The rainbow never sets

During the holiday period in January we had often arranged an outdoor service together with the East Belconnen congregation. This took place under the trees of the Lake Ginninderra park. Their minister Rev.Graeme Watkins and I usually shared in leading the services, and we had some wonderful services in God's beautiful part of the world there.

With my background at the ACC and involvement with Indonesia, I received an invitation to join the Church's Commission on International Affairs (CCIA). I met very interesting people through this Commission and I enjoyed very much the work we were doing.

One area in which I became actively involved in through them was working for peace. There already existed a Christians for Peace group in Canberra, and eventually enough people in our Melba church were interested to form a peace group within the church. This caused initially 'un-peace'. Some members insisted that the church had nothing to do with a peace group, nor should there be a peace group as part of the congregation's activity. It required some persuasion and some good theological points in sermons to help the congregation as a whole to see that "Blessed are the peace makers" is actually a Christian response to the gospel. One family felt they had to leave our church because of that, but there was nothing we could do about it.

Another way to promote peace opened up for us, when I met a young Danish man on the train from Sydney one day. We got talking together and he mentioned that he was travelling with a SERVAS recommendation. I had never heard of this organisation. It was started after the war in Denmark, to promote peace and understanding among peoples of all nations. The SERVAS accredited traveller would buy a book with addresses of hosts in a particular country, and then contact people on that list, asking for free hospitality for two nights. If it suited the host, the traveller would stay there, and share something of him or herself, of their country and learn something of the host country. I was very taken by the philosophy behind this organisation and invited the Danish man to visit us too. After his visit we became members of SERVAS as hosts and we had, over the years, many interesting guests from overseas staying with us. I could see how getting to know people from other countries was a wonderful way to promote peace in the world.

We often talk about conversion in church, but most of the time this is being used in a very narrow sense. Throughout my life I have ecperienced that I needed to be converted in many areas, one of them was to use inclusive language. I attended a seminar initiated by members of the CCIA group, where the presenter addressed us all as: "dear women", he talked about "her attitude", or quoted from the Bible "will a woman gain anything if she gains the whole world but loses her life?"

I had the acute feeling that I, as a man, was being excluded. That, of course, was the whole point of the exercise, and it hit me like a sledge hammer. If women feel like this when they are addressed as "men", and are

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