Can I just start by saying I love this church. Like I really do. Which means I love you, because you make up this church. And just thinking about all we experienced in one week’s time, coming in here and worshiping together, packing meals, over 50,000 meals, can you get your minds wrapped around that. And our prayer will always be that those meals go to the mouths that need them the most. But I’m just super proud of this church. I’m super proud to be just one of the pastors here. Honored, truly honored, to be here.

Well, if you’re new here today, we’ve been in a series called “Lines” for the last five weeks, and we’re concluding this series today. And the whole idea behind putting this particular series in place was to educate and equip and empower us to stand firm in the gospel where we live, work, and play. And as many of you know that have been coming for the last several weeks, no topic has been off limits. Because we’ve determined by doing this series that there are some lines that we need to define in our life. Specific lines that we need to define. Because there are certain areas in our life that we will just naturally, we will just naturally drift. And it will always be the undefined lines in our life that will be the easiest ones to cross.

But as we conclude today, I want to do something and I actually want to take us back to the beginning of this series and remind you where we started. In Philippians chapter 1 Paul said this. He said, whatever happens. Okay, whatever happens, no matter what happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel, without being frightened in any way by those that may oppose you.

And as I mentioned, we haven’t shied away from any subject in this particular series. And to a great extent, maybe even on some of the things that I preached, it led you to have some difficult conversations. And for those of you that entered the fray by having those difficult conversations, I want to let you know, like truly as your pastor, I’m proud of you. Maybe those difficult conversations were with people that you loved. Maybe those difficult conversations were with yourself.

But I’ve stated several times from this stage something that I’m going to repeat right now, and that is every time that we hear something that is crystal clear, that we know that is to be true from God’s Word, we know it to be true from God’s Word, and we align that with the Spirit’s conviction in our own life where we may need to make some adjustments in our life to get back within the will of God and where He would want for us to be in any given day. Like when we feel the Spirit’s conviction, we align it with the truth of God’s Word, it will always work to our benefit. Always. It will always work to our benefit to listen to that conviction and make the appropriate adjustments.

Guys, today we’re going to enter into another conversation that will be full of opinion. It will be full of different experiences. It will be full of, well, let me back up and say it this way. I’ve been challenging us for the last couple weeks on this particular thing. It will bring out our own personal biases. Okay. It will. And so I’m just going to ask you to do the same thing I’ve been asking you to do for the last couple of weeks. Can we just shelf our bias. Can we shelf our bias for a moment and allow the truth of God’s Word to speak to us. But to also just be educated on a particular subject that maybe we haven’t been educated enough on.

Today I want to talk about the subject around being transgender and gender dysphoria. And to make sure that we’re all defining this the same way, I want to read to you some definitions. The term transgender refers to a person whose biological sex does not match the gender that they identify with. The term gender dysphoria refers to the psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s biological sex and how they may identify.

And I need to let you know something. I think you should know this. I’m just going to be transparent for a moment. This has served to be one of the most difficult sermons that I’ve ever preached. And the reason this particular sermon has served to be the most difficult, or at least one of the most difficult sermons that I’ve ever preached, is because there is so much that I want to say. There’s so much that I want to say on the subject, but I only have a limited time to say it.

Like every week when I preach up here, and you’ve been hearing me talk about these three words specifically, like I want to do my best to educate you and equip you and empower you to stand firm in the gospel where you live, work, and play. But today’s sermon is going to be a little bit different, because today I’m heavily, heavily, heavily going to lean on the side of education. And the reason I want to lean on the side of education is because I don’t think most people are educated when it comes to this particular subject.

Now, this sermon will also be unique in as much as it’s almost serving as a part two to my sermon last week, where I took a significant amount of time and built for us a biblical framework around the subject of sexuality, which also reinforced the fact that there are only two genders. And so what I’m not going to do, because I don’t have the time, is go back and build that biblical framework all over again. And so if you missed last week’s sermon, I would strongly suggest that after our time today, you go home, pull it up on our YouTube page, all of our sermons are on Trace Church YouTube page, pull that up and make sure that you check out that sermon. Because that really is where I built the biblical framework for a lot of what I say today.

