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Engaging gender identity with grace (with Dr. Gary Yagel)

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WORLD Radio - Engaging gender identity with grace (with Dr. Gary Yagel)

Dr. Gary Yagel of Forging Bonds joins the conversation to explore the origins of gender theory and transgenderism. How can parents and educators engage this difficult issue with grace and truth?


KELSEY REED: Hello, welcome to Concurrently: The News Coach Podcast from WORLD Radio and God’s WORLD News. Our mission is to come alongside you, learning and laboring with you as you disciple kids and teens through culture and current events. I’m Kelsey Reed. I’m here with Jonathan Boes.

JONATHAN BOES: Hello!

KELSEY: Together, we want to model conversation and apply tools you can use at home or in the classroom. We would love for you to send in your questions for us to address in future episodes. Please send your questions to newscoach@wng.org.

JONATHAN: From the moment “news coach” began as a concept here at God’s WORLD News, we’ve talked with parents and educators about the most pressing subjects on their minds, and one subject comes up over and over. It’s the subject of gender identity.

In recent years, the idea of binary gender has imploded in popular thought. More and more people, especially in younger generations, identify as transgender or another non-binary gender identity. Now, we’ve touched on gender foundations already in one of our previous episodes—that was called “Girl power and God’s purpose for gender”— but today, we really want to address the idea of transgender identity.

As we’ve said before, this is a massive, complex topic. And we know it’s a very personal and painful topic for many parents. And it’s an incredibly difficult topic for all of us, as we seek to balance love and value for our neighbors and friends and family who identify as transgender, while also holding on to the truth of God’s word, and figuring out what it means for our duty as parents and educators. Because of that complexity, we want to split this discussion into two parts. The first part will be laying some important foundations, and then the second part will go into some more practical issues and even look at some specific listener questions. But for this issue, we also want to seek wisdom beyond ourselves. For this, we’re bringing in a guest who has years of experience writing, teaching, and discipling through these issues.

KELSEY: Yes. Today we’re excited to be speaking with Dr. Gary Yagel. Dr. Yagel is the producer of the Mission Focused Men for Christ weekly podcast and the executive director of Forging Bonds of Brotherhood Men’s Ministry. It can be found at forgingbonds.org. He served over 10 years as the Presbyterian Church of America’s men’s ministry consultant. Recently, his focus has been helping parents and church leaders to be equipped to guide their children to embrace God’s wonderful design of male and female, and also equipped to respond with grace and truth to the transgender craze sweeping through our churches. He and his wife of over 40 years, Sandy, have raised five children in the D.C. suburbs. Welcome, Gary. We’re so glad that you’re joining us today.

DR. GARY YAGEL: It’s great to be with you. I love what you’re doing.

KELSEY: Thank you. We are just learning and laboring, like we said.

DR. YAGEL: We all are.

KELSEY: So thank you for laboring with us today. We often start what we’re doing in any episode—but we want to be very careful today—to start by defining our terms in this area, encouraging that as a practice at home, what you need to do in the classroom. Because this subject matter, as we’ve said, is very complex. It requires some careful thought. So Gary, help us wrap our minds around a definition of gender and what informs our definition.

DR. YAGEL: Well, thanks. You know, originally from Webster’s Dictionary, gender has always had, as part of its definition, sex. Your biological sex. It’s been used some in the field of language—for French, le and la—but it primarily referred to your biological sex.

But interestingly, the history of this movement, gender movement, introduced the term “gender” with a different concept behind it. And that actually happened back in the ’70s, when, for the first time, gender as something psychologically distinguishable from biological sex began with a professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins. His name was John Money, and he’s considered the father of gender theory. And the idea he introduced to the world was that, when a baby’s born, it’s gender neutral. In other words, he unmoored gender and gender roles from attachment to physical reality or biology. And so that was sort of the paving the way for what we hear today, “gender is a social construct.” What’s fascinating to me is that, at the time that John Money made that proposal—and he was a psychologist, not a biologist—he did not know what we know about things like embryology, and how the presence of testosterone in the brain changes the way the male brain is formed. So the link between the physical body and behavior was not clear to him scientifically, back then.

