required new symbols because new human knowledge has disabled the old ones (Browne, 1976: 107). Hastings, looking back on the times in which Browne wrote, asserts: There was never a time since the middle of the nineteenth century when Christian faith was either taken so seriously by the generality of the more intelligent or could make such a good case for itself. (Hastings, 1986: 491) Browne himself is rather more querulous in his reflections and quotes approvingly from Emmanuel Mounier: There is a comfortable atheism, as there is a comfortable Christianity. They meet on the same swampy ground, and their collisions are the ruder for their awareness and irritable resentment of the weakening of their profound differences beneath the common kinship of their habits. The prospect of personal annihilation no more disturbs the contented sleep of the average radical-socialist than does horror of the divine transcendence or terror of reprobation disturb the spiritual digestion of the habituà ©s of the midday Mass. Forgetfulness of these truisms is the reason why so many discussions are still hampered by naà ¯ve susceptibilities. Emmanuel Mounier, The Spoil of the Violent, Harvill Press, 1955: 25 (as cited in Browne, 1976: 109) Browne was conscious that amongst the comforts of wide social acknowledgement and respect other more challenging forces were becoming apparent. Browne is wary of any intellectual triumphalism on the part of preachers and insists that in attempting to address the atheist, or the wholly religiously indifferent unperturbed post-atheist, it is always necessary to establish pastoral rapport first (1976: 110). Sometimes, he admits, such rapport will be impossible to establish (1976: 110). Paradoxically, as Hastings notes (1986: 492, 496), the 1950s were at one and the same time an era in which religion was considered seriously by a number of the great cultural and intellectual figures of the day (such as Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), Carl Jung (1875-1961), Graham Sutherland (1903-80), Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), to name just a few) and in which the radical agnosticism and secularism born of earlier times also flourished (for examples see the works of A.J. Ayer (1910-89), C.P. Snow (1905-80), A.J.P. Taylor (1906-90) and Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003)). Perhaps it was that Browne realized i n a way other preachers did not, that although these two worlds of thought existed side by side the competition between them was not in any way equal. As Hylson-Smith observes, by the end of World War II the environmental context of all cultural activity was essentially secular (1998: 212). That point was a matter of essential concern to a preacher like Browne who regarded sermons as an artistic activity requiring similar processes of social understanding and interaction as those necessary to the production of music, poetry or painting (Browne, 1976: 18). Browne writes rather ruefully: Christians have the naà ¯ve idea that the arts, specially drama, could and should be extensively used for the proclamation of the gospel. In the first place Christian artists cannot easily and quickly find a way of expressing Christian doctrine in a community which is not moved by Christian symbols. Indeed at present there is no common symbolism Christian or otherwise and Christian artists are found incomprehensible and disturbing by their fellow Christians who cannot justify the authority of new forms and somehow feel that old forms might be patched and brought up-to-date. In the second place whenever the church tries to use art as a method of propaganda her integrity and authority are severely questioned by just those whose conversion would be most significant. (1976: 35) There is here an early recognition of that social forgetfulness of Christian symbols that would a generation later become a commonplace assessment of religious traditions in contemporary Britain. For Browne the preachers purpose was to seek answers about the most profound aspects of human concern and experience with the single-mindedness and commitment of an honest artist. Easy answers to difficult questions, or formulaic responses to deep questioning, were to Browne a betrayal of preachings very purpose. For him nothing less than the artists earnest wrestling to express the inexpressible was good enough. It is hard to imagine that Browne was untroubled that the things of artistic expression, with one or two notable exceptions, seemed less and less concerned with religious ideas, and that the churches appeared indifferent to the fact (Hylson-Smith, 1998: 212). As favourable to inherited ideas of religious expression as the climate of the 1950s appears viewed from the beginning of the twenty-first century, Browne, as a preacher active during those years, offers an altogether less sanguine appraisal. That his book dwells extensively on the issue of meaning and the use of language in relationship to the expression of faith indicates that he did not share the easy certainties regarding the communication of religious ideas that were still prevalent within the institutional church of his day. Brownes commitment to preaching as a necessary