Now let me lay some groundwork for us. One of the reasons that I wanted to cover this subject specifically is because it truly is concerning to me, especially when it comes to our young people, and what has changed in the last 10 years. So primarily my focus today when it comes to transgender and gender dysphoria will actually be how it is affecting our young people.

I want to let you know that leading up to this sermon I’ve read several books. I’ve listened to many podcasts. I’ve interviewed doctors and psychologists. I’ve talked to people who have kids that identify this way. And even last week sat down with someone who experiences gender dysphoria themselves.

And I was also reminded of how sensitive this subject is when about four weeks ago one of my friends called me to let me know that his teenage daughter, who is struggling with gender dysphoria, attempted suicide. And I was also reminded of how sensitive this subject is because there was a teacher, there is a teacher that comes here, that let me know that the school she teaches at had a little girl in middle school who actually was successful, unfortunately, in taking her own life because of this particular subject.

The pain and the struggle is real. And I just want to let you feel that for a moment. Because the last thing that I want to do is be flippant about anything that is leading our young people to make decisions that are irreversible. And we’re going to talk a lot about that today.

I’m also certain that there are many of you, if not most of you, in here right now, that to some extent there’s some point of connection for you personally on this subject. A friend. A family member. Maybe it’s you. And what has probably happened is recently you’ve been kind of struggling with, what is my response to this. Like, what is, I’m a Christ follower, what is a Christ follower’s response to this. Because the conclusion that I see our society coming to is not the conclusion that I think I’m supposed to come to. And so what is it that I’m supposed to do. How do I respond to this. How do I respond to the people in my life that maybe identify this way or maybe are struggling with something that is involving this particular subject.

And so again, I want to do my best today just to educate you. If there’s a win for me today, it would be you walking out that door feeling more educated and equipped to maybe at least speak up and know what it is that you’re supposed to say when it comes to being a follower of Jesus.

Now I want to be really clear. I’m going to repeat something that I said last week. This is not just an issue that the church needs to deal with. These are people to be loved. And so if you’re in here right now and this represents you, if it represents one of your kids, if it represents one of your friends, and you’re just trying to figure this thing out, I want to let you know that I’m available. And I’ve not yet turned anybody down that’s reached out to me and wanted to sit down and talk more in depth about anything that I’ve preached on throughout this series.

And so if you decide that you want to take me up on that, let me remind you of something I said last week. I won’t chastise you. I won’t condemn you. And I won’t chase you out of here. First thing I’ll do is confess to you, because I’ve got my own crap that I’m dealing with. And then I’ll talk to you about what it looks like to live out Luke 9:23. What does it look like to be somebody whose commitment to Jesus goes way before any conformity to our culture. What does it look like for you to live through Jesus. What does it look like for you to stand firm in the gospel. And I’ll do my best to equip you in that. Because all of us, as those crosses, we look at those crosses every week around the room that are on their side, we’re reminded that if we want to follow Jesus, we’re reminded of His words in Luke 9:23 that we’re to pick up our cross, deny ourselves daily, and follow Him. Which means all of us have personal preferences that we are called to set aside.

Now, I want to begin here, and this actually may surprise you. Out of the letters here, L G B T Q, right. Lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and queer. Out of those letters, I was surprised to learn, through all of my reading and through all of my study, that the L, the G, the B, and the Q are actually not in support as much as you think they would be of the T. The people that represent the L, the G, the B, and the Q are having trouble with how much we are pushing the T agenda, specifically with our kids. Almost forcing them at very young ages to a choice of whether or not they want to identify as the opposite sex.

And there’s a couple examples that I’m going to give you. But one of the things that you’ll read, if you decide to put any time and investment into reading and studying further on this subject, and I’m going to give you several resources a little bit later so just hold on for that, but one of the things that you’ll learn is that it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for a little girl today to just be a tomboy without someone suggesting that she is a boy.

