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What happens when a parent's deeply held Christian values collide with their child's life-altering decisions? Deborah McNinch faced this question head-on when her adult son announced he was transgender in 2017. The pain and isolation that followed became the catalyst for Battle Cry Moms, a prayer movement uniting mothers of prodigal children across denominational lines.
With raw honesty, Deborah shares the journey from devastation to determination, revealing how she navigated the tension between unconditional love and unwavering faith. "I couldn't hate my child enough to get him to heaven, and I couldn't love him straight to hell," she explains, articulating the delicate balance many Christian parents struggle to maintain when their children make choices that conflict with their beliefs.
The conversation tackles the uncomfortable reality that churches often fall short in supporting families through these crises. Many parents find themselves caught between two extremes - reject your child or fully affirm choices against your faith - with little guidance on finding a middle path rooted in both truth and grace. Deborah's experience highlights the urgent need for faith communities to create space for messy realities rather than perpetuating the illusion of perfect Christian families.
Battle Cry Moms now connects over 1,300 mothers worldwide through a private online platform where they can share struggles, find specific support groups, and most importantly, unite in persistent prayer for their children. The community stands on the conviction that while parents cannot force their children back to faith, they can stand in the gap through faithful intercession, armed with Scripture and unwavering hope.
Whether you're personally walking through the heartbreak of a prodigal journey or seeking to better support those who are, this conversation offers practical wisdom, spiritual encouragement, and a powerful reminder that no situation is beyond God's redemptive reach. Join us to discover how persistent prayer and unconditional love can become your battle cry in life's most challenging seasons.
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00:29 - Introduction to Battle Cry Moms
06:44 - Finding Community Amid Crisis
13:39 - Christian Parenting in LGBTQ Reality
21:49 - Navigating Family Division
28:31 - Creating Church Support Systems
39:05 - Building a Prayer Battle Plan
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Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the Dorsey Ross Show.
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Today, we have a special guest with us.
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Her name is Deborah Minutes.
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She is the founder of Battle Cry Moms.
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Battle Cry Moms was launched in May of 2021.
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It exists for one purpose For moms to unite in prayer for their prodigal children.
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In June 2017, debra's world came crashing down when her son announced he was transgender.
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The days and weeks following his announcement were full of pain, tears and uncertainty as Deborah watched the Christian values instilled in him fade away.
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Out of the pain, she would make sure of several things.
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She would share her family's struggles to offer hope to others going through the same thing.
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She would build a community for other moms, like her moms, that believe that their prodigals will come home.
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She promised to never stop believing that God was a God of miracles and nothing was too big for him.
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She found a battle cry to be the answer to all those promises.
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Debra, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
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Thank you so much for having me and for having this important conversation.
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Definitely.
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Now I'd like to open up with a few, you know, lighthearted questions, and the first one is what's the most interesting place you ever visited?
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visited?
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Okay, well, you know, let me think about that.
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These questions always are so hard for me.
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You know you prepare for all of these and it's the ones you don't know are coming are the hard.
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You know we have traveled just a little bit, but I'm going to say my favorite place we ever went was Israel.
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We were able to take a private tour of the Holy Land about a decade or so ago and it was amazing as you can, and changed my life and so just it was so interesting just to see actually what is going on there now, what went on there thousands of years ago, and just to kind of make the Bible come alive.
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Now I hear, I read and I heard that you like to learn a new skill every year.
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Every year, what's a new skill that you would like to learn this year, in 2025?
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This year.
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I'm still kind of deciding on a couple of things, but I really want to get into fermenting things, and so last year we really took on canning learning, going deeper into learning how to can and preserve food, and I'm really kind of into the fermenting game right now, and so I really want to learn more about how to ferment vegetables and ferment things and put them up and all of that kind of good stuff.
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I also, you know, I want to learn.
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I want to keep sewing a little bit.
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I took up a board last year and I really want to continue that Just hand sewing skill.
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I think that's super fun.
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So, yeah, I just am all about learning new things, keeping my brain active, and I just like to be just like one of those people that say, yeah, I can do that.
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You know, it's just fun, I can do that, I can do anything.
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What is a photo from F-A-R-M?
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Yes, so a long, many, many years ago.
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I've always been a photographer and I really got to the point in my photography that I didn't enjoy photographing people as much as I used to, and so, but one thing I always liked to do was to build sets and collect junk.
