Since I don't like people whining about something and not offering any suggestions, here is my list (incomplete) for non white and/or females who I think embody missional and would make spectacular speakers at MissionShift.

Alise Barrymore
David Ramos
Eliacin Rosario-Cruz
Melvin Bray
Anthony Smith
Kathy Escobar

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I call 'em like I see 'em.

Hopefully if there are women or non whites they plan to bring it up now.

http://www.missionshiftconference.com

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UPDATE: @vergeconference might have blocked people by accident (they switched something around). Hopefully this answers why many of us were blocked.

So, you know how I recently commented on my disappointment upon seeing the Verge2010 has only male speakers? I didn't think I was mean. Apparently whoever is running the Verge twitter account doesn't like questions because any of us who asked the question about the all male speaker lineup were banned from their twitter feed. Really? Is that what accounts for missional these days? I would email someone personally but there isn't an email address on the website and I don't want to bug my friends who are speakers because I know speakers at these things almost never have control over the actual event. And truthfully, I don't care.

Now, just to show that I have some perspective, I greatly respect many of the men speaking at Verge. They have served me in my spiritual journey and as a missional community leader. And I have no doubt that the planners of Verge are great folk. So all I was asking is if they noticed that they only have males speaking. I also have no intention of spending my time bashing Verge or the speakers there. I know how that feels and I won't do it to someone else. So I'll drop it now but I just think this whole situation is unfortunate - STARTING with the planner's choice (oversight?) to include only men as speakers.

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I mentioned earlier that in the Verge 2010 lineup, there are 12 male speakers and 1 male musician listed on the homepage. I thought I'd take a few sentences paragraphs to explain why this bugs me. First off, it's not just women who are underrepresented at these things, but at least Verge has some other races/ethnicities represented so I'll focus on the woman thing for now.

I don't think diversity for diversity sake is valuable in any way. If the only reason a conference like Verge had a woman speaker was so that they could avoid people like me bitching at them, then never mind. But I'd like to think the planners of Verge recognize the value of diverse voices when discussing missional community...esp. in the real life, grass roots living out of missional community...and I know enough about Hugh Halter and Alan Hirsch to know that they have lived at that grass roots level. (and I know enough about Alan's wife to know she might just agree with me here)

So why does it bug me? Because we all lose when those voices aren't heard, period. I believe in equity but I don't think we're all the same. I need different people in my life and christian communities also need different voices..not just present but actually given value. It's really not all that complicated.

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