BURKE, Virginia – 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.
“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.
On a recent plane trip, she says she saw God’s hands at work when she happened to sit next to the head of the Christian Post, and the issue of transgenderism came up.
“Once we started talking about that, the CEO, Christopher Chou, said, ‘Oh we’re trying to have an event in northern Virginia but we can’t find a church that’s brave enough to host this event for us.’ And that’s when we started chatting about the fact that I thought our pastor, Pastor Marty, would most likely be interested in hosting an event in conjunction with the Christian Post,” Ashton-Lazaroae explained.
And it happened. She and other experts gathered at Burke Community Church in October for a conference.
During the event, leaders announced the formation of a new support group. “Wonderfully Made” is a ministry for parents with children who identify as trans and refuse to bow to the pressure of society to socially and surgically transition them.
“The group is for parents whose children are struggling with their identity,” said Ashton-Lazaroae. “Our aim is to walk in prayer and support and grace with these families, to help them feel that they’re not alone.”
The group has no pastoral leadership or curriculum. It’s simply parents leaning on parents.
“It’s caring for each other,” said Baker. “And that’s getting down into the mess of other people’s lives, crying with them, being concerned about them, because a lot of these people feel alone.”
“Wonderfully Made” had its first meeting at the beginning of November. The church tells CBN News 12 people showed up, a mix of people wanting to help launch the group and others needing support.
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