part of Christian community life is absolute, but his insistence that its practice is most like the creation of a work of art or a poem makes plain its inherent limitations: the sermon can no more readily define the truth in absolute terms than can the artist or poet (1976: 18). Such an insistence shifts the authority given to preaching from one of power, described as six foot above contradiction, to the altoge ther different position implied in later years by terms such as Fords communicative expertise which is self-authenticating (Ford, 1979: 235), or Taylors fragile words (Taylor, 1998: 121). Like such later homileticians, Browne believed preachers should not claim too much for their efforts. That reserve, however, should not be mistaken for a hesitation about the necessity or value of preaching. In his work there is no hint of the thought of later theorists who sought to abandon preaching completely. Brownes reserve is a perceptive awareness that, to use the terminology of Adrian Hastings, although the comfortably traditionalist church of his times was undergoing a period of confident revival (1986: 504) it was in fact finding it harder and harder to connect with the generality of people in terms of shared symbols and meanings. Browne was ahead of his time in his recognition that the changing social context of ministry had direct ramifications for the power and authority of the preacher. He wrote: What ministers of the Word say may seem too little to live on, but they must not go beyond their authority in a mistaken attempt to make their authority strong and clear. That going beyond is always the outcome of an atheistic anxiety, or a sign that the man of God has succumbed to the temptation to speak as a god, to come in his own name and to be his own authority. (Browne, 1976: 40) Such sentiments are echoed in the more recent application of contemporary philosophy to preaching by the American scholar John S. McClure (2001). Nevertheless, in terms of homiletic theory in Britain in the twentieth-century, Brownes was a voice that offered a new appreciation of the actual communicative environment in which sermons were placed. His book demonstrates that the radical calling into question of the methodologies of preaching pre-dates both the crisis noted by such commentators as Ford (1979) or Jensen (1993) and the colloquial assumption that in the 1950s, before the widespread use of television, the place of the sermon was assured. This concern about preachings power to engage attention indicates that the shifts that will be analysed when this study returns to the consideration of collective memory must extend wide enough to include responses such as those of Browne. The unease with homiletic methodology that Brownes work expressed provides a justification for this review using his analysis as its historical starting point. Consequently, there now follows an overview of trends in preaching since Brownes book that aims to provide both general orientation and a framework within which works discussed later can be placed. 2.4 Trends in the theory and practice of preaching since the mid 1950s. O.C. Edwards in his A History of Preaching notes that the 25 year period ending in 1955 turned out to be the high-point of the social standing and influence of traditional Protestant churches (2004: 665). Whilst that judgment may seem too effusive and unqualified when applied to the United Kingdom, it does, nevertheless, indicate the reality of the institutional confidence that was prevalent in churches on both sides of the Atlantic at the time. That confidence had direct ramifications for preaching: as Hastings puts it, in the immediate post-war years preaching as both art and edifying was still alive and cherished (1986: 462). The comment comes in a passage in A History of English Christianity 1920 1985 (1986: 436-472) that deals with the Free Churches, in which Hastings cites the influential preaching ministries of Leslie Weatherhead (1893-1975), W.E. Sangster (1900-1960), and Donald Soper (1903-1998)—all of whom drew large numbers to hear them preach. In the same section of his book, however, comes this stark conclusion: The mid-1950s can be dated pretty precisely as the end of the age of preaching: people suddenly ceased to think it worthwhile listening to a special preacher. Whether this was caused by the religious shift produced by the liturgical movement or by the spread of television or by some other alteration in human sensibility is not clear. But the change is clear. (1986: 465) Hastings is perhaps a little too hesitant in his judgement about what prompted this change. Although numerous theological and social factors were obviously significant, the turn towards television as a predominating pastime must surely have been the crucial prompter of change in the way people spent their time. That preaching, at the beginning of the 1950s at least, remained dominated by agendas and styles drawn from previous generations is evident in the fact that a number of books from those earlier times remained in frequent use. Bishop Phillips Brooks had delivered his eight lectures on preaching at Yale Divinity School in the Lyman Beecher Lectureship of January and February 1877, but his advice was still considered pertinent enough to warrant the publication of a British fifth edition in 1957. Similarly, Harry Emerson Fosdicks Lyman Beecher lectures of the winter of 1923-4, entitled The Modern Use of the Bible, were last re-issued in their published form as late as 1961; and Leslie Weatherheads Lyman Beecher lectures of 1948-9, although only published in part in his book Psychology, Religion and Healing in 1957, was re-issued in 1974. Two crucial points are suggested by the longevity of these works: first, although the 1950s do indeed mark a watershed in preachings social location, it is clear that the consequences of that change were not apparent with the same force, nor at the same rate,

