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A Discourse Community As A Group Of People That Has An Agreed Set Of Common Public Goals

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John Swales defines a discourse community as a group of people that has an agreed set of common public goals, ways to communicate with its members, to provide information and feedback, genre(s) that the group may further communicate its goals, lexis, and a threshold level of members (220-2). The group I chose to study St. Luke Church of God in Christ, St. Luke COGIC, bears the qualifications to be a discourse community. Founded in 1925 by Millissis Shannon and her husband Charles with only twelve members, pastoring St. Luke COGIC is Elder E. A. Shannon with over eight hundred members (St. Luke Church of God in Christ). This church is a great church to attend and has several activities, groups, departments, and ministries for any person at any age. Some of them include Sunday School, music, men’s, women’s, youth, children’s, and Bible Study and they all help to reach the community and lead people to Christ. The church’s mission statement states that their purpose is, “to function as a Christian fellowship where the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached and the ordinances and doctrine of the church is taught and administered…” (St. Luke OB). My goal while observing and interviewing people was to figure out how people praise and worship the Lord at St. Luke COGIC on a Sunday.
Watching with minimum participation and just watching at what the church members did (McCarthy page 234) is how I observed St. Luke COGIC. On Sunday, services start at 8:00 a.m. and end at around 9:00 p.m.

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