A Christian conference for people from Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Latino backgrounds, known as Wogs for Christ, is due to be held in October.

Wogs for Christ is designed to allow opportunities for people from these backgrounds to engage with the evangelical Christian faith, to hear from Scripture, and to meet with other church-going Christians in a culturally relevant setting.

Ross Ciano, a pastor at Marrickville Road Church and vice-chairman of the Wogs for Christ committee, says the conference aims to reach out to people from “wog” backgrounds who are outside, and already inside, the church.

“We have a few goals,” he says. “One is that we’ve seen a lack of Mediterraneans, also people from the Latino, but particularly the Mediterranean world, in our churches. There’s not a lot of engagement going on with that culture, so the conference is to enable a safe middle ground between that culture – which is very suspicious of evangelical Christianity – and church. The second is that we actually want to educate people in ministry to be able to engage with and dialogue about Christ with people from those cultures. We want to encourage people who attend evangelical churches of those backgrounds, who sometimes do feel like they’re the only person in that fellowship, and we want to equip them for service.“

Part of the way Wogs for Christ attempts to create that middle ground is by using the conference setting as a safer first step to engaging with Christ, but also by keeping the culture of the conference familiar. According to Mr Ciano, that means food.

“We have lots of food. Lots of food,” he says. “I’m organising the food this year, and it’s a menu of lasagne, schnitzel, potatoes, rice, salad, bread rolls, on top of the fruit, coffees and cake that people get... It’s not a choice of one or the other. We want to do food very well because with those cultures, the amount and the quality of food tell the individual how much they’re loved.”

The conference consists of a set of keynote Bible talks as well as several workshops. The three expository talks are “A busy woman”, “A rich man”, “A dying man”, and Mr Ciano says these talks are able to deal with the words of Jesus in Scripture while also touching on areas of wog culture that will be familiar to those in attendance.

“There’s the stigma, I guess, of a housewife in a wog culture, who is constantly busy and serving, rather than having an opportunity to stop, and slow down, and listen to Jesus,” he says. “The issue of money and wealth, wogs and cash will come up. Status and wealth are very prominent in our cultures… and the last one is death. Everyone has to face death, and so we talk about the hope that is in the cross of Jesus, which a lot of these cultures don’t have. Sometimes they can glorify death in a bad way. So they’re very specifically chosen for wog cultures, but also for any culture, really.”

This year’s conference will be held on October 19 at Rooty Hill MBM. See wogsforchrist.org for details.