- In the last 10 yearsmore than 50 gender clinics

for children have opened,designed to provide

medical interventions for children

and teens who want to change their gender.

And overall the number ofpeople seeking medical treatment

to change is on the rise.

The medical journal JAMA says the number

of gender surgeries increasedfour fold from 2000 to 2014.

So how should the church relate to

and care for these children

and adults who identify with another sex?

To answer this question,CBN's Heather Sells

spoke with best sellingauthor Dr. Preston Sprinkle

with the Center for Faith.

- What are you hearing from pastors

and church leaders?

Are they beginning to see

more people in their churches

who are struggling witha transgender issue?

- Yes, absolutely.

I've been doing this full time

for quite a while now,

helping churches think through

questions about sexuality and gender.

It was about a year ago

when the number of emails

and questions I would get

between like same sex related questions

versus the gender related questions.

About a year ago thegender related questions

now are the primary questions I'm getting.

We're seeing, as you mentioned,

an explosion of,especially female teenagers

identifying as something together than

their biological sex,

whether it's transgender or non binary,

gender queer, gender nonconforming,

and there's a whole hostof other identities.

So yes this is absolutely something

that many pastors are wrestling with.

- You've written about balancing love

and truth when it comes toministering to these people,

how can believers remainfaithful to scripture

and then also love a person

who's identifying as transgender?

- Yeah that's the sweet spot, I think,

how to balance those two well.

You know there's not,

I think there's no realsecret magic formula.

I mean read about Jesusand follow his lead.

I think listening is a big thing

for people, like most of us,

who don't have any kind of a gender,

we're not wrestling withour gender identity.

You know those of us who are at home

in our bodies and wedon't think much of it,

we have a hard time understanding

somebody who might not feel that way.

So I think just beinga really good listener,

like genuinely listeningso that you can understand

what the person is trying to say.

And listening doesn't meanyou have to agree with them,

it just means that you want to honor

them in their humanity

as they're honoring you bytelling you their story.

- I wanna ask you about pronouns

because from what I'veread of your writings

you believe that when it comes to pronouns

there's some good reasons forusing what a person asks for,

so explain your thinking on that.

- Yeah, that's a really,that's a tough one.

And I honestly can see good sides on both,

good reasons for both views.

One view would say if youuse a person's pronoun

that doesn't match the biological sex

then you're lying.

And thou shall not lie.

And that's something Ithink we should consider.

But pronouns, and language as a whole,

is really flexible.

I mean language changes over time,

and today pronouns can be used

to refer to one's biological sex

or in some cases

people use pronouns to referto their gender identity,

their internal sense of who they are.

And you can disagree with that,

but that's just how language works.

Culture determines themeaning of language.

So there is some flexibility there.

And quite honestly, on a practical level,

if you wanna end a relationship

with a trans person immediately,

just refuse to use the pronouns,

that relationship is gone.

As Christians, I think wewanna build relational bridges,

not build relational walls.

So I think there's a good case to use

some of these pronouns.

- All right, well Dr. Preston Sprinkle,

a lot to think about.

Thank you for your time.

- Thank you for having me.