KELSEY: So you’ve given us some touch points on language, some touch points with history, but really firmly rooted in our understanding of gender and sex in biology, and even in increased knowledge in the sciences, recognizing that we’re always learning something new. And in that growth of our learning, we’ve distinguished there are things at the tiniest level that talk to us, that speak to us of our design. So what a helpful way to contextualize our understanding and to define our terms.

So as we’re thinking about gender and sex, what are some more important things for us to consider? Already, we’re hinting at the idea that they’re not separable. So give us some more of what is so important in our consideration between those two terms: gender and sex.

DR. YAGEL: Sure, and I think that what’s most important for us as Christians to realize is the brokenness of the worldview that’s being currently promoted today. It’s promoted by the Trans Educational Resources Group. This is not a caricature that criticizes them; it’s the model that they use. But from a biblical perspective, we see the fracturing that this reflects of personhood, sexual personhood, into five different parts. To contrast that with the wholeness of the biblical teaching I think is really valuable.

But to go through those five parts: sex assigned at birth is the term that group would use. We would say “biological sex.” They would make a distinction between physical attraction, which they associate with sexual orientation—male, female, bisexual—they would separate that from emotional attraction, so that you could be in love with your wife, but do your sexual thing on the side. And just parenthetically, that’s such a broken view. That’s behind the pornography; it’s behind the sex trade, slavery really. But anyway, moving on. The fourth part of that is gender identity, seeing yourself as male or female or on a continuum. And then fifthly, gender expression, which is the way you would express your gender. But the key to this whole diagram is autonomy: that every human has the right for himself or herself to determine where he or she is on those various continua. And so that’s at the root of this, including biology, and that’s what we’re seeing now through sex change surgery and so forth.

In sharp contrast, the biblical worldview sees God’s perfect design of every human being as wholly male or female. So a woman’s body, opposite sex sexual attraction, opposite sex emotional traction, identity as a woman and role in life, especially in marriage, all fit together in this unified glorious whole together, just as a male’s creation does. So I don’t really have a problem with Christians using the term “gender identity” to communicate, because we’re trying to promote a biblical worldview. But I would prefer to not fight over the language per se. I think it’s more winsome to ask someone who uses that term: Do you know where the term “gender identity” originated? And then we might point out, well, it was invented through a scientifically outdated theory that was proposed by a man named John Money in the 1970s. And see how that discussion might lead to further observations about this view.

KELSEY: I love how you’re helping us to already think about this in relational terms. So this isn’t purely academic, that we’re thinking about what it means to engage in culture for the sake of shaping culture. You know, I also hear what you’re describing in these categories that have been parsed out and fractured, as you said. It reminds me of the atom and how, when we try to study an atom, there are all these parts that are whizzing around one another or that are in the nucleus. But really none of them stay still. In order for us to comprehend them for a little bit, we’re trying to think about them as separate pieces, but they really don’t function that way. And so I’m helped by hearing how the fracturing, or even the deconstruction, has stayed in that place, into what would even be called a destructive place, when it comes to understanding who we are. And that part of our process, as you’re naming it, has to do with reconstructing and moving in with “Oh, did you realize that this has been debunked? Let’s help you reconstruct your understanding.” So thank you for that very healthful way, and that wholesome way, of engaging.

So we’ve talked about how we might employ terms in order to make sense within our conversations with proponents of another ideology. Are there any terms that we should avoid? Is there anything we should not use even at all? Do we avoid terms? And if so, why?

DR. YAGEL: Well, again, I think that’s a great question. You know, I believe the concept of your biological sex being merely assigned at birth is false. And we need to winsomely tear that down. But I would rather do that, not so much engaging in a battle over the language, as when someone says that gender is something that’s arbitrarily assigned at birth, I would like to ask, “What makes you say that?” And then, after I listen to what they said, probably say something like: Imagine yourself in the birthing room watching the birth of a child, when no ultrasound has been done. The baby comes out. The OB cries, “It’s a boy!” Why did the doctor just say that? And an honest person is going to say, “Well, I guess the OB looked at the genitalia of the child.” And then we can say, “So is the child’s gender arbitrarily assigned at birth, or discovered at birth?”

So you know, being winsome is a skill I’m trying to develop. And I’m not very good at it. But asking questions is so valuable, because you don’t put people on the defensive. And if we listen well to them, we can use them to sort of make some points about the inconsistency of what they’ve just accepted.

