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Noah Horn

UWRT 1102

Dr. Sally Griffin

20 March 2017

The presentation of my discourse community through a collage was an extremely helpful

exercise. I was able to hone in my research and define my topic using a different style of thinking

than one would normally use when attempting a to explore a community. Using pictures I was

able to better understand how I was going to portray my community as well as what exactly I

would be able to inquire more deeply into. My presentation, on the other hand was not nearly as

successful as I had hoped it would be.

I approached this project with an inside out mindset. I wanted to find pictures that

represented my community first and foremost. I wanted people to get a taste of what

MEcklenburg community church was like and while their understanding may be basic, it allowed

my audience to literally get an inside view of my Church. I then narrowed pictures down to

represent some of the issues that I wanted to focus on within my community. I was able to find a

picture that showed the size and modern look of my churchs sanctuary and I combined this of a

picture with the newly renovated childrens ministry area. This not only showed two locations

within my community, but also allowed me to talk about the issues with how the church may be

using the money. I used the logo and picture of the apparel so people could see the image that my

church was attempting to portray. THis then allowed me to shine the light on the fact that due to

the business like nature of my church, there may be an overemphasis on branding and name

recognition. Finally I was able to show a picture of the worship team which gave my audience

insight into the age of my church while also allowing me to comment upon the potential
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fabricated diversity, and the bias towards youth and attractive people. The only concept I was

not able to portray through my picture was the fact that the senior pastor of my church acted

more Chief Executive Officer than a Minister or traditional senior pastor. I included an Image I

found online because I felt this was one of the overlying themes and concepts in my inquiry

project and leaving a representation of this idea out of my collage would not portray an accurate

picture of my inquiry project.

My design of the picture was mostly artistic in nature. I wanted it to not simply be 6

pictures aligned on the screen but wanted it to appear like a legitimate collage. The only really

intentional part was the placing of auditorium as a background of sorts. Having it as the largest

picture allowed me to show the large size of my church and gave the audience a more indepth

look at the central location for my community.

My presentation was far less successful. My intention in the presentation was to portray

how much I appreciated with and identified with my community while talking about how I only

began to critically analyze it recently. I feel like it turned into a complete deep criticism of my

church. I feel like my audience would be confused if I had mentioned that I currently work for

my church and that at this point I have no intentions of changing that. I want to make changes in

my church and to truly be a part of a community, you must know its strengths and weaknesses;

however, due to my desire to be an engaging presenter, I focused far too much on the negative

aspects of my church. I do not think I would have changed any of the ideas I presented; however,

I wish I had approached them in a less critical tone. I want to be critical of my community but I

did not want my audience to believe that I was completely against the community I was apart of.

I also would have prepared more exactly what I planned upon saying. I knew what I wanted my

audience to understand about each picture but my preparation did not go far beyond that. I feel
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that I spoke well and the informal tone I used was appropriate for the setting, but the tone of

what I said would have been completely different had I prepared more specifically what I would

have said.

Overall, I believe the collage was helpful in my exploration of my community and my

inquiry paper. Most of the time simply writing something out and focusing my thoughts through

words and outlines had been most successful, but the way that the collage forced me to think

about individual concepts within my community really opened the door for further research and

inquiry and out of all the activities we have completed for the class, this is most certainly one of

the most helpful.