The loving parents of an early-teenage girl come to see you, asking for help. Their daughter has just told them she wants to be a man and is demanding that they affirm her decision. They ask for your counsel on how to remain faithful to God’s creation design and biblical teaching while continuing to love their daughter.
A storm of pressure is building in your fellowship over a minor issue. Your actions as leaders are being questioned with growing suspicion by a segment of the members. The decision wasn’t unwise or unreasonable and yet the reaction against it seems extreme and almost irrational. In light of the response, you are questioning your ability to lead and now repeatedly second-guess even the smallest decisions.
You hear that a respected local preacher has had a number of invitations to preach in local churches withdrawn. You learn it is because he made an application in a recent sermon that some in the congregation found ‘distressing’. You come to learn that what he said was grounded in the text, spoken in love, and was a point you yourself had made in a sermon just a few months earlier.
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