JONATHAN: And it feels like this is an issue where, even when you try for winsomeness, no matter how winsome you try to be about it, there is a wall somewhere where people really want to shut it down. So it’s hard to find that balance and get to the heart of it without becoming argumentative or making it purely academic.

DR. YAGEL: Yeah, that’s the challenge. You know, how to be winsome in proclaiming the biblical worldview of gender, and not combative.

KELSEY: And this is a great place to segue into thinking through some of the categories relationally that you may be in, listener. We’ve laid a foundation for the terms, but it’s not merely those dry academic things. We’ve already, as we’ve acknowledged, recognized that this is a very relational thing. I believe, and I would suggest, everything about our lives has that relational component. We’re made to be relational creatures. So we need to consider our relational context when we think about this topic.

So you may be in a conservative homeschool community, or a Christian private school, in which God’s design for our sexuality and gender roles is presumed and even taught. Or you could, alternatively, be in a public school context where conservative Christian values are no longer normative, and really a diverse array of sexual orientations and gender identities are not only accepted, they’re promoted. Maybe you’re experiencing something even more intimate than that: the challenge of relating to a child or another family member who’s struggling with single sex attraction, gender dysphoria, or other sexuality or identity struggles. And probably, you find yourself in some combination of these three categories. Our hope is to engage each of these places with loving kindness and the view in mind to equip both current and future conversations. So, Gary, how should parents approach this personal, tender subject of their child’s view of themselves? What posture should we take?

DR. YAGEL: Again, I’m so grateful for that question. And I don’t do this all the time, but I do feel strongly about the first answer to that. I really believe that, before talking directly to our kids, we need to do something that gets our hearts in the right place. And that is really to weep for those who are confused and mixed up about themselves, and are being drawn into the LGBTQ movement. Even those who are activists. These precious, confused, frightened kids are looking for love and acceptance and a place to belong, just like we are. And the difference is that they’ve been captured by Satan’s deception about where that love and acceptance and belonging is found, in rebellion against God and the horribly destructive LGBTQ+ life. But the only reason we’ve not been enslaved to this destructive worldview is God’s grace. So this horrible ideology may cause teens to engage in same sex behavior or sexual behavior, it may cause them to disconnect from reality, it may cause them to believe that delusion that they’re in the wrong body, and cause them to mar their bodies with puberty blockers or cross-gender hormones. The CDC found that suicide attempts of those in the LGBTQ population were nearly five times higher than among other students. So I really think we need to just weep over sin. You know, the first beatitude is that we need grace, humbling ourselves. The second is to grieve over how our sin destroys. And I have to do that, because I can become hostile towards this ideology, and let that hostility flow over to those who are captured by it. But they are not the enemy. They’re held captive by the enemy. So that will be my starting place.

But a couple of other practical ideas. The first is to ask questions. It communicates, first of all, that you value them, because you value what they think. And that’s so important at this critical stage of a child’s life. Secondly, listening. Asking questions allows you to listen to what they’re feeling inside. And that itself meets a great need of the heart to feel understood through this turmoil. And then thirdly, by asking them their opinions, you create an environment which can, to some degree, set them at ease as they start to think about riskier questions to ask, like,
“Do you think there’s something wrong with me that I don’t like dressing in frilly, feminine things, and most of my friends are boys?” In other words, those really personal issues. For our kids to be able to really bring those up requires us to create a supportive, safe environment. And questions help do that.

The other observation I have—and this just again breaks my heart—we have to be watchful. We cannot be naive about the power of peer pressure and the social media in the lives of kids that have great homes, great families, great parents. It’s astonishing how powerful that peer pressure in today’s world can be. And we just we need to—I’m thinking of 1 Peter 5:8—be watchful. Your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. We need to be internet snoops. We need to be vigilant and know what’s going on in our children.

JONATHAN: I know that for me, if I go on Twitter for five minutes, the things you see on there and make it seem like to hold to a biblical view of gender is the craziest thing in the world. And that really gives you an unbalanced view of reality on social media. That’s huge.

KELSEY: And I appreciate your pastor’s heart. You immediately go, again, to that tender response to whoever’s in your home. And when you’re doing that, you’re also building in them, modeling for them, that tender response they might have as they go out and interact with their peers. So we’re talking about levels that are heart-level things, mind-level things. They also impact our actions, our behaviors. And so thank you for the way that you view the whole person with everything you’re saying.

