Fifth Edition

For every pastor, parent, and all who care.

Access practical, God-honoring guidance to relate effectively with LGBT+ people in your family, church, ministry, Christian school, or other community setting.

Practical answers to some of the toughest challenges pastors and parents face:

Understanding LGBT+ Loved Ones

Receive insights on what it’s like growing up LGBT+, the courage it takes to come out, and the risks LGBT+ teens face.

Developing a Thoughtful Care Plan

Learn how to respond well when loved ones come out, love well while holding onto your beliefs, ensure their safety, and reestablish relationships with loved ones after making mistakes.

Engaging with Accessible Language

Gain a missional perspective on language that helps make every word count as you build trust with your loved one.

Loving Gender Minorities Well

Build understanding about trans and non-binary identities and discover ways to care well and foster conversations with your trans or non-binary loved one.

Guidance for All Who Care

Tips for relational effectiveness, making sure your home is a refuge, being a friend to parents of LGBT+ children, and preparing for crucial conversations.

What's new about the Revised 5th Edition?

Expanded Content

In this new edition, you will find more of our Best Practice Care Plan, many content suggestions brought to us from you - our readers of prior editions, and expanded guidance on care for trans and non-binary loved ones.

Reorganized Structure

This edition will lead you on a journey through the profile of LGBT+ individuals across a lifetime from childhood to adulthood, offering deeper insights into the needs of LGBT+ loved ones at every stage of life.

New Design

While still offering a high design feel, the edition’s new design embodies an enhanced narrative structure for readability.

If you could only give parents and concerned family members one resource, point them to Guiding Families. The Fifth Edition graciously and wisely addresses care for Trans kids and much more. I keep several copies of this top resource to give to parents.

Guiding Families will walk you through how to care for your loved one with helpful specificity—even down to the specific questions you should be asking your child in that first all-important follow-up conversation. For parents who have blown it, you will learn how to reset the relationship. There is only one book that I recommend for parents, pastors and friends of young LGBT+ people: This is it!

Guiding Families holds wisdom born of deep Christian faith and years of experience walking with LGBT+ people and our loved ones. It will help you walk with your child, or any young people for whom you are responsible, showing Jesus' love and humility even in the face of disagreements. I recommend this guidebook all the time!

This book boldly invites each one of us into a posture of relational tenderness, biblical fidelity, cultural nuance, and practical care. I long for a world where more and more Christians love their LGBTQIA+ neighbors with the kind of sensitivity and compassion modeled in these pages.

Guiding Families is an essential guide for Christian pastors, parents and others who have the privilege to walk with LGBT+ loved ones. In the midst of so much fear around how to be effective Christian witnesses at the intersection of faith, sexuality, and gender, this resource offers a foundation for greater courage, charity, and Christlikeness. As a psychologist, I find myself recommending Guiding Families to each and every family I work with, and have been blessed to apply its wisdom in relationships with those I love who identify as LGBT+.

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