And for what it’s worth, I think we’ve done an incredible disservice to our young people by not allowing them to express themselves in ways that sometimes may be stereotypical to the other sex. The way that people live out their maleness and their femaleness is culturally conditioned. And I would even go as far as to say that it undermines, oftentimes, what the Bible has to say. And I could give you examples like Deborah the judge in the old covenant and how strong she was. The sensitivity of David and how he danced around, even naked at times, and how he expressed his love for another man that wasn’t a same sex relationship, it was just a friendship, but it seems really feminine. I could talk about the Proverbs 31 woman who led her home and her business with shrewdness and tenacity. I believe, and we believe as a church, that there should be great flexibility in how someone expresses their gender. But when you wipe away the male and female distinction, you’re wiping away God’s original design.

And we talked about this last week, going all the way back to Genesis chapter 1. God created us in His image, both male and female He created them in His image. Which means it takes a man and a woman to complete the image of God. It’s absolutely beautiful.

And I don’t think I need to tell you this, that since the beginning of humanity, even outside of the faith, let’s not even talk about the biblical framework of this. Since the beginning of humanity, we have determined someone’s gender by their biological sex. And all of that has begun to be rewritten in the last 10 years, as we started to say somebody’s psychology gets to trump their biology. Somebody’s psychology actually gets to trump their biology.

And this is completely brand new. Like we just need to arrive here. You need to be here with me where it’s like this has not been the case since the beginning of humanity until just the last 10 years. And what happens, like what happens, truly what happens to the fabric of a society when we start allowing how somebody feels to trump what’s biologically certain.

And what’s even crazier is that we are making these radical changes for point six percent of the population. That’s how many people actually identify as trans in the world. Zero point six percent of our population.

Now I’m going to do something right now that’s going to be incredibly controversial. Okay, you ready for this. And so if you want to email me, dave.bundrick at trace church, that’s my personal email, I’ll read every one of them. I’m going to quote to you something that our president said. And I need to let you know, if you haven’t been coming to Trace for a while you don’t know this about me, I’m as apolitical as they come. Like I read left, blue, brown, whatever the colors are, I don’t even know. And so whether this was President Biden, Trump, if it was Abraham Lincoln, I don’t care. I’m going to show you this example because I want you to see that even from the top, from the leader of the free world, this agenda is being pushed.

Here’s what President Biden said. When an eight year old says, so he’s quoting what an eight year old would likely feel like, but let’s just let that process, an eight year old. An eight year old. “When an eight year old says, hey, you know what, I decided I wanted to be transgender. That’s what I think I want to be. It would make my life a lot easier.” President Biden said there should be zero percent discrimination or hesitation.

An eight year old. I have an eight year old. I have an eight year old right now. I will barely let her choose what she eats for breakfast or she’ll just eat like Jujubes or something. Much less choose what sex she’s going to identify as.

Can I just take my pastor hat off for a second. Like there’s a part of me that when I wanted to preach this sermon I’m like I don’t care how polished this feels. Does anybody else just want to be like who thought this was a good idea. Who thought this was a good idea. And I guarantee you 10 years from now we’re all going to wake up and we’re going to be like how did we end up here.

Now I want to be really clear. Do I think this is a legitimate issue for some kids and it needs to be psychologically treated. Yes. Up until nine years ago it was called a disorder in the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. It’s the gold standard for psychology. Up until nine years ago it was called a disorder. Do I think that this is real and it’s a struggle. Yes. I’ve already established that. Does it need to be treated. Yes. But what happens to a society when we’ve thrown out what we’ve used since the beginning of humanity to determine what a man and a woman is, and we’ve allowed somebody’s psychology to trump their biology. We don’t know where that’s going to end up.

And what you’ll learn if you read any into this subject more thoroughly and investigate more thoroughly, you’ll learn that there are people all over the aisle, the political aisle, blue, red, left, right, that are not okay with this. That are not okay with this.

And so you may be asking the obvious question that I’ve been asking. I’ve been entrenched in this particular subject for months now. How did we end up here. How did we end up here. Because I would even say both people that are represented by believers and nonbelievers are like, the mass majority of our society is not okay with this. And so how did we end up here.

