“Karios, my wayward son. There’ll be peace when you are done.”

The fine people who attend Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Oakland comprise the public I seek to address. Do you know how I know they are a public? I know they are a public because I anticipate they will be attentive to my message in the steeple context. The three authors in Available Means of Persuasion underline there must be an audience to address for there to be a public, and said audience must be attentive, something I anticipate if these people, by their own volition (or without their arms a twistin’), attend the Wednesday night gatherings I seek to host on mental health awareness. Furthermore, Sheridan et al. emphatically suggest that kairos implies an “opportune moment” and not simply opportunism (or merely selecting to do something out of the blue without plan or reason). Kairos is linked to ethics (p.12) because ethics leads to action which calls for such a moment to address the ethical dilemma. (Thus, the prayer is that there will indeed be peace when that kairos moment comes. The Kansas reference in the heading was not opportunistic.) Holding that my topic is timely, I seek to engage a public, people who will clearly give attention to my message, in a space in which allows a “rhetorical performance” to take place, that is, in a public sphere where I and others can address our willing audience. Because of the pervasiveness of mental health ignorance in the evangelical church, the moment is an opportune one and not merely opportunistic, as defined above. Ethically speaking, there is an issue (or injustice here). There is a timely and ethical word to be spoken in that context to a church public which I anticipate to be attentive (since they volunteer their time to listen to my cause, something I have highlighted for the third time). The mental health awareness issue is an appropriate issue to address since many are being hurt by those calling themselves evangelicals. Awareness is necessary concerning this very morally-based matter. If indeed persons with mental illness are made in the image of God, then they should not be rejected for dealing with biochemically-based brain disorders just as much as the old women should not be scolded for serving purple JELLO. (Its not their fault they are cheap. They grew up post-Great Depression where they had to make their own soap out of chicken butt lard.) Awareness needs to be now, especially as Bellefield looks outward to a hurting world in need of the good news of grace in Jesus Christ.