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Jonathan Hsu Park ENGL 106 3/26/14 Family Away From Home A discourse community is a community in which every single individual is brought together through a something in that everyone has in common. This is a community where an individual chooses to be a part of the community. My discourse community that I have chosen to represent is my church fellowship. My church fellowship is called Purdue Cornerstone Christian Fellowship and is mostly student-run. I first found out about Cornerstone at the club fair during Boiler Gold Rush for incoming freshmen the week before the fall semester began. I chose to start going out to Cornerstone because of recommendations from friends and relatives. I would like to show my audience that many stereotypes associated with church-attending people are not true at all. Through extensive research that I will be conducting over the next couple of weeks, I will provide proof and evidence that prove many of these stereotypes to be incorrect or false. I believe that in todays society, we, as a group, tend to stereotype and generalize many groups whether they are ethnic, racial, or social groups. The tendency to do stereotype is a very dangerous thing that society altogether should strive to stop doing. I have laid out a weekly plan to determine how to address this project. I will be using observations and interviews as my primary methods of acquiring information for this project. I intend to do two observations, one of Friday large group meetings and one of Sunday church service, and one interview. I believe it is a wiser decision to do two observations because I would like to note how my discourse community interacts and behaves in a regular, everyday situation.

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The goal of Cornerstone is for students to encourage and aid one another while fellowshipping and having fun with one another. Participation includes all years of undergraduate students as well as many post graduate students here at Purdue. In total, Cornerstone consists of roughly around sixty to seventy people. Lexis includes words and terminology from the Bible. Communication is usually done through Facebook. Facebook is the easiest way for all members of Cornerstone to communicate and interact since everyone has such busy schedules. For genre, Cornerstone is a very social discourse community. However, it mainly strives for members to develop and grow as Christians in college. For expertise, there are students who take on the tasks of small group leaders, worship team, and admins. Since Cornerstone is completely student-run, it does not rely on any adults. By this I mean that everyone at Cornerstone is a student, either an undergraduate student or graduate student. Ultimately I wish to better understand my discourse community and grow closer to all members of the group. For my first primary research methodology, I chose to do an observation. This observation is of the weekly Friday evening meetings in PHYS 112. These meetings are known as large group meetings. I chose to do an observation for the meeting because it would be easier to view the community in their natural environment. Large group goes from 7 PM to 9:30 PM. Leaders, consisting of praise band members, small group leaders, and anyone involved in organizing these weekly meetings, need to be at the Physics Building by 7 PM sharp or else they are required to pay $0.50 for each minute they are late. This is done so that leaders do not set a bad example for members by being late to meetings. On Friday, March 8th, I arrived at Physics around 7:01 PM. As usual, large group did not start until around 7:15 PM because members are usually late. People come as late as 7:30 or 7:45. There is a moment for prayer before we sing

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worship songs for everyone to calm down. So as this is going on, people coming in are very quiet, respectful, and careful not to be too loud. Everyone coming in is dressed very casually: jeans, tshirts, hoodies, etc. Essentially everyone is dressed however they dress for a regular school day. Around 8 PM, we split off into our four small groups that we have had since the beginning of the school year. These groups were picked by the leaders at the beginning of the school year and are basically smaller groups where individual members are able to share experience and just talk in general. Since I am not able to observe all small groups at once, since we split off and go into different classrooms, I made an assumption that all the small groups generally act and run the same way. Therefore, I based my observations off of just my small group. During small group, we just talk about anything that comes to mind. Small groups are intended for ideas and experiences to be free-flowing through each other. As a small group we continue to talk until about 9 PM. I noticed that within a small group, members as well as leaders are more likely and comfortable sharing with others in the group. After small group, everyone comes together to finish up large group together. We sing one or two more songs together as a congregation with the worship band. The worship band consists of a guitar, keyboard, drums, and bass guitar. After large group ends, the leaders have announcements for upcoming events that will be taking place in the future. Then, as usual, some of the guys go play basketball at the Co-Rec. Many guys bring their athletics bags to change into clothes at the Co-Rec but others are already dressed in athletic wear. There are usually a couple guys who play basketball on a regular basis including me, but there are also others from Cornerstone who come once in a while. The Co-Rec, unfortunately closes at 12 AM. So afterwards, we usually go to Harrison Grille to just chill and hangout. However, that last Friday, there were no basketball courts that were open for Cornerstone members to play by themselves. So instead, we played volleyball with some of the

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girls from Cornerstone. This semester, volleyball has become a second alternative instead of basketball. This is because sometimes there are events that run late Friday nights in the Co-Rec. These events usually are hosted on the basketball courts. Overall, Friday large groups are times for Cornerstone members to really bond and grow together. My second observation was done during Sunday morning church service. The church van goes around the West Lafayette area and picks up members who do not have a ride to church around noon on Sunday. Church service is at 1:30 PM. When we get to church, they provide lunch for us. Usually it is some sort of Korean food. Since I am not Korean, I do not exactly know what it is, but for the particular week that I doing my observation, we had some rice with curry and, of course, kimchi. While members are eating, more people arrive who dont eat lunch at the church. Cornerstone has Sunday church at the Korean Presbyterian Church a few miles north of Purdue campus. When members go into the room where service is held, the room is dark and the worship team is playing softly. This allows for members to calm down and focus as they walk in. After singing a few songs, offering is taken. Many times, there is not much that is placed in the basket that is passed around. This one Sunday was no exception. Then we pray for offering and then the pastor gives his sermon. This pastor is from Korea, so English is not his first language. As the sermon goes on, some people start to doze off or go on their phones. People get distracted. Others are trying to get the most out of the message and vigorously take notes. As the sermon ends, we sing one last song and conclude on that note. There are announcements about upcoming events and anything of the sort. Finally, rides are arranged back to campus. My interview was a face-to-face interview done with a leader. His name is Minwoo Kang. I asked him many questions that were phrased in a way that did not produce any biased results. I kept the interview short in order to preserve time because he was on a very tight schedule. His

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input on Cornerstone as a student-led organization was very eye-opening and allowed me to round out my paper very nicely. Minwoo explained that the current leadership consists of small group leaders, admin members, and worship team. These positions are held by students who apply for leadership positions. To apply for a position, one must submit a testimony to the current leadership team and the process advances from there. Altogether, Minwoo mentioned that Cornerstone has many positives and negatives. Given the current circumstances of Cornerstone, he would like to see more participation from members but understands that members also have their own schedules and may be busy. In conclusion, I hope to reveal just a tiny portion of what Cornerstone does on a daily basis. While not everything about Cornerstone is mentioned in this research paper, much of the weekly activities of the organization are mentioned. I believe Cornerstone is a wonderful student-led group of people who all have the same goal. This is what makes Cornerstone such a strong discourse community. All members seek to glorify God and will help each other get there.

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Works Cited Page Observation. Large Group Meeting. March 7 2014. Observation. Sunday Church Service. March 23 2014. Interview. Kang, Minwoo. March 21 2014.