Trace, I want you to know that this is absolutely breaking my heart. My wife would tell you that I’ve been depressed for the last two weeks, just because of how much I’ve gone into this world, and to see the depth of brokenness that’s happening within our young people. And what we’ve ended up doing is in the midst of them just reaching for things in the dark. Remember what it was like to be a teenager, to be a young person, just reaching for things, trying to figure out how do I find some solutions to my struggle. And now all of a sudden we’ve presented them with an option that never should have been an option, and it’s only going to lead to more brokenness. I promise you. I’m watching it play out all the time.

In a 256 detailed parent report of teenage girls who started to identify as trans. It’s called rapid onset gender dysphoria. It’s a 256 detailed parent report. Over 47 percent reported that mental health had worsened, and fewer than 13 percent said that they noticed any improvement.

Historically, the studies for adults who have transitioned and actually gone through a medical procedure, and again, we’ve got a lot more long term studies when it comes to adults. We have very few studies when it comes to kids. Very few. But when it comes to adults, after they transitioned and after they actually went through a medical procedure, suicide rates went up. The science is not there.

My father in law was a pediatrician, a practicing pediatrician for 51 years. And one of the things that he told my wife and I several times, because we were raising four kids, it’s one of the most consistent things that I heard him say. He said, “Kids will try on personalities until they find one that fits.” It’s kind of sweet if you think about it. It’s true. Kids will try on personalities until they find one that fits. But unfortunately, we have now given them an option of something to try on that should have never been a choice. And when we create a choice where there should be certainty, it’s only going to lead to more chaos. When we deconstruct something that God specifically designed, it’s only going to lead to more damage.

I want to kind of switch gears a little bit, and I’m going to go through just a bunch of statistical information with you really quick. Again, from an educational side of things. If you’re a note taker, I’d encourage you to take a lot of notes.

In 2013, the DSM 5, again the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, was published. It’s the DSM 5, version 5. And it predicted that, based on the previous decade, so from 2003 to 2013, it predicted that based on that decade that gender dysphoria would be found in these percentages. That 0.005 of males would experience gender dysphoria, and 0.002 for females would experience gender dysphoria. That’s fewer than 1 in 10,000 people. And that was the prediction.

Now keep in mind something. Before 2010, gender dysphoria was predominantly experienced by little boys, like around the age of preschool. But now, in 2021, it’s predominantly adolescent girls. This is a new phenomenon. You just have to understand this. It’s a new phenomenon. And in the last five years, even though this is what was predicted, five percent of all of our teenagers now identify as trans. Just think about how big that jump is. Five percent of all of our teenagers now identify as trans.

What happened. The question I want you to keep asking.

Let me share some other things with you just to give you some context. Before 2011 there was no scientific data that talked about girls from the ages of 11 to 24 experiencing gender dysphoria at all. There was no data. Now compare that to the fact that from 2016 to 2017 the number of female transitional surgeries have quadrupled. Biological women now account for 70 percent of transitional surgeries. In 2018 the UK presented a 4,400 percent rise in teenage girls from the previous decade seeking gender treatments.

What happened. What happened. We created an option where there should be certainty. And not only did we present that, we started to affirm that. And we started to educate that.

Being a resident in the state of Colorado you should know this. We are now in one of the top 10 most progressive states in America to push a trans educational agenda within our public education system starting in elementary. You just need to know that.

In that same 256 detailed parent report, it said that 65 percent of all the adolescent girls who experienced rapid onset gender dysphoria had done so after a prolonged social media immersion. We are allowing social media to raise our kids, guys. It’s not acceptable. Over 70 percent did so within a friend group where another transgender girl had come out, and they’re seeing this become more and more common, that clusters are doing it. Clusters of teenage girls are doing it together. It’s called peer contagion.

Let me show you something else that’s really profoundly interesting. In the DSM 5, in that manual, it lists, I think it was eight different reasons, or not reasons, eight different kind of pre qualifiers of what a kid would typically experience if they ended up being diagnosed with gender dysphoria. There were eight things. Here I’ve got represented seven of those eight. And it said this. These are things that kids would likely experience if they end up getting diagnosed with gender dysphoria. A strong desire to be of the other gender. A preference for cross dressing. A strong preference for transgender roles or make believe play. A strong preference to play with toys that are typically played with by the other gender. A strong preference for playmates of the other gender. A strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy. And a strong preference for the sexual attributes of another gender. Those were all kind of like preconditions to what ended up getting a little kid diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Now listen to this. Over 80 percent of the teenagers that have recently come out as transgender have not experienced any of those in childhood. Any of them. Over 80 percent.