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And so I teamed up with a dear friend of mine that owned a wedding venue and said, hey, would you like to have a photo farm on your property?
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And so what we do is we set up sets, different sets, and we they're very elaborate also.
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It's just, it's a lot.
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We are kind of over the top.
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We're known for kind of our over the top things that we do.
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But it allows other photographers, or people we call momographers, to come out and use our sets and take pictures, and so they basically they rent our set, and then people can come out and bring your own camera or your own photographer and use our stuff.
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So that's what a photo farm is.
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Okay, and you also mentioned in that last answer that you like to get vintage junk.
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What is the best vintage junk that you've gotten?
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Oh gosh, I have a love for vintage chairs and vintage couches, and so you can find me with vintage furniture.
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Okay, so my vintage junk I love to collect.
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I am one of those that will be driving down the street and we'll see junk by the curb and you know I'm like stop the car, I have to get that.
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And so I always like to joke that I love to see the value in things that other people throw out, just like Jesus, only with more glitter.
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And so I like to like I.
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I can just see anything can be a transformation and there could be beauty in anything, and so I love to collect couches.
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I love to collect vintage couches.
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Um, vintage chairs.
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I have a thing for old wooden chairs Pretty much.
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If it's junky, I'm going to get it.
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What sparked your interest in what you do now?
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Okay, so as you said in the intro, my world kind of came crashing down about seven years ago when my son announced that he was transgender.
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And up to that point I kind of was living this life of.
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I had this kind of perfect little family and you know, I thought we were all, everything was just unicorns and rainbows and everything was just going great.
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And it wasn't until that announcement that I realized that I was facing something that was really big and really hard and I was all alone in that.
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And so at the time, kind of at that announcement happened.
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It really was still the beginning, kind of the beginning stages of the movement we see today, kind of more.
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It's more open and talked about.
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It really wasn't kind of back then, and so at that time I really didn't know anyone that was going through the same thing I was, and even as far as like having prodigal children of any kind.
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I really didn't know of anybody that had kids that kind of strayed from the path that was laid out for them.
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I know the church wasn't talking about it, I knew that it wasn't something on a Sunday morning pastors were really talking about, and so I found myself really just not knowing what to do, where to turn and who to talk to.
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And so I knew immediately that I was going to need to find other moms, moms like me that had hopes and dreams for their family and that those changed overnight.
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And now they were left to pick up the pieces and figure out is God still good, does God still love me, does God still love my child, and how can I go forward in the future?
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Can you give a little bit more in of a description of how you know how, what is battle cry, moms, and how do people find you?
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And you know, yes, um, about that yeah.
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So, as I said at the beginning, I knew I was going to need to find moms like me.
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So originally I joined a secular kind of Facebook group for people going through similar experiences and I discovered really quickly that I probably wasn't a good fit for that group because I had different values and was coming from a whole different kind of point of view.
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But I stayed at it for a long time because I needed that community, I needed to know that there were other moms going through the same thing.
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And so I started doing some research about four years ago to kind of figure out what that would look like, to build my own social media network.
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And I always just say it was God just opening up the doors and showing me where to go and when to go and all of that during that time.
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But I started Battle Cry Moms and how it operates is it's its own little, it's kind of like a Facebook, but it's its own private community.
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It has nothing to do with any of the major social media networks.
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It's its own little entity by itself.
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And I started that so moms like me would have a place to go and to connect and to believe together.
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And so within the group.
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We have the main group, but we also have subgroups, and it's amazing because we have it broken down for what people are going through.
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So if you have a child that maybe is LGBTQ and you're a Christian and you don't know how to handle that, there's a group for you.
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If you have a child that maybe has some alcohol drug issues, there's a group for you.
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You're going to find other moms going through the same thing that will be able to speak life into you and to be able to help you on this journey, and maybe you just have a kid that simply doesn't believe.
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We have a group for you.
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And so within our main group we have lots of subgroups and so there's going to be somebody that you can connect with once you get in.
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And so how you find us is we are battlecrymomscom.
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When you come to the main page, it will say like click to join, something like that, and then when you click that, it's going to ask you five questions.
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And then when you click that, it's going to ask you five questions, and I personally go through every request to join the group and I say yes or no, depending on how people kind of answer the questions, because we're a very private group.
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What we do in the group, we want to stay private and secure and we only want people there that have the same prayer concerns and the same values that we have going into what our kids are going through, and so we have over 1,300 moms right now that join us from all over the world.
