Religious Service Speech Analysis

Danielle McIntyre

Public Speaking

Speech Analysis

12/3/2012

Speech Analysis

A. I went to Kingston United Methodist Church and the Pastor there is Earlene Lekwa. Earlene is from Columbus Junction Iowa and has been a pastor for some time. Aside from being a Pastor Earlene also works at a Preschool. Earlene has been the Pastor at Kingston United Methodist Church for a little over two years now and is very well liked by the congregation there.

B. Kingston United Methodist Church is not a very big church so the Sanctuary is not that large. The windows are all stained glass and the lights weren’t very bright so the room wasn’t that bright. It would have been much brighter if it had been a sunny day outside. The temperature in the room was warm, but comfortable. Some people probably would have found it too hot but I thought it was good. During the service people around me were whispering which I found very distracting. This is something that I notice whenever I attend this church and I noticed it very much since I was analyzing the speaker and the situation this time. I also noticed a lot of people coughing and sniffling which was very distracting and just plain annoying.

C. The pastor began with announcements and then Joys and Concerns. The part that I am analyzing, though, is the sermon. Pastor Earlene began her Sermon with a story from the bible. In the story a woman in the bible’s husband dies. Earlene talks about how in life sometimes things are going good and then you hit a bump in the road. Pastor Earlene encourages you to go to family when times get tough just like the woman in the bible did. She also stresses that God loves you and will always be there in the good times and in the bad. We must put our faith in God and Trust in God and his plans for us. We have to remember to do this even in the bad times.

Pastor Earlene also talks about love and how we must love God, self, and neighbor, even when it is hard to love some people we should do it to please God. We hold onto some things that we think we love that we sometimes put ahead of God and we need to put these things down. She also stated that the word love often times gets used to freely in todays world and that we shouldn’t use the word too freely. She ended with a very touching story.

D. I thought Pastor Earlene did very well. She was very conversational and had good eye contact. She used a mic. And was very easy to hear and understand. She had notes in front of her, but they weren’t used often. Her sermon went about eight minutes over, and it did seem a bit rushed because she knew she was running out of time.

E. Overall I thought the speech was very good. It was well organized and easy to understand which is sometimes hard to do because the bible can be confusing. I thought she connected it to the real world very well. She included real life stories and you could tell that everyone was really listening. I was very glad that I had to go to church to do this analysis because it turned out to be a very good sermon and I really took something away from it.