Personal Goals :: essays research papers

My background in technology is not as deep as most people, but I do have some. My first experience with computer technology was when I was in eighth grade and the Atari VCS came out. My sister and I begged our parents for one for what seemed like eternity. Finally, that Christmas, there it was under the tree. After that, I remember computer class in school. Later when I joined the military, I had a small experience with a word processor, when I worked with the Staff Chaplain. After I separated from the military, I got a job at McDonalds as a manager and had to frequently use a computer for numerous tasks, reports, and so forth, and that was my first experience with it in the workplace. Later on I became a truck driver and thought I would not use it very much, but little did I know. The transportation industry is full of technology, from dispatch and the main office, to the trucks themselves. Dispatch is using computers to take orders track them and dispatch them. When a customer calls in and places an order or asks for a pick-up, the first thing a dispatcher does is input the information into a database and finds out if this customer has worked with them before. After they have determined either this they are entering this customer into the database, or they are entering a new program. This new program is how they enter the order into a new database. There are many different programs but they all do the same thing. They track the customers order form where it is originating from to the final destination and every stop in between, they track the mileage and fuel consumption on the individual truck and even how much down time the driver is taking. This program is lin ked to the individual truck, where the driver is in charge of upkeep. On the drivers end he/she is sending messages to dispatch telling them everything they need to know. Such as I am empty, where do I need to go, from I am broke down send help. These devices are called Qualcomms, but that is just a brand name. They are satellite links and mini computers all in one. These computers can do many things, they help the driver plot the shortest route to a delivery, track his fuel consumption, and most importantly his time records. Personal Goals :: essays research papers My background in technology is not as deep as most people, but I do have some. My first experience with computer technology was when I was in eighth grade and the Atari VCS came out. My sister and I begged our parents for one for what seemed like eternity. Finally, that Christmas, there it was under the tree. After that, I remember computer class in school. Later when I joined the military, I had a small experience with a word processor, when I worked with the Staff Chaplain. After I separated from the military, I got a job at McDonalds as a manager and had to frequently use a computer for numerous tasks, reports, and so forth, and that was my first experience with it in the workplace. Later on I became a truck driver and thought I would not use it very much, but little did I know. The transportation industry is full of technology, from dispatch and the main office, to the trucks themselves. Dispatch is using computers to take orders track them and dispatch them. When a customer calls in and places an order or asks for a pick-up, the first thing a dispatcher does is input the information into a database and finds out if this customer has worked with them before. After they have determined either this they are entering this customer into the database, or they are entering a new program. This new program is how they enter the order into a new database. There are many different programs but they all do the same thing. They track the customers order form where it is originating from to the final destination and every stop in between, they track the mileage and fuel consumption on the individual truck and even how much down time the driver is taking. This program is lin ked to the individual truck, where the driver is in charge of upkeep. On the drivers end he/she is sending messages to dispatch telling them everything they need to know. Such as I am empty, where do I need to go, from I am broke down send help. These devices are called Qualcomms, but that is just a brand name. They are satellite links and mini computers all in one. These computers can do many things, they help the driver plot the shortest route to a delivery, track his fuel consumption, and most importantly his time records.

