As the weather heats up, along with the controversy surrounding gender issues, Affirming Gender is hitting the road for a season of speaking and presentations. This year, we are choosing audiences of a particular kind of influence to address, as I explain below. If you’d like to engage with gender issues and are in the vicinity of one of these this year, I invite you to make your way over…
Note: Our apologies–the Christ the King Church Google Hangout Talkback, (Raleigh) has been postponed.
- June– Atlanta, Georgia: PCA General Assembly
Each year, more than 2,000 people from across the country and around the world come to the Presbyterian Church in America’s annual all-elder gathering. Pastors, elders, spouses and children, church planters, chaplains, campus ministers, missionaries, seminary professors, and students all amass to exchange cigars and decide important things. This year I will be teaching a seminar called “Ministering God’s Gift of Gender Amidst Gender Breakdown”, on Wednesday morning, June 13, 8:00am. But since we are going anyway, all during the assembly (June 12-June 14), we hope to run, pending permission, a booth to promote conversation about these issues. Hopefully this small effort will help get the church a little ahead of the curve of all that will soon be coming at us from our gender-shredding culture. Expect deep talk.
NB: If you are a PCA ruling or teaching elder and plan on attending GA, PLEASE contact me through the site. I have a special opportunity for you.
- July 4th weekend (End of June)– Wildwood, New Jersey: The Boardwalk Chapel
AffirmingGender is going back the boardwalk! This is because supporintg this wonderful truth-sharing-training ministry of the Orthodox Presbyterian
Church pays deep spiritual dividends for Christ’s Kingdom. Trainings on Friday morning and afternoon, and Saturday morning, June 29-30, for students, staff, and local church members, are nonetheless open to the boardwalk for those who wish to join in for a more thorough discussion of gender issues. Expect a lively experience.
- July– Lancaster, PA– Veritas Teacher Training Conference
I am thrilled to have the privilege of addressing this summer, in two plenary sessions, one of the most elite groups of our society, heroes of our time, those making up the most important current personages: school teachers! I am veritably gay (in the old sense of the word—you remember, like how Maria used it in West Side Story) at the thought of talking to these most influential world-shapers at this conference. The goal of the talks (and a Q&A breakout session) is to help teachers in practical and applied ways as they use their curriculums. The Eden Resort will host the events on: 7/12, 8:15-9:15am -Building a Theology of Gender: Why it Matters. 7/13, 8:15-9:15am -How to Love Loved Ones Who Minimize Gender. Expect the world to change through these amazing people.
- Fall– A college campus maybe near you, PA: Campus Event
Finally, and this is just in the talking stages, come mix it up with colleges students as we explore a Biblical take on gender with 
them. The students at this particular, highly esteemed school, like those on most college campuses, speak about gender all the time these days. It comes up in the most unlikely classes, like, say, electrical engineering. The Christian ministry leadership there are brave souls, so we are in discussion about an event for the interested to introduce the sacred gift. I will be sharing more as planning talks progress. Expect sparks to fly.
If any of these platforms work for you this summer, I’d love to see you. Be sure to say ‘hello.’