Exclusive: North Point Church Responds to Leaked LGBTQ Training Video: ‘This…unintentionally mischaracterized our view’

Staff Writer

North Point Community Church has responded to a leaked training video that we shared last week showing a church ministry director instructing small group leaders to use affirming language with transgender tweens and teens, saying that the training “does not reflect our church’s approach to ministering to or guiding students who are experiencing gender dysphoria.“

Note. The full 20-minute training video is available only to patrons at our Media Content Page for Insiders. To sign up for our Patreon, which also gives you an ad-free browsing experience, exclusive podcasts, and behind-the-scenes content, click here.

The original video, seen below, advises ministry leaders to use their new names and personal pronouns of struggling trans 11-14 year olds, because if everyone else in that child’s life is affirming them, “we cannot be the last place a (trans) student feels comfortable.”

North Point has been inundated with bad press and upset congregants across all campuses as a result of the video being made public, with one North Point pastor telling us, “It’s like you dropped a grenade in the sanctuary.”

The story has been covered by multiple news channels, including Christian Post, Breitbart, Daily Wire, The Blaze, and others, and even Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene commented on it on a “Right to the Point” podcast. During the show, which the Republican Study Committee runs, Greene called out the church and described their policies as “spiritual attacks” on children.

In a letter sent last night to Transit leaders, North Point shared:

Dear Transit Leader,

We have received a few questions concerning training material that was distributed to Transit small group leaders at some of our Atlanta-area campuses. The purpose was to prepare them for the recent middle school series on relationships. Though North Point Transit did not distribute the training material, I wanted to share this information in case you hear about it and have questions going forward.

In addition to the content that is normally included in the training, a section on the topic of gender dysphoria was added that does not reflect our church’s approach to ministering to or guiding students who are experiencing gender dysphoria. This additional content unintentionally mischaracterized our view and gave the impression that leadership encouraged transitioning. That is not the case.

This content was not created by our local Transit team and did not go through the proper approval process, an issue that was immediately remedied.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or our Transit staff.

Thank you for investing in middle schoolers. They are fortunate to have you speaking into their lives during this important season.

The letter is not an apology and does not address the issue of whether or not North Point uses personal pronouns for struggling trans teens and tweens.

Furthermore, Transit training is not the only way North Point leaders encourage LGBTQ children to pursue trans identities.

First, North point pastors and ministry leaders have previously recommended that struggling LGBTQ children attend The Christian Closet, which is a gay-affirming counseling collective where every counselor and therapist are themselves gay, genderfluid, or transgendered.

Second, while they insist they do not encourage transitioning, as we’ve covered in a previous article, after a young man from the church came out as a “transgender woman” on Instagram, the post was liked by nearly a dozen North Point church leaders, including by Jennifer McGhee, the Director of Transit for that campus.

Third, at North Point’s 2023 Embracing the Journey Conference, where nearly all the speakers were gay or gay-affirming, one of the panelists openly advocated for the use of chemical castration on their trans child, saying “For many of us and for our kids who take hormones to feel like themselves, this is medically necessary. This is life-saving. And so many in the culture treat it like it’s some flippant thing.”

She further insisted that people need to “come to grips” with the reality that “medical intervention is necessary for a person’s well-being and healing” and that gender-affirming care “is a treatment for gender dysphoria.”

Again, all very encouraging to us.