The Advantages of City Life

Some people prefer to live in a small town. Others prefer to live in a big city. Which place would you prefer to live in? Use specific reasons and details to support your answer. The Advantages of City Life There are undeniable advantages to both life in a big city and in a small town. The former offers more excitement and convenience while the latter offers a cleaner, quieter and often friendlier place to live.However, despite the advantages of small town life, I prefer to live in a big city for several reasons. First, life in the city is more convenient. More goods are available and stores are open later. Also, there is better public transportation so it is easier to get around. I can find almost anything I want easily in the city. Second, there are more ways to spend leisure time in the city. There are many places I can go to meet friends and have fun.Finally, and most importantly, the city offers more educational and career opportunities. The city often attracts the best teach ers and the best companies. There is also a wider choice of jobs so it is easier to move up the career ladder. For all of these reasons, I prefer to live in the city. Although I sometimes miss the fresh air and quiet life of a small town, nothing can make up for the opportunities that the city offers me. If one wants to be successful, I believe the best place to live is the city. The Advantages of City Life The Advantages Of City Life Some people prefer to live in a small town. Others prefer to live in a big city. Which place would you prefer to live in? Use specific reasons and details to support your answer. The Advantages of City Life There are undeniable advantages to both life in a big city and in a small town. The former offers more excitement and convenience while the latter offers a cleaner, quieter and often friendlier place to live. However, despite the advantages of small town life, I prefer to live in a big city for several reasons. First, life in the city is more convenient. More goods are available and stores are open later. Also, there is better public transportation so it is easier to get around. I can find almost anything I want easily in the city. Second, there are more ways to spend leisure time in the city. There are many places I can go to meet friends and have fun. Finally, and most importantly, the city offers more educational and career opportunities. The city often attracts the best teachers and the best companies. There is also a wider choice of jobs so it is easier to move up the career ladder. For all of these reasons, I prefer to live in the city. Although I sometimes miss the fresh air and quiet life of a small town, nothing can make up for the opportunities that City LifeAs the famous saying goes â€Å"Grass is always greener on the other side†. People who live in the countryside might long to live in the city and those in the city may long for the peace and quiet of countryside life. However, countryside life and city life have several differences which may attract one person or repel another. Let us see some of these differences. Firstly, â€Å"The first wealth is health†, an elderly person might find life in the city to be better in the long run as there is better access to health care facilities and quick availability of round the clock emergency services. However, the kind of health care available in the city is not accessible to someone living in the countryside, as the countryside might have only a local clinic with a rural nurse available, sometimes even a doctor might not be available in the clinic. To add on to that the clinics are not equipped with the supplies necessary for an emergency, sometimes even basic medication becomes out of stock Cities are normally very crowded places as compared to countryside. In the city, you might not have the privacy that you wish for. You would not be able to go outside without bumping into people. You have 10 people living in a small one room kitchen and buildings just as far away as 5 feet. This however is a total different case in the countryside. You might walk for miles without encountering anyone and your nearest neighbor would live miles away. The population of the entire countryside may not be more than a few hundred. Due to high populations and great amount of disposable income, almost everyone in the city has one vehicle or the other. These vehicles, in addition to other sources of pollution, add on to the already worsening atmosphere. On the other hand in the countryside’s due to the absences of a large number of vehicles and other sources of pollution, you have abundance of fresh air and a very calm, clean and serene climatic conditions which are good for our†¦

My Traumatic Event

My Traumatic Event It was the first week Into my sophomore year; I thought I was going to have such a fun and careless time, I had Just got out of a very bad relationship and for the first time I felt free and In control of my own life. Until the day that my traumatic event changed my look on life, and made me open my eyes to reality. I had walked over to my friend Macaulay's house the morning before school. As I walk in the door McKay says â€Å"Hey girl I've got some good stuff for you. † Me: â€Å"Sure, what is it? † â€Å"I've got Asana that are . OMG,† she said â€Å"Oh yea sure, and if they're only . MGM I'll take two of them. Later on that morning I am sitting in my first period class which was speech. I am starting to feel extremely tired and I fall asleep for almost the whole period which was 90 minutes at the time. It was near the end of class, when there was about only 20 minutes left, I Instantly woke up and felt Like I was going to get sick so I qui ckly