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We have people from overseas that have joined us, but it's a very diverse group.
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We have all denominations we have anywhere, I always joke from Lutherans and Catholics to Pentecostals, and so we have all kinds of craziness going on in there at any given time, but we stay united.
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We don't discuss politics, we don't discuss current events.
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We discuss our children, and that's the focus of our group.
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We pray for our kids and we post verses and songs and different things to encourage each other all of the time, and that's where our focus is with Battle Cry Moms.
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I know a friend of mine.
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He had a son who was a prodigal and he is now home, and he's been home several years now and you know, I'm thinking to myself, man, I wonder if she had any type of support for any type of people that she was surrounded by to help her during that time.
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Exactly.
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I found in my case there were not really a lot of people that knew what to do.
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Nobody knew what to say to me.
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Pastors didn't know kind of what to do in my situation, and so there just wasn't a lot of information out there.
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We have started, a couple of years ago, a battle cry dads group, and so if you're listening to this also and you're a dad, there's a group for you.
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I will say it's very, very small.
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I cannot get the dads to join.
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The dads aren't joiners, like moms are joiners.
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But I know the Lord's got plans for that group, and so we just keep inviting people to come, and one day it's going to be a powerful group as well, and so there's power in having a group.
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I call them our mat carriers.
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It's like the story of the paralytic in the Bible when it took four friends to get this person down in front of Jesus.
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I need friends.
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I need people to help me get my child in front of Jesus, and so we need mat carriers in our life, people that are going to partner with us to get our kids back to the kingdom of God.
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Amen.
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What is it like being a Christian and the mother of a transgender child?
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That's a great question and it depends on the day, probably, how I could answer that question.
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But the right answer to say up front is my kid is my kid and I made the decision at the beginning that I heard the Lord clearly say to me it was my job to love my child and it was his job to save him, and so I have never wavered in my love and support of my child.
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But at the same time I have different values and I come from a different place and so I had to learn to find my voice where at the first I was really kind of full of shame and embarrassment and it wasn't shame and embarrassment, I always like to say, it had nothing to do with his decision the shame and embarrassment was that we go to these churches and we have to have the perfect little family and we have to pretend the perfect little family and we have to pretend like everything is okay.
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And then, when it wasn't okay, when I realized I had a child that now didn't really fit into the pew, like maybe he would have before, I was embarrassed because I somehow felt like people were looking at me like what did that mother?
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Do you know what?
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Where did she go wrong?
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She must have done something.
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And so it was a lot of like holding my head just trying to lift up my eyes every Sunday to see the Lord, with kind of the shame and embarrassment I felt like the church was kind of putting on me.
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And you know, at the beginning I write about in the book I wrote about, all of this is I found there were two camps in the church and there was the camp I call it door A that said what these kids are doing is wrong and you have to turn them out and you have to.
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You know, just love them from afar and let them go.
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And then there was this camp over here that said there's nothing wrong with what they're doing, just love them.
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Everybody, god loves everybody, you know, in affirming the decision.
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And so I found myself kind of stuck in the middle of these two camps going.
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You know, I love my child yes, absolutely.
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But to not talk to him and to treat him any differently because of this decision, that just didn't feel right to me.
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But to affirm and lie to him and say this wasn't going to affect possibly eternal salvation, that didn't feel right to me either.
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And so I had to just decide I couldn't love my child anymore enough, you know, to get him to heaven.
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I mean, I couldn't hate my child enough to get him to heaven.
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I couldn't like there was nothing I could do to like turn him out and hate him enough to like that was going to like somehow get him in with better with God, but at the same time, I wasn't going to love him straight to hell.
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I was going to tell him the truth.
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And so I had to find out how to love my child where he was at and be the hands and feet of Jesus, but sometimes do that through my actions and not my words.
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And so, and it's all about learning to lay our kids down, and I think that was one thing I wasn't personally taught, maybe with the church.
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I love to joke that we dedicate babies and pray Jeremiah 29, 11 over them.
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You know that they're going to have a hope and a future, and that really has nothing to do with high school graduations and you know, and baby dedications, but we use that verse.
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But what we don't know is that verse yeah, you know, jeremiah, he had a hope and a future.
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God was saying I have a, I have this for you but you're going to be in captivity for a while.
