Introduction
Religious organizations, especially on college campuses, can sometimes be viewed by the public as intimidating due to the rules and stereotypes associated with religious groups. Journey, a Christian worshiping community at the College of Charleston, encourages an open-minded approach to spiritual growth throughout college by communicating with students in a way that welcomes all types of students without judgment. This organization is a discourse community, a group of people that share common goals and communicate about a particular topic, at the College of Charleston. To determine this, I compared Journey to the discourse community discussed by John Swales in his academic article. In his piece, Swales explains that to be a true …show more content…
Religious organizations have been analyzed by others, such as Julie Park who crafted an academic article about how religious rhetoric relates to race. While Park discussed how religious groups on college campuses use rhetoric “to urge students to view race and faith as complementary paradigms” (6-7), I researched how Journey uses rhetoric to create a community where students can feel welcome regardless of factors such as race. Although race often relates to religious upbringing, Journey disregards this issue and focuses solely on building a relationship with God and following the spiritual journey presented as a maturing college student. As a discourse community, Journey uses constant communication through various forms of technology to ensure that students feel comfortable and included in the …show more content…
First, a discourse community must have a set of public, common goals (Swales 471). The main goal in Journey is “to provide you with a holistic understanding and practice of Christianity that equips you for life in the real world after you graduate (“Vision”). Journey also has a vision of “Question. Explore. Transform (“Vision”). The leaders encourage students to question and explore their faith and ultimately transform into Christians with an intimate relationship with God. Discourse communities have mechanisms of intercommunication and use these as ways to provide information and feedback (Swales 471-472). Journey uses email, text messaging, social media, and a website to communicate with members. The pastor informs members of all meetings through these means of communication and asks for questions and feedback about sermons. The group uses these different genres of communication to provide different types of information. Emails explain worship topics and what to expect, while text messages are simply reminders and feedback mechanisms. The website provides basic information for all students at the College of Charleston. On social media, pictures and videos of group activities are posted, as well as current topics in the news related to Christianity to spark
Religious organizations, especially on college campuses, can sometimes be viewed by the public as intimidating due to the rules and stereotypes associated with religious groups. Journey, a Christian worshiping community at the College of Charleston, encourages an open-minded approach to spiritual growth throughout college by communicating with students in a way that welcomes all types of students without judgment. This organization is a discourse community, a group of people that share common goals and communicate about a particular topic, at the College of Charleston. To determine this, I compared Journey to the discourse community discussed by John Swales in his academic article. In his piece, Swales explains that to be a true …show more content…
Religious organizations have been analyzed by others, such as Julie Park who crafted an academic article about how religious rhetoric relates to race. While Park discussed how religious groups on college campuses use rhetoric “to urge students to view race and faith as complementary paradigms” (6-7), I researched how Journey uses rhetoric to create a community where students can feel welcome regardless of factors such as race. Although race often relates to religious upbringing, Journey disregards this issue and focuses solely on building a relationship with God and following the spiritual journey presented as a maturing college student. As a discourse community, Journey uses constant communication through various forms of technology to ensure that students feel comfortable and included in the …show more content…
First, a discourse community must have a set of public, common goals (Swales 471). The main goal in Journey is “to provide you with a holistic understanding and practice of Christianity that equips you for life in the real world after you graduate (“Vision”). Journey also has a vision of “Question. Explore. Transform (“Vision”). The leaders encourage students to question and explore their faith and ultimately transform into Christians with an intimate relationship with God. Discourse communities have mechanisms of intercommunication and use these as ways to provide information and feedback (Swales 471-472). Journey uses email, text messaging, social media, and a website to communicate with members. The pastor informs members of all meetings through these means of communication and asks for questions and feedback about sermons. The group uses these different genres of communication to provide different types of information. Emails explain worship topics and what to expect, while text messages are simply reminders and feedback mechanisms. The website provides basic information for all students at the College of Charleston. On social media, pictures and videos of group activities are posted, as well as current topics in the news related to Christianity to spark