asked â€Å"May I go to the restroom? † My teacher must have known something was wrong because she sent her assistant with me. Once I was In the restroom, I pulled out my phone and tried to dial my great grandma so that she could come pick me up, but the embers started to look blurry.The lady who was with me asked â€Å"Are you k, are you k? Do I need to go get help? † The story from there on is kind off fog. I do remember being asked if I wanted to go to the nurses' office. Once I was in the nurses office I was asked what was going on. â€Å"l took two Asana that were . OMG. † â€Å"I'm sorry Ashley but I couldn't understand that, what did you say? † I was making sense in my mind but to other people I was mumbling and stumbling. The nurse had me sit down and try to explain things to her, while I waited on the ambulance to get there. â€Å"Ashley, what did you take? â€Å"l took†¦. I would doze off and the nurse would shake me and yell†¦ â€Å"Ashley, stay with me and explain to me what happened,† she said â€Å"l took two Asana†¦. † And I would doze off again and the same thing would happen. As I'm dozing off I see black walls that have surrounded me, and I feel as if I have been asleep for a while, when really it had only been a couple seconds. The whole time the nurse tried to get what happened out of me. As I'm waiting for the ambulance, I felt as if I had been waiting for hours. I don't know how long I had really been waiting, but it sure did feel like forever. Finally, the ambulance had arrived.I was put on the stretcher, strapped on, and wheeled out. As I'm being wheeled out the paramedic is trying to talk to me to keep me awake, it works until we get to the front door of the school (which is not very far from the nurses office. ) I do remember that as I'm being taken out that there are all these students gathered around trying to see what Is going on. Looking back I think how embarrassing. The next part that I remember I woke up to being hooked up to monitors, EKE pads all over, an IV In my arm, and I had to have a tube shoved down my nose. I was forced to drink something until I woke up Just puking nonstop.The worst part was I had nothing in my stomach to puke up besides that black, thick liquid I had drank earlier. What I was throwing up was pretty much tar like. After that phase passed I fell asleep again. The next time I woke up my dad was sitting across the way in front of me. He was sitting there with his hands on his head, as his head was down. I didn't even have to see the look on his face to tell that he was worried. Once he realized that I was awake I saw a look of relief and disappointment. The rest of what happened in the hospital is blur, so to mom to a conclusion I had overdosed.What I had taken was not real sure. I had blood test done in the hospital, but they are not real sure what exactly I had taken. From the description that I had given and my symp toms they said it could have been morphine, but that is not one hundred percent sure due to it wasn't found in my blood test. I paved some heavy consequences for my actions that day, even though the drugs were not taken on school ground, my episode happened on school ground. I was suspended for seven days, and I had to give the name of the person who I had received the pills from.Of course the person who I received them from was not happy, so I took harassment from her and her family for quite a while. My dad was pretty upset with the choice that I had made, and he felt that I should be punished/embarrassed. So after I was released from the hospital I went home, I ate something, and I started to change into some pajamas when my dad said â€Å"Oh no, we've got softball practice tonight and you're going! † I looked at him like he was crazy. I could barely function with all the â€Å"morphine† in my system. When I get to practice of course my dad has to tell my whole stor y to everyone.My coach takes me aside and wants to have a heart to heart conversation. I don't remember everything that he said, but I do remember a few things. â€Å"Ashley, high school is a very important matter and it is very easy to get mixed in with the wrong crowd. If you want to make something out of yourself you have to graduate high school, and you have to graduate with good grades and a good GAP, so don't let the wrong crowd ruin your future because you want impress a couple of friends you'll only have for maybe a year or two. † I thought about what my coach said and I started to think, â€Å"What do I want to do with my future?I want to be a Nurse Practitioner. After that I started to look into colleges, I had to take into consideration a lot of things. Like the things a college looks for in a student. Good consistent grades, a high GAP, attendance, whether or not you were a good student. At that point I was not on the right path to accomplish my future goal, and from that point on I changed my life in school. I got serious, I started going to class, I was there on time, I studied for test, and I always did my homework and always turned it in on time. All of my hard work finally paved because I did graduate in May of 2013.I may not have graduated with highest honors, perfect attendance, or valedictorian, but I came close to a 4. 0 GAP, and I graduated early. After high school, I went on to college to study medical assisting. I started out in college the right way, I did not fool around at all. When all said in done I graduated in November 2013, this time I did make a difference. I graduated with perfect attendance, highest honors, and valedictorian. My hard work paved off, I am now a medical assistant at the Indianapolis VA Hospital, and I plan on moving up in the medical field and making a difference.