Welcome

Welcome to this "gym!" You'll see messages here about learning and teaching the languages I know well enough to tutor or teach. You'll also see messages here about the use of rhetoric (the effort to influence people's feelings and thoughts).

I'm employed in non-religious jobs, active in my church, and interested in the use of rhetoric in both types of environments.

I have learned to push religious matters mostly on my own kind. I have learned to try to practice discernment in applying encouragement, confrontation, affirmation and exhortation.

You are welcome to push back through comments. I am accountable for what I put here. If the way that I treat you stinks, please tell me so.

Emotionally charged comments are welcome, especially if they show some reasoning. Not all people who get branded as "loose cannons" are loose cannons.

Whether or not you are one of my own religious kind (Evangelical/Fundamentalist Protestants who are Americans), I want this blog to be useful for you on these topics.

Qualifiers with no shame: I'll mostly avoid discussing rhetoric in business management in order to keep myself employable. For rhetoric in churches I'll be silent on some issues, circumspect on others and outspoken on yet others.