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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