What happened. Is it possible that not enough of us were speaking up. Whether you’re a school teacher, a nurse, whether maybe a friend, you’re a parent. That we just weren’t speaking up when we know this doesn’t seem right.

I want to show you a sequence of events that I would kind of point to. This is mine, for what it’s worth, so not nearly as educational as everything else I just shared with you. But this is kind of my sequence of events of how I’ve watched this transpire over the last decade. It started with tolerance. And tolerance gave way to acceptance. Acceptance gave way to affirmation. Affirmation gave way to celebration. And celebration gave way to education.

If you’re 35 years old or younger, you were raised underneath this banner, kind of this sentiment, of what’s called tolerance. And tolerance was largely taught in our school system specifically to kind of counter the bullying and sometimes downright abuse that was happening to kids in the LGBTQ community. Which all of us can agree with. It’s never okay. That’s never okay. And maybe it’s the eight on the Enneagram in me talking when I say there’s nothing that boils my blood more quickly than seeing a kid get bullied. Period.

But looking back in hindsight, it looks like the anti bullying efforts were actually a pretext to a greater agenda. Because with time, tolerance gave way to acceptance. And acceptance quickly gave way to affirmation. And then some things started to get put in place where everybody started to speak up and say, whoa whoa whoa, that’s not where I thought this was going. Why are men competing against women in athletics. Why are boys going into girls’ locker rooms and changing and nobody’s saying anything. Why are little boys sleeping in girls’ dorms when schools are taking trips. And if you don’t think this is happening, a teacher that comes here to Trace let me know that on a middle school retreat about six weeks ago a little boy slept in the girls’ dorm because he identified as a little girl, and none of the parents of those other little girls knew about this.

If you don’t think that this is a bigger problem than it actually is, you just simply need to be educated. Hence why I’ve taken the time to do this today.

And you would almost think, just based on mainstream media and the television networks, mainstream television networks, mainstream TV shows, you would almost think that what we know to be 0.6 percent of the population actually almost feels more like 60 percent of the population. Because of how normal they’re pushing this. Of how, not even normal, of how popular and how often it’s actually represented in the majority of families. It’s 0.6 percent of the population.

And the reason why I even mentioned the fact that it’s being pushed through media and social media and popular television networks and TV shows is because that’s how it’s become celebrated. And once that got to be celebrated through those ways, that’s when we’re like, well I guess it’s time to be educated. And if somebody speaks up, I mean once you get to the point where it’s being celebrated and it’s found its way into the education system, once you try to finally speak up against it and say, hold on, is that, like, are we sure that’s what we want to do. Are we sure that’s what’s good for our society. At that point if you speak up, and we’re learning this by case after case after case, that you’re going to be cancelled. And you’ll be labeled a transphobe. And maybe the thing that you’ve worked so hard to achieve will be taken from you.

You don’t think that’s real. Let me introduce you to Martina Navratilova. She’s a lesbian, keep that in mind. She’s won 59 Grand Slam titles in tennis. Fifty nine. In 2019 she spoke up in The Sunday Times in Europe, and she said that it is unfair to allow for a trans female athlete to compete against biological women. And as a lesbian woman herself, she was quickly labeled a transphobe, dropped by her sponsors, and expelled from certain advocacy groups for that one statement.

Maybe if you were watching the Olympics this past summer, you were introduced to Laurel Hubbard. Laurel was a biological man all the way through his twenties. Competed in weightlifting events as a man through his twenties. Decided to transition into a female in his thirties. And was the first trans athlete to compete in the Olympics. Wildly celebrated. NBC did an entire special on Laurel. I watched it. It was incredibly sad. And it was sad because I know all the other female athletes behind the scenes that are scared to death to speak up. And you can find them if you dig in the internet long enough, because they did speak up, but those voices aren’t heard on the NBC special.

