Speaking of Quentin Schultze
October 11, 2006
I just received today my copy of his latest book, An Essential Guide to Public Speaking: Serving Your Audience with Faith, Skill, and Virtue. Some quotes from the introduction:
"...the materials available for learning how to speak publicly have become excessively technical, focusing on skills without paying adequate attention to purpose and ethics. The biblical context--speech as a gift and a responsibility for the service of our neighbors--has nearly vanished."
"Augustine, trained as a rhetorician before his conversion, eventually concluded that Christians needed to save rhetoric from insincere practicioners who (1) taught and practiced deception, (2) equated good rhetorical (eloquence) solely with audience impact, and (3) believed that the real, inner character of a speaker was largely irrelevant in contrast to how an audience perceived that speaker.
"For the sake of church and society, we should reclaim Augustine's vision of rhetoric, which is fitting for servants of God in a needy world. . . ."
"This book reclaims public speaking as a noble practice for Christians. I encourage readers to become servant speakers who (1) faithfully serve audiences as neighbors, in the biblical sense, (2) are virtuous speakers, and (3) skillfully use verbal and non-verbal methods. Faith, virtue, and skill are the keys to servant speaking."
"...the materials available for learning how to speak publicly have become excessively technical, focusing on skills without paying adequate attention to purpose and ethics. The biblical context--speech as a gift and a responsibility for the service of our neighbors--has nearly vanished."
"Augustine, trained as a rhetorician before his conversion, eventually concluded that Christians needed to save rhetoric from insincere practicioners who (1) taught and practiced deception, (2) equated good rhetorical (eloquence) solely with audience impact, and (3) believed that the real, inner character of a speaker was largely irrelevant in contrast to how an audience perceived that speaker.
"For the sake of church and society, we should reclaim Augustine's vision of rhetoric, which is fitting for servants of God in a needy world. . . ."
"This book reclaims public speaking as a noble practice for Christians. I encourage readers to become servant speakers who (1) faithfully serve audiences as neighbors, in the biblical sense, (2) are virtuous speakers, and (3) skillfully use verbal and non-verbal methods. Faith, virtue, and skill are the keys to servant speaking."
