A Resource for your pastor

[BeverlyAnn]

http://www.erinswen.com/PastoralCare2col.pdf

If you are a member of a church, openly transgendered and your pastor has problems with or questions about transgenderism, here's an excellent resource written by a Presbyterian minister and gender therapist.

Bev

[BeverlyAnn]

My therapist knows and has collaborated with Erin quite a bit in the past and for once I feel fortunate to be living in the Atlanta area.

Are you seeing Virginia?  And being TG in Atlanta is a lot better than being TG in say, Cordele. 

"Does everything have to be about gender, about how you look, about chatting with your support group friends?"

I did a seminar on this topic called "The Balancing Act" at SCC a few years ago although it was primarily aimed at married CD's.  Virginia and Erin both attended as my "expert witnesses" to handle the really hard questions.

Bev

[David W. Shelton]

This topic is stickied... good information here, folks!

[Cindi Jones]

Yes it is excellent information.  When Bev posted it in February, I actually provided a link to it from my blogs.  It's not only good for the pastor folks!

Cindi

[Chandra21]

Thats cool and all, except the members of my religion are closeminded and believe everything their "Prophets" tell them... even if archeology, scientific or medical discoveries prove otherwise. I am probably one of the few Mormons (and I was as closemind as the rest once) that does not believe the church is true. I believe in their concept of god and the afterlife (save for the fact that I think God is probably female) and nothing more (because of this I refuse to go through their mason like temple rituals). I'll try to show my bishop this though i'm pretty sure I know what the response will be.

[Squirrel698]

Thank you for the link.  Very informative and well said.  I'm going to send it to my pastor and see what happens. 

My Mother tells me that any church that accepts me is not a Christian church but something else.  I really don't believe that.  I think people are just uniformed and this is not a moral or religious decision I am making here.  I am just being exactly as I was created to be.

[Bam]

Thanks for the imfo,i have been through seven church's and finally found one that is accepting!!

[Caisie Breen]

http://www.erinswen.com/PastoralCare2col.pdf

If you are a member of a church, openly transgendered and your pastor has problems with or questions about transgenderism, here's an excellent resource written by a Presbyterian minister and gender therapist.

Bev

Wow! This is great material. I come from a very conservative church that I have been a member of for years. Although I left sometime ago, I still have a few people I feel very close to and want to explain things to them.

It will be very hard for them to understand as the church is not only very conservative, I actually was an activist teaching against who I am today, twenty plus years ago.

Anyway, again, I find this material to be very interesting and I hope it will help me as I begin to dialogue with my old church leadership.

[Beatriz]

Excellent information indeed, though a bit old by now.

I wonder if I could contact the Association and request authorization to translate it to Portuguese? My local pastors, from an LGBT-accepting church who are starting only now to include gender identity concerns in their agenda, are both fluent in English, so I can just forward this material. My family, on the other hand, has quite a few traditional Presbyterian pastors who refuse to talk to me or strike a conversation at all - including my father - so it'd be great to have this available in Portuguese.

[MsAnnaLynn]

I see that this is an old posting most recently replied to in 2015, but would like to know how to open the link. It doesn't respond to clicking on it.