DR. YAGEL: If I could go back and touch on one thing I forgot to say: Our kids won’t hear us if we don’t communicate real compassion and care for those who are in the LGBTQ world. We need to do that because we need to be like Jesus and have great compassion in our hearts. But the second practical side of that is that if our kids don’t see that, they’re going to buy into what they’re hearing, which is that their parents and churches are transphobic and gay-phobic. And so we just have to get our hearts in the right place. We can’t fool them. And if they’re not, they’re probably not going to listen to a biblical view of gender coming from us.

KELSEY: I hear in your posture that verse talking about, if you have a brother who is caught in sin, then you should help to free him. You know, as that consideration that you’re restoring, that you’re freeing almost as though from a bear trap or from enslavement, like you spoke of earlier, that being enslaved to a lie. So there’s this very tender posture, and key things in scripture that affirm and establish that foundation for our actions. So what other biblical truths can we supply maybe our older kids and teens with as we engage this conversation with them?

DR. YAGEL: You know, I know you’re focusing this on those who are a little bit older, and I have a passion for creating the soil that our little ones grow up in, that really is rooted in affirming God’s creation design. But I still want to go there with our older kids, because they are not hearing of the glory of the design. We’ll talk a little bit about the sort of the myths, about the biblical worldview in the second half. But the design—I just don’t know how parents today cannot spend some heavy time in Genesis 1-2, because we have to give guidance and help our kids see God loves us. His design is good; it’s perfect. Aligning our lives with His design is the path of life.

You know, for example, again, Genesis 1. God begins to talk about differences by pointing out that women are fully members with men, fully bearers of God’s image. They’re equal. And you know, so many people think that biblical view of women puts women down. So right there, God starts by saying no: male and female both fully bear the image of God. Femininity is required to image who God is. Adam and Eve are both called to the cultural mandate, to exercise dominion. And then He goes into the second chapter, where He goes into a good bit of detail about the design. And the difference is that God deliberately designs male and female because He wants them to need each other, because that’s a part of this complementary design. And so we see that Adam is made from the ground, and He’s put in the garden to work it. And that term, the Hebrew term avad, is just a glorious picture of how God designed masculinity to be. It means “I sweat, I die, so that the garden flourishes, so that my wife and kids who are in the garden flourish, so that my customers flourish.” That’s the essence of being put in the garden. And then Adam is put in the garden to protect it—shamar.

Then we see later on in Genesis 2, in the process of describing romance at the end of Genesis 2, that it’s the man who takes the initiative. “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother.” And then we put that with the picture of Jesus in the New Testament and realize that part of the male calling is to leave our comfort and to pursue as Jesus did. He died for us. He draws us to Himself with the cords of love. But He initiates and we respond. And so there’s a beautiful picture in the dance of male with female that’s just glorious. And today’s generation is just not getting to see that, and they’re not hearing that very much.

Eve, on the other hand, is just a gloriously designed creature who has the ability to partner. Women can, as they lead collaboratively, they lead in much better ways in some contexts than men do. I love the old Puritan statement of Matthew Henry: “Eve was not taken out of a man’s head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him.” It’s just a glorious design.

But then two more parts of Eve’s design further on. She’s the mother of the living. And I know that motherhood has been overdone in some contexts, and we need to affirm the value of a woman apart from being a mother. But the biblical picture is to highly elevate a woman who has the ability not just to bear children, but to nurture. In fact, I think a man’s love is to provide what is needed in the garden to flourish. But a woman’s love is the giving of herself, it’s nurturing with, surrounding that person with her love. And then finally we come to Proverbs 31. Again, sometimes this makes women feel disheartened, because they feel like they have to be super homemaker woman. I don’t think that’s the way God intended it. I think God lays out this picture, not as an exhaustive list that every woman needs to reach as a goal, but as an inclusive list, because He’s created every woman with unique and special gifts to exercise dominion in her home. So she’s called overall to exercise dominion in Genesis 1, but she has the special ability to exercise dominion in her home. And that’s a glorious picture. Sure, anything can be taken out of balance, and we need to be careful to protect against that more than anyone else. But as I think about our children at all ages, the roots of our desires, the soil for those roots—can it reflect the glory of the design? Because I think that insulates our kids from a lot of the fallen ideas that are out there about gender.