You may not know this about me. I used to be a fitness professional. I used to own a health club. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in exercise physiology. And so I can tell you that because he didn’t transition until he was in his thirties, that he had already experienced the fullness of development as a man. Which is on average 50 percent more upper body development and strength, and on average 33 percent more lower body development and strength. He’d already had the full benefits of that.

And I feel like there are people all around our nation saying this is not right. And again, if I can just take my pastor hat off, being somebody that used to coach a lot of female athletes, it pains me even for women specifically that have worked so hard to get to where they’re at to allow this nonsense to happen. It’s nonsense.

And people are being forced. Let me say it differently. I think the best way that I can say it. They are being assumed. We are being assumed into this posture that we don’t want to be in. We are being assumed into a posture of affirmation at fear of what may happen if we don’t speak up.

Tolerance gave way to acceptance. Acceptance gave way to affirmation. Affirmation gave way to celebration. And celebration gave way to education.

In the last couple of months I’ve talked with several teachers, school administrators, counselors, nurses, doctors, and all of them are under increased pressure to immediately affirm kids in their desire to be trans. And I just want to let you know, listen to me, there is a better way. There’s a better way. There’s a better way.

A lot of this is largely being influenced by something called gender affirming therapy. And to a great extent underneath this banner of therapy, the patient, which in this case is a kid, gets to push their own course of treatment, which just happens to be puberty blockers. Puberty blockers. And parents are being forced out of fear that their kid will go kill themselves if they don’t make this adjustment. They’re being feared into this posturing position. I guess I need to instantly affirm because that’s the voice of the transgender community, I promise you, where it’s like if you don’t immediately affirm your kids then not only are you transphobic but you’re not loving them. And it’s making parents, and it’s putting them in this horrible position to make decisions that are irreversible. Irreversible.

I want to let you listen to an interview that Preston Sprinkle did, and that’ll be one of the resources that I point you to by the way. I’m going to send out an email with a lot of these resources too if you want to do some further investigation for yourself. But I would encourage you to listen to Preston Sprinkle’s podcast called Theology in the Raw. It primarily talks about subjects like this, and if you ask me he’s one of the leading voices on this particular subject. He also wrote a book called Embodied. That’s an incredible book that I would encourage you to read as well. But he interviews a doctor by the name of Dr. Ruse, who is an associate professor of pediatrics, cell biology and physiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He has a PhD and MD, a medical degree, and specializes in pediatric endocrinology, which is the specific branch of medicine that would promote or give these puberty blockers to our youth. Check this out.

“This new approach to affirmation, rather than challenging that gender identity, it used to be referred to as gender identity disorder. It was recognized as that the underlying difficulty was arising from the thought processes that these individuals had. And I think there was a move, I think it is fair to say that there’s quite a bit of ideology involved in really thinking about that differently. You know, making claims that really the mind is not a problem at all. It’s the body itself that was not formed correctly. And again that’s not based on any science, and there’s a lot that could be said about that. But this is dating back a little over a decade ago. My professional organization, the Endocrine Society, first came out with practice guidelines in 2009, so to give you some ideas, and they revised those in 2017. And really moving away. So the traditional approach was either to try to assist affected children in realigning their gender identity with their biological sex, or merely watching and waiting. And that was based upon some long standing data that the majority of children that have this experience, at least when this begins before the time of puberty, will have a spontaneous realignment of the gender identity with their sex. And we’re talking, you know, good estimates around 85, 90 percent. And that was how it was approached. And recognizing that has moved drastically now to the current approach of affirming one’s gender identity and then engaging in some of these medical interventions like puberty blockers and cross sex hormones that we can talk about. And it’s really moved beyond looking at the various approaches to very strongly asserting that that’s the only viable option forward. The affirmation only approach. And really with the exclusion of even investigating other ways that we can assist these individuals. You know, it’s based medically on the recognition that a very significant proportion of people that have this experience will have real suffering. And I think that that’s not controversial at all. You know, markedly elevated rates of suicide, depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, all of the things going on. So the change went from considering this gender identity disorder to focusing on the discomfort that one has in that experience, and referring to that as gender dysphoria, and that actually came out formally in the diagnostic manual that psychiatrists use to classify psychiatric conditions, the DSM. And it really is important to recognize that there was no new science in making that transition. It was based on ideological principles.”

