Spotlight

Compassion for Parents Living Under the Cross

In 2024 and 2025, the LCMS offered retreats for the parents of children struggling with sexual orientation and gender identity issues.

Story by Brianna Dehn | Photography by Erik M. Lunsford | Summer 2025

When a young person is grappling with sexual orientation or gender identity issues, it impacts the whole family. Parents often don’t know how to help, and the situation can end up leaving them feeling isolated from family and friends who don’t understand what they are going through.

“Many of the parents [of children facing LGBTQ+ temptations] feel that they’ve been left out of all of the decisions that their child was making,” said the Rev. Dr. Mark Rockenbach, professor of practical theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and a member of the Synod’s Created Male and Female Task Force. “[They’re] struggling with this. They need a place where others can help them think through it and process it.”

For the last two years, the LCMS Office of National Mission’s (ONM) Family Ministry has organized exactly this kind of opportunity. The Created Male and Female Parent Retreat was held in April 2024 and again in April 2025 so that parents of children with sexual orientation and gender identity struggles may support one another and learn practical and personalized skills for engaging with their child on the topic.

Those who attend the retreat leave with a godly approach to caring for children with sexual orientation and gender identity issues, as they learn from Lutheran experts in the field, spend time in prayer and conversation, and address their own hurt and concerns. There is also time for participants to make personalized action plans on how to talk to their children on this topic.

“We want them to engage with their children,” Rockenbach said. “The goal is not to shun their children or abandon them, but they need to be able to engage with their children while still holding true to the truth of what God’s Word has to say on who we are and how He has created us.”

Rockenbach continued: “We want our children to know if they are struggling, there are people who can sit down with them and care for them and … their souls.”

The work of the Created Male and Female Task Force grew out of 2019 Resolution 11-03A, “To Encourage Synod to Develop Resources to Aid Congregations and Schools regarding Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues.” The task force tackles these difficult issues from a Lutheran perspective and confesses what the Bible teaches. The resources are developed by experts who continue to study what is going on in the world and stand ready with suggestions for how the church should respond.

“We are God’s creatures. He has made us, body and soul,” said the Rev. Andy Becker, manager of family discipleship for the ONM. “His creation and design includes our sexuality. And while our identity is not limited to our gender or sex, it is part of it. When we talk about our identity in Christ, it includes not only who He made us to be, but who He has redeemed us by His blood to be. He has called us to live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness.”

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Learn more about LCMS Family Ministry

Brianna Dehn

Former staff writer with LCMS Communications.