Postkiwi

I’m continuing to think and act on insights from the Forge Summit held in Melbourne over the weekend.

I enjoyed sitting in on Debra Hirsch’s workshop on engaging with gay subculture. Interestingly enough, we never actually got to talk much about gay subculture. Most of what we talked about was mindset. Debra encouraged us to consciously move from a closed set approach to an open set approach. Instead of trying to get people into a ‘church box’ defined by correct theology and behaviour, we should be recognising that Jesus interacts with people wherever they are. The result is being content with a ‘fuzzy set’.

Kevin Ward addresses this in his article, “Christendom, Clericalism, Church and Context“. Kevin remarks that Evangelical/Charismatic/Pentecostals have preferred being able to identify who is in and who is out of the church. From a Uniting Church perspective, the open set approach sits well with the theology but isn’t always put into practice at a local level.

The absence of female speakers on the ‘mainstage’ of the Forge Summit was acknowledged. Debra Hirsch was scheduled to speak on Sunday morning but opted to invite John Smith of God’s Squad to speak instead. Dan @ Signposts has written a significant post on the role of women in the emerging missional church network. Dan raises serious questions around leadership and communication styles, pointing out that ‘angry young men’ are more likely to be listened to in the early stages of a movement. Perhaps the maturity of Forge as a network will depend on its ability to learn from the reconciling perspectives of women. See the post on “Missional Chicks” at Signposts.

Debra is the Director of Purple Heart , a pioneering ministry to homosexual people in Melbourne. She was formerly Team Leader at South Melbourne Restoration Community.