Registration for Fall 2009 is closed.

Young Speakers of Austin (YSA) is a communications organization for Christian students with a strong focus on family participation. Members/Students range from ages 6 to 18. Members participate in a variety of communication activities including platform, limited preparation, and interpretive speeches as well as Team Policy and Lincoln Douglas Value debate. Student leadership is valued and experienced students are provided the opportunity to teach newer students.

Our club consists of two components, Competitive speaking and Community Speaking (our ICC Chapter).  You’ll find futher details regarding these components under the “About YSA page and under their individual pages.

Greetings!

YSA has just posted the updated information for Fall 2009. Check it out and please us know if you have any questions.

By the way, we’re very excited about next year.

Article to be published in the upcoming CHEACT Newsletter

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Homeschooled students and their parents from across the nation descended upon Austin, Texas on Tuesday, January 13. The annual Communicators for Christ Masters Conference was held at Crestview Baptist Church in North Austin for 9 straight days. This event attracted students from New Jersey, Michigan, Florida, Colorado and other states across the country. The aim of the conference was “to train students to be cultural communicators, helping parents to guide cultural communicators, and equipping teachers to develop cultural communicators.” It was the first time the national conference was ever held in Austin.

The event was organized by Communicators for Christ (CFC). CFC trains mostly-homeschooled middle and high school students in Christian speech and debate. Lead by the Moon Family of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, CFC travels most of the year leading conferences and events like this year’s Masters Conference.

This year’s conference  theme was “Lead the Escape” taken from Exodus 6:6,7. The first verse says, “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians, I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.” (NIV) Conference organizers wanted students to catch a vision for effectively communicating the gospel and Christian truth.

The conference was divided into two separate parts.

The first part was devoted to speech and media. Students attended two full days of classes on speech and communication. Some of those classes were entitled “All Truth is God’s Truth”, “Once Upon a Time” (storytelling), “Blogging Kung-Fu”, and “A Knack for Acting”. After attending classes, students participated in a mock-tournament on Friday where they competed against each other in various speech events.

The second part of the conference focused on competitive debate. This part included CFC debate instruction and competition. CFC interns and former interns taught most of these classes. Interns are former-speech and debate students who toured with CFC. Debate classes focused on two types of debate: one-on-one debate, also known as Value/Lincoln-Douglas Debate and two-on-two debate also known as Team Policy Debate. This portion also culminated in a debate tournament on Wednesday, January 21.

One conference attendee was especially encouraged by Masters 2009. Maddie Clay of Cedar Park, said, “The Masters Conference was really inspiring. I learned a lot and it made me want to be more involved in speech and debate. I met so many great people from various parts of the country. I’m looking forward to the next CFC conference that I get to attend.”

More information for Communicators for Christ can be found at their website: www.CommunicatorsForChrist.com

In case you missed last Thursday’s meeting - or if you just needed a refresher – I wanted to review some basics from our Apologetics class. Hopefully you found it helpful. Even if you’re not competing this year, these principles are useful for Christian speech and debate.

Event

Apologetics is a limited preparation event in which the speaker is given four minutes to prepare a six-minute speech on a topic related to defending his/her faith.

For a complete explanation of the rules, check out this page: Apologetics Rules

Method

The best way I could think about preparing for an Apologetics speech is found in the acronym: PROP. Just as actors on stage use props to help them tell a story, so also apologists can use a prop to tell his/her story.

P rayer: We should always rely on the Lord to help us in our efforts (Phil 4:6,7).
R esearch: We should prepare by gathering helpful information when discussing the faith (2 Tim 2:15).
O rganize: We should assemble the information is a convincing way (1 Pet 3:15).
P ractice: We should improve our efforts by practice (Phil 4:9).

Structure

In case you needed some help remembering how to construct an Apologetics speech. It should start with a helpful introduction – preferably a story. Second, you should have 2-4 good points backed up by Scripture and possibly Godly men or women. Finally, you should conclude with a tie back to the original introduction.

If it helps, an Apologetics speech is like a ‘Brownie Sundae’. On top you have a nice layer of chocolate syrup (introduction), followed by some tasty ice cream (main points), and the bottom is a chocolate brownie (conclusion with a tie back to the introduction).  

Hopefully this helps.

Brandon