I don’t know if you caught it, but 85 to 90 percent of kids experiencing this no longer experienced it after puberty. Yet we are pushing a treatment plan that’s irreversible.

In 2019 the Tavistock and Portman Trust Gender Clinic concluded one of the most extensive surveys and studies done to date. And this is actually really important, because there’s very few studies done because this is so new when it comes to our youth. It showed that self harm and suicidal ideation did not decrease after puberty suppression. The report was so damning that one of the key physicians in the clinic, Dr. Marcus Evans, resigned because he feared that the clinic was fast tracking girls specifically to transition, doing more harm than good.

The little girl that I mentioned earlier that unfortunately took her life was from a family that was completely affirming of this. It doesn’t discriminate. These kids are broken on either side of the decision. And we need to meet them in the midst of that brokenness.

And suggesting something that is so drastic as actually changing their biological sex and starting them on hormones and starting them on puberty blockers, listen to me, it’s not the answer. And the science does not support it.

This is why you’ll actually see, if you read on what Europe is doing as we speak, they’re pulling back from a lot of their progressive policies on this particular subject because the science simply isn’t there.

Trace, there is a better way. There’s a better way.

So what do we do. We speak up. We speak up. If you’re a teacher, you speak up. You prepare, maybe if you’re a school administrator, you prepare with maybe just a couple questions next time that you’re in a professional development day. I just heard this happen. This is a real life situation. A professional development day where an organization is brought in to tell you that gender is just a social construct. People can be whatever gender they want to be. That you’re ready with a question. “Hey, do you have the science that backs that up. Before we start implementing that with our kids, do you have the science that backs that up.” Just be prepared with a question if nothing else.

If you’re a parent, if you’re a teacher, if you’re a school administrator, if you’re a doctor, if you’re a counselor, if you’re a friend, be ready to point to the fact that there’s a better way. There’s a better way. Yes, we’re going to listen, and we’re going to love them, which is the fullness of grace and truth, right. And we’re going to lead them to a better place. His name is Jesus.

Extending compassion, listen to me, extending compassion does not mean that we give in to the demands of a kid.

Let me close this way. Someone asked me this last week, knowing I was going to be preaching on this particular subject. They asked me, how would Trace treat a transgender person if they came here. It’s a good question. And I thought for a second and I said, well I can tell you how I would treat them. But if you’re asking how Trace would treat someone. Well man, that largely depends on every one of you.

And so can we get on the same page with this. My hope is that we would treat them with the compassion of Christ. We’d let them know they’re not an issue the church just needs to deal with, but somebody that needs to be loved and to represent God’s love the best way we know how. We know that it has to be the fullness of both grace and truth. Our conversations and interactions with everyone should always be with the compassion of Christ. But listen to me. It’s our allegiance to Christ that does not allow us to get preoccupied by the social norms of our day. And so we’ll never affirm something that God didn’t design. Because when we create a choice where there should be certainty, it’s only going to lead to more chaos. When we deconstruct something that God designed, it’s only going to lead to more damage.

So Trace, listen to me. Let’s be a people and a place that’s not only safe, but points people to a better way. His name is Jesus.

So God, right now we just submit to You. God, we surrender to You on this particular subject. If we’ve deviated to a point of affirmation. If we’ve not spoken up in times where we should have spoken up. God, that You would embolden us. God, that You would prepare us with questions. That You would get us ready for the next opportunity to speak up and to let people know that there’s a better way.

God, we need Your help in this. This is a big deal. It’s a big deal. So often we feel assumed into this posture and position to just affirm something that we truly know and are convicted is not okay. It’s not right. It’s not what You want.

So God, would You partner with us today. Help us to see what step we need to take to make sure that we’re representing Jesus above all else. We pray this in His name. Amen.