This group made our “Day on Gender and Sexuality” a reality.

“It’s keeping me up at night praying”, I told a friend last March. Volunteering at a local high school, the students with questions about gender seemed to be visible all around me. Some students I got to sit and hear their stories, others passed me in the hall and I would think silent prayers over them.

Night after night I would wake up and lay in bed praying and asking the Lord two questions:

Why was I so moved and disturbed by conversations about gender dysphoria and discontent?
What was I to do about this, if anything?

Voicing this aloud to a friend, she replied, “you work at a summer camp, could that be a piece?”

Hmmmm… camp.

At least it was something concrete to pray about. I shared my thoughts with our other full time staff. We certainly did not have all the answers, or even that many answers, it seemed. But we became convicted that we needed to broach the subject of gender with our campers and see what doors it opened.

I became absolutely certain that we needed to move into this space after listening to a session at the Revoice conference where the speaker (the Director of a ministry called Lead Them Home) explained that current statistics show that 16% of teens identify as non-binary. By age twenty five this percentage drops to under 1%. Whatever causes this dramatic change, I had the immediate thought that we need a fleet of loving adults, equipped with sound doctrine and a nuanced understanding of gender to walk alongside these teens through their challenges. You can read the whole post here.

We made two small changes to our teaching and were amazed with the responses from the campers.

First, during our large group teaching where we discussed creation, we paused during the creation of Adam and Eve to say this simple sentence: “we live in a world today that says we can choose our own gender, but that doesn’t seem to be what the Bible says, it seems to say that God creates us in a specific gender.”

Secondly, we have a focused time with the 14-15 year old campers daily where we discuss life issues such as: identity, race, family,sexuality and fatherlessness. During this time, when we discussed our identity as being created in God’s image, we again added the above sentence. We followed this up with a question that allowed them to discuss:

Why would God choose our gender for us?

How do you feel about God choosing your gender for you?

I had amazing conversations and wrote a bit about them here.

I had such amazing conversations that I began to dream about a whole day event in the fall for campers and their parents. A time where we could share with parents what we teach at camp, give them an opportunity to ask questions, and then hear from a panel of friends who willingly shared stories of gender dysphoria and same sex attraction. This day happened October 12. My friends on the panel shared openly and vulnerably and brought tears to the listeners. Alongside their hardships, they equally shared stories of hope found only in a relationship with Christ and how He alone is what we are seeking deeply.

Our panelists :) Hayley Mullins, Laurie Krieg and Kat LaPrairie. So grateful to them!

I had a hard time not bursting into tears as I moderated the sharing time. I felt so grateful that we could provide this space for learning and for sharing. I felt proud to work alongside a full time staff that wants to move into dicey spaces because we love teens and young adults and these are the spaces they are in.

I felt deeply moved that God has pushed and prodded my heart for months towards this end. I believe that.

He cares intensely for these campers, for their parents, and for all of us.

I decided to write about this story not because I am wanting to say, “wow- we are so great”. I wanted to write to encourage you, as you are reading, to begin to pray about what you might do in the places that the Lord has placed you? You have been placed strategically where you are.

I am placed at a Christian summer camp as well as at our local Christian university. I want to leverage those places that I’ve been entrusted with to benefit the Kingdom.

Where is your area of influence?

You’ve heard my story, and I am sure I will write others. God is consistently opening doors for me to love teens and young adults and to explain that ultimately He is what they desire.

Pray with me that a fleet of loving adults, equipped with sound doctrine and a nuanced understanding of gender and sexuality will stand up and walk alongside a generation that is hurting deeply and asking hard questions. Thankfully we serve a God who is more than adequate to meet them.

a conversation about gender...