Benjamin Sherick
Benjamin Sherick graduated from the University of Calgary in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts - Honours First Class in Communication Studies and a minor in Religious Studies. His academic interests include rhetoric, pop culture, music, and religion. He currently resides in Alberta with his wife.
Contents
Introduction
The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill Church
What are the Scriptures?
Theory & Method
Ethos
Ethos Cont.
Conducting Interviews
Analysis
Analysis Cont.
Conclusion
Works Cited
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Conducting Qualitative Interviews
For this project, I wanted to not only speculate on issues of audience response, but also demonstrate the affect that Driscoll’s intrinsic ethos had on persuasion. Therefore, this project also involved qualitative, semi-structured interviews. These interviews were designed to add supplemental data that would support or question the findings of the rhetorical analysis.
Discussing various research methods, Neuman and Robson (2012) explain, “the focus [of interviews] is on the members’ perspectives and experiences” (p. 252). This was exactly the type of data I wanted to use to supplement the findings of the rhetorical analysis. After undergoing the process of gaining ethics approval from the University of Calgary, I began designing and carrying out the interview component of the project.
Since it was impossible to interview actual members of the MHC congregation due to the significant distance between Calgary and Seattle, I had to simulate an audience for the purpose of the interviews. Driscoll shares a religious ideology with a significant portion of his congregation. A simulated audience needed to share the same ideology. Therefore, I recruited Protestant, evangelical, North American practicing Christians.
Participants were selected using a nonprobability sampling method best described as purposive sampling. Neuman and Robson (2012) define purposive sampling as “situations in which an expert uses judgment in selecting cases with a specific purpose in mind” (p. 132). Participants were selected based on the following criteria:
- Participants ideally reflected Driscoll’s podcast audience, who would have had access to both the podcast and the news of the recent controversies without being members of the church. For this reason, and due to the inherent time, resource, and scope limitations of an undergraduate thesis, residents of southern Alberta were asked to participate. My personal network in the southern Alberta Christian communities enabled me to recruit six participants rather quickly. Four of the participants resided in Calgary, while one resided in Cochrane, and another lived in Airdrie.
- Data would be more relevant if participants closely resembled Driscoll’s original audience. Participants needed to be professing Protestant evangelical Christians belonging to churches with similar theological views to MHC. To demonstrate this criterion, participants were asked to read and demonstrate agreement with MHC’s statement of faith (Mars Hill Church, n.d.). In order to avoid bias or similarities in the answers, all selected participants attended different churches. This lead to a breadth in the denominational traditions represented.
- Since Driscoll originally preached this sermon to members of a church campus in Seattle’s university district, it was preferable that participants be in their twenties, similar to the audience who first heard Driscoll preach the sermon. Ideally, there would be equal gender representation, and a variety of education levels in order to diversify the potential responses.
Once participants were selected, the pool of participants was divided into two experimental groups. Since this project was primarily a rhetorical analysis, supplemented with data from human participants, it was not necessary to design a carefully controlled psychological or scientific experiment. However, I believed that manipulating the variable of reputation knowledge would help to answer the research question and sub-questions. In Group 1, participants were asked to listen to one sermon, and interviewed about its effect afterwards. Group 2 was asked to read a New York Times article and a blog post from Matthew Paul Turner about Mark Driscoll before listening to the sermon. The article, “A Brash Style That Filled Pews, Until Followers Had Their Fill” (Paulsen, 2014) was originally published on August 22, 2014, and outlined some of the controversy surrounding Driscoll and MHC. Turner’s blog post “Mark Driscoll’s Pussified Nation…” (2014) was the same blog post that originally revealed Driscoll’s 2000 comments under the pseudonym William Wallace II. Turner’s blog post contained only six lines of commentary, and was primarily comprised of an excerpt from Confessions of a Reformission Rev, excerpts of the damning quotes, as well as a link to the full pdf.
Both groups were shown the full video recording of the sermon. By showing participants the video, they experienced the sermon as closely as possible to those actually present in Driscoll’s church. This allowed them to see non-verbal elements of his ethos, such as his clothing, appearance, mannerisms, posture, and demeanor.
Once participants had finished watching the sermon, they were asked a number of questions relating to their perception of Driscoll and his ethos. All participants were asked the same questions, in the same order, with some exceptions. First, only participants in Group 2 were asked questions relating to the Matthew Paul Turner blog post and the New York Times article. Second, since the interviews were semi-structured and qualitative, participants were asked spontaneous questions relating to their experience of the sermon in order to clarify previous answers, expound on personal reactions, or pursue topics that emerged on the spot. Finally, on the rare occasion, questions were posed out of order. Conducting the interviews in this manner allowed me to gauge actual audience reactions to the sermon, in turn allowing me to supplement my own analysis with human data. I then incorporated this data into my rhetorical analysis where appropriate to supplement or interrogate my claims.
Profiles of Interview Participants
As a condition of participating in this study, I guaranteed anonymity to all participants. For this reason, any participant profiles must be vague. All participant names in this article are pseudonyms assigned based on gender. All participants were in their twenties. For the sake of classification and anonymity, I have categorized the participants as either “20-23”, “24-26”, or “27-29”. Finally, I have also indicated the level of knowledge each participant had about Driscoll prior to watching the sermon.
Participants in Group 1 were not given any information about Mark Driscoll prior to watching the sermon. Any reputational information held by this group had been accumulated prior to the interview. Group 1 contained:
- Courtney: 24-26 year old female. Demonstrated a low to moderate knowledge of Driscoll. She stated that she had listened to approximately three sermons by Driscoll, “a long time ago.”
- Emily: 24-26 year old female. Demonstrated a low to moderate knowledge of Driscoll. Had never listened to Driscoll’s preaching.
- Kyle: 27-29 year old male. Had no knowledge about Mark Driscoll.
Participants in Group 2 were asked to read the New York Times article and the Matthew Paul Turner blog post prior to watching Driscoll’s sermon, in order to understand how knowledge of reputation affected reception. Group 2 contained:
- Scott: 24-26 year old male. Demonstrated the highest level of knowledge of all participants. Had actually attended Mars Hill Church and seen Driscoll preach in person. Also indicated that he had watched numerous video excerpts and full sermons of Driscoll’s preaching.
- Rudy: 27-29 year old male. Demonstrated high knowledge about Driscoll.
- Liz: 24-26 year old female. Demonstrated a low to moderate knowledge of Driscoll.
Limitations of Interview Data
The interview data is limited in its reliability and its generalizability. Because of the small sample size, it is possible that data collected from these participants constitutes an anomaly. The findings of this project may be limited to the six participants that took part in the study. These findings could also be unique to the geographic location and the Christian audience. While this data may spark some interesting insights, it would still be necessary to interrogate these findings with future research.
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