saturday Workshops

Queer people with disability often navigate multiple identities at once, yet their experiences are frequently overlooked in conversations about inclusion, faith, and community. In this workshop, Elga draws on her experience in disability advocacy, public policy, and faith-based inclusion to explore what it means to belong at the intersection of queer and disabled identities.

Through lived experience perspectives, research, reflection, and discussion, participants are invited to consider the barriers and opportunities that shape inclusion, and explore how communities can become places where people are welcomed, valued, and experience genuine belonging. 

Banned, Not Gone: Conversion Therapy/Practices

Conversion therapy is not what most people picture. The electric shocks and the clinics are largely a caricature. In churches, the real thing is quieter and far more common: prayer ministry, deliverance, “healing,” pastoral counselling, celibacy reframed as faithfulness. Many queer Christians have been through some version of it without ever being handed the words for what happened to them.

Here in Victoria, conversion practices have been banned since 2022. But a ban on paper has not made them stop. It has made them quieter. The clearest forms went underground and the softer ones carry on under the cover of prayer, care and discipleship, which means the people most at risk are often the least equipped to name what is being done to them.

In this workshop, Aaron draws on eleven years as a pastor to expose how the theology of change is actually built. Where the ideas of “brokenness” and “God’s design” come from, how “love the sinner” does its quiet damage, and why these practices persist even where the law says they should not. This is not a lecture on why it is wrong. It is a working session on how it functions, so you can recognise it, name it, and help others do the same.

Together we will pull apart the theological scaffolding from the inside, look honestly at what harm and repair involve, and focus on the real task in a post-ban state: staying alert to what has gone under the radar, and standing with those who do not yet have the language for what they are facing.

You will leave able to:

• Name the covert forms conversion practices take in faith settings
• Understand and counter the theology used to justify them
• Recognise how these practices persist even where they are banned
• Support and stand with those who are still being harmed  

Many of us in the Queer community have to engage in Identity Questions:
•  How do we identify
•  Which label might work
•  Adopting a name
•  Choosing to cease using a name
•  Changing a birth certificate/naming document
•  Changing appearance

This can be impacted upon by the communities that we are a part of, by our own understanding, by our society and by our own needs.

How do we decide what is important enough to fight for change, how do we decide the balance of our own well-being vs the surrounding society and how do we have discussions about this within our own community?

How do we tell that story to others in our community and the wider world, being aware that our telling also can provide a template for others who might want to explore their options as well. How far do we go when explaining to others? How much information do we offer?

More Information Still to Come. 

Spirituality doesn't live in a binary, and neither do we. Join this interactive workshop on how non binary and gender fluid experiences can transform the way we nurture our faith and spirituality. By leaning into the creative "both-and" of the non binary experience, we can liberate our sacred lives from rigid categories and external expectations, and rediscover a spiritual expression that is dynamic, open, and deeply authentic. Using a guided reflective exercise, we’ll explore what faith and spirituality practices nourish us, which ones we’re still doing out of obligation, and cultivate sacred rituals that honour how we authentically connect with the Divine. 

In May of this year Jeanne and Karen found themselves in Norway, attending the European Forum of LGBTI+ Christian Groups. Come and hear about their learnings, new insights and their stories.

More Information Still to Come. 

More Information Still to Come.

More Information Still to Come. 

Right wing fear-mongering centres children as threatened by queerness whether through abuse/grooming or existentially through being “turned trans/gay”; the church has a fraught past that maybe more accurately reflects the fears espoused about queer people (child abuse/grooming and dubiously moral evangelism to children); both queer-self-protection and church-self-protection avoid these accusations by avoiding introducing queerness to children; this forces queer children to self-advocate, to try develop queer theologies in isolation, to be without community and communal support in their identity. 

The ask:
•  What does doing better look like?
•  How can adults in churches support the wisdom and identity of children and teens?
•  What about when parents don’t approve?
•  What about if it triggers wider backlash?

More Information Still to Come.