The transgender issue reaches far and wide and affects hundreds of thousands of Americans, and now churches are starting to address it. One in northern Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C., has started a support group for parents with trans-identifying children.
It’s an issue almost no one discussed five years ago but today is impossible to ignore. The transgender crisis affects an estimated 1.6 million Americans and is now so common that pastors are weighing in.
Marty Baker is the senior pastor at Burke Community Church in Burke, Virginia.
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“As gender ideology began to surface in 2017-2018, began to be infiltrated into the school systems, taught to children, that type of thing, well by definition, you started having parents wondering, ‘what is this?'” Baker said in an interview with CBN News.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation on transgenderism and consistently teaches on it from the pulpit.
“We’ve taught [the congregation] a lot about the information, the apologetics of it, how to defend, how to push truth as opposed to error, those types of things, so they’re very educated on that, but what do you do with all of the life stories? And there’s lots of those,” Baker explained.
He says those life stories came up during a women’s retreat at the church. More than 100 women had questions and needed wisdom.
Ed Stetzer, the dean at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology, told CBN News, “I think a lot of churches five years ago weren’t talking about this. But the last five years has seen such an acceleration, I think it’s time for churches to be teaching more on the topic.”
Stetzer says Christians need to speak on this issue in a biblical way that’s filled with grace. He sees a big opportunity for the church.
“I think this is an opportunity for the church of Jesus Christ to actually put forth a beautiful image of sexuality and gender that I think will actually call to people who are living in a confused – and we’re all in a broken world – but just unsure about those things,” he explained. “Let’s say, ‘The Bible gives us a path. We want to walk with you on that path.'”
Burke Community Church member Dr. Susan Ashton-Lazaroae deals directly with teens on this path as a pediatrician.
“Thankfully the number of children presenting with gender dysphoria has decreased in the past couple of years, which is truly encouraging,” Ashton-Lazaroae told CBN News.
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Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2024 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
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