KELSEY: And you’re saying here, it is never too much to reiterate God’s truth. You know, we’re never done with that grammar school of the gospel, or the grammar school of our design. Sometimes we think through classical education terms, and we think that’s really only for elementary schoolers, to listen to those building blocks. No, we need those over and again, to keep our foundation. So thank you for that reminder to nurture and to supply our children with the words of the gospel—that huge, full narrative of scripture—to remind them of the goodness of their design. How beautiful. What other sort of bedrock self-image truths do we need to guide our children to embrace, especially in this cultural moment?

DR. YAGEL: Well, of course, I think we all want our kids to grow up saying, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made, wonderful are God’s works, my soul knows it very well.” But I think in today’s age, they especially need to know that. Because their physiological, biological body is part of that. But even more important, I think, in terms of really valuing our masculinity or femininity, is Ephesians 2:10: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

God perfectly designed us for our mission in life, including our gender. You know, my wife and I had five kids. And we started off with twins. And we very early discovered that twins especially—probably all kids really—want to be seen as unique. So we were pretty intentional about trying to build a sense of uniqueness. We went through spiritual gifts material on Romans 12, we went through Gary Chapman’s love languages, we went through something called the Youth Exploratory Survey. And my point here is just that, as our kids can see—the way they’re perfectly designed as male or female, with a male or female body, fitting into the context that they’ve been made for a mission. And so God wouldn’t mess up the gender part of that. That’s the truth that we want to be the bedrock of our kids’ self-image.

And then one other thing, which is ideal, but if we can help our kids understand that our calling as God’s covenant people is to be a blessing to the world—that our kids are going to be rejected for their views on gender, but that the world needs those views, that God has revealed to us in Genesis 1-2 some things about how male and female work, and how male and female work is profoundly important for life. And so we need to be that light, and maybe it helps our kids understand you may be rejected sometime, but God called you to be there and to guide those who really are lost in this dark culture, about this design. And yeah, it’s hard to say that well, and you may be ridiculed for it. But it’s a great calling for God’s people, who have been given His revelation, to try to speak that, shape that into a form that can be winsome, to shape the culture. So that’s a little heavy duty for a child. But you guys get that, you know, in terms of worldview.

KELSEY: Absolutely. And to condense it to a child’s level. He named you as “very good.”

JONATHAN: Just the other day, my daughter, who is seven, asked me—I don’t know where this question came from—but she asked me, “Are men better than women?” And I just walked her through, like, God created all these things and He called them good. He created man—wait, something was missing. It wasn’t good for man to be alone. He created woman. Now it was very good. It was both together. And that was the very good creation. And I think that really touched her, just knowing that her being a girl is part of God’s very good creation.

DR. YAGEL: I think that’s essential. Because the biblical view is sort of accused of being patriarchal and oppressive. And so we need to make sure that our children don’t come away thinking that the design of Eve is in any way inferior. God starts with saying that both thoroughly bear the image of God. Both are equal. And I think during any questions about our differences, we need to start with the full equality. We cannot let our little girls ever think that they are somehow inferior. And there’s a little bit of an issue with the word “suitable helper,” that it just sounds inferior. And I think we need to give guidance to our kids. That’s not the intent of that Hebrew word at all. Just another reason for going back to the scriptures and giving guidance at a time in history when it’s kind of needed, in today’s world.

KELSEY: I’ve been thinking about how the Lord reveals Himself gradually more intimately to His people. Starting from that place of God Almighty, it becomes I Am, and then even more so, He reveals himself as Father through Jesus. And then He leaves us with—and here’s that word—a better Helper. So even in the Lord’s revelation of Himself, that is some of the language He uses for Himself, as He is to us. And He is the one deserving of all glory. He is good, good, good.

DR. YAGEL: Well, there’s one doctrine that my wife doesn’t have any problem believing, and that is that word ezer, which is really—the wife is created to be a helper, ezer—it really is used to describe God. And my wife understands that I need her just about as much as I need God. You know, she shouldn’t doubt that doctrine one bit.

KELSEY: As we’re talking about all of these rich portions of scripture, and how they inform our individuality, our identity—where do we find encouragement in scripture towards the diversity and uniqueness of our call as male and female?

DR. YAGEL: Well, again, I want to thank you for that question. It’s really important in this whole discussion of transgenderism, because those who come out as trans are rejecting the stereotype that goes with their biological sex. And understanding that diversity of creation is profoundly important here to prevent that from happening. God is so creative that there’s a wide diversity of characteristics of all human beings. Typically, a bell-shaped curve describes the breadth of God’s creativity, whether it’s intelligence or size or athletic ability. Now, since God created male and female differently, to complete what is lacking in the other, the bell curves of male and female are different. But they overlap.

So take size. Are adult males typically bigger than adult females? Yes. Are they always bigger? No. The bell curves overlap. Or to bring it home a little more: Let’s consider being emotional. Okay, kind of a hot topic. But does estrogen make a difference? Are most women more emotional than most men? Yes. But when my wife and I watch a sad Netflix movie, I cry way before my wife. My wife is on the less sensitive side of the typical female curve. I mean, she had to handle five small kids. I am more on the sensitive side of the male curve. My linebacker son said to me, “Dad, you’re not tough enough to be a football coach.” And I answered, “You’re right. God created me to be a pastor, and I have to have a tender side.”

So here’s the point that I’m trying to get to. The alternative to being a girly girl is not identifying as trans. It’s celebrating God’s marvelous creativity, knowing that God perfectly fashioned a girl’s body to match His purpose for her.

JONATHAN: This is an audio-only podcast, but if people could see, they would see me putting my fists in the air. Like, touchdown. Yes, that’s good truth.

KELSEY: And it is what we attempted to say, but I think you’ve said so much more eloquently than our attempts.

JONATHAN: “Girl power and God’s purpose for gender” was our episode.

DR. YAGEL: I loved your episode on gender. I loved it. I love your heart as well.

KELSEY: Thank you. Well, we would love for you to wrap us up with a blessing from scripture. But before we do that, where can we find your material? We’re going to include it in the show notes. But for those who are listening, would you tell us how can we grab hold of some of that material you’ve written on this topic?

DR. YAGEL: Well, I did write the book Anchoring Your Child to God’s Truth in a Gender-Confused Culture with the purpose in mind of sharing some of what I just did about masculinity and femininity. That book is available; the PCA published it. It’s also available at Amazon. I often talk about what’s going on in my podcast, because I want to equip fathers to know what’s happening in the culture. And what happened is, I was really setting out to try to help dads understand this whole issue. And then I realized that moms are much more in touch with their kids anyway. And so I should be doing this for parents, you know? But I’m an old men’s ministry leader. So I was really trying to help men be spiritual leaders of their homes, is why I got started in this. So I do cover this a good bit in my podcast, if you guys want to listen to it.

KELSEY: And it’s great. I’m so thankful for it. I’ve listened to it as well and found your material very accessible and encouraging. And the book, part of the reason I want to point to it is because there are discussion questions there for use at home with your kids. What a great resource. So I want to encourage: Check it out. We’ll put it in the show notes. But now Gary, we would love a pastoral blessing from you for the end of this podcast.

DR. YAGEL: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” We do not need to be perfect parents. God’s grace is for those who are not. That’s what that verse says. And that’s sufficient for parenting our children. God loves to hear us say, “Lord, I can’t do this. I haven’t raised my kid to celebrate your gender design as well as I should have. I haven’t helped him see his uniqueness as well as I should have. I don’t even know what questions to ask to get the conversation to happen. And I’m too upset about these people that are corrupting my child.” Bring that all to the Lord and say, “Lord, I can’t. I can’t love those who I see badly influencing my child like Gary is saying to do,” and just say, “I can’t do this.”

And you know what? That gets the Lord to respond, “Okay. Get ready for my power to work in you. And in your child.”

KELSEY: Parents, teachers, mentors of kids and teens: The Lord has put you in a particular position, with kids in front of you that you have a unique impact on. But He hasn’t left you there alone. He has equipped you for the work.

 


 

Show Notes

Dr. Gary Yagel of Forging Bonds joins the conversation to explore the origins of gender theory and transgenderism. How can parents and educators engage this difficult issue with grace and truth?

We would love to hear from you. You can send us a message at newscoach@wng.org. What current events or cultural issues are you wrestling through with your kids and teens? Let us know. We want to work through it with you.

See more from the News Coach, including episode transcripts.

Further Resources:

 

 

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