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And so we kind of failed to mention that to parents when we pray that verse over their kids.
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And so I had to learn how to lay my child down and I had to believe that God had a plan and that he was never going to stop pursuing my child, just like he never stopped pursuing me.
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And I had to learn just to let him go.
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Let him go and let God and just love my kid right where he was at.
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And I refuse to believe.
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I love the story in the Bible when it talks about Rachel and she refused to be comforted.
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I had to refuse to be comforted.
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There wasn't anything anybody could say to me that was going to make this better.
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There wasn't any little verse.
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I was just going to pray and I was just going to you know it was all going to go away.
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I had to refuse to be comforted and I had to stay in that place.
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And I have to stay every day into that place of just intercession, prayer and belief that God has got this and somehow some way he is going to make all of this right and that Satan.
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One thing we say in my group, a lot is.
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No one fights alone and Satan is not going to have our children.
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He's not, and we refuse to believe it that he's going to.
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You mentioned the two camps or two sides for the cookies.
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We even see it today.
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You know more and more.
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Even see it today.
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You know more and more.
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We see it today.
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Yes, and did you ever talk to, you know, a pastor, talk to church members or whatnot, to try to understand why there is that you know?
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Conundrum of the two sides Right.
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First, the side that you are talking about Right, you know, early on I made some contact with you know, my pastor and whatever, and was just kind of not given good advice and I just I've realized that I can pull right now.
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I could go to any church website and I could pull up where they stand on any issue that we're talking about and I could tell you if they think my child's going to heaven or hell and we have drawn the line in the sand, which is fine.
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I have no problem with churches preaching the truth and standing up for what is right.
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That's never been my problem.
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My problem is, if we honestly believe that these decisions are separating our children from eternal, you know, glory with our Savior, then what are we doing to pray them home?
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How come we're not on our faces every single Sunday at the altar crying out for these children?
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And that's what my kind of my problem became was I wasn't seeing any kind of prayer movement or any kind of like movement to believe these children are coming home.
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It was like we stopped at condemnation but we didn't believe that God could somehow transform them and there was no teaching, if you will, or instructing parents, because there's parents just like me, there's parents probably listening right now to this podcast, saying, gosh, I am going through the same thing, or I know somebody going through the same thing, and there's nobody talking about this.
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This is an issue the church is silent about, and so it's just time that we as a church the capital C church start talking about hard issues and start standing with our parents for the things that they're going through.
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And I know, at the beginning, one time I was at a Bible study and I was with people I had been in this Bible study for a while and I loved everybody in this Bible study, but I had never felt comfortable to tell my story.
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No one knew what I was going through.
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And one week the conversation went to LGBT issues and I started hearing things that these people that I loved and was sitting around the table with saying you know things like well, we send our kids to private school because we don't want our kids around those kids.
00:20:57.884 --> 00:21:34.240
And there was something in me that clicked that night when I heard the word those kids that I knew it was time that I had to get over myself and I had to stand up and be a voice for parents everywhere that are going through hard things, that want people to stand with them in prayer and to believe their kids are coming home, and so we have to get to a point that it's my kids and it's your kids and I want the best for your family as much as, hopefully, you want for my family, and we're not going to stop praying and believing until all of our kids are home.
00:21:35.829 --> 00:21:40.481
How old was your son when he had this discussion with you?
00:21:41.651 --> 00:21:51.013
He was an adult and, in my situation, an adult already out in the world doing his own thing, all of that.
00:21:51.013 --> 00:21:54.701
And so I think it's a whole different discussion.
00:21:54.701 --> 00:22:02.996
If maybe you have a child at home, that's a minor living in your house, I think that's a different kind of discussion from where I'm coming from.
00:22:02.996 --> 00:22:14.898
But in my case, you know, my child was an adult, made an adult decision, and so, as a lot of our kids do, they make adult decisions that maybe you're not going to agree with.
00:22:15.019 --> 00:22:19.153
And, as silly as it sounds, I I guess I really didn't.
00:22:19.153 --> 00:22:25.933
I laugh when I say it because it sounds so ridiculous I didn't realize like they were going to have a free will to do their own thing.
00:22:25.933 --> 00:22:31.435
It never occurred to me that like they would choose anything other than to like walk with the Lord.
00:22:31.435 --> 00:22:38.559
So that was my own kind of naive like oh well, this is the way they've been brought up, this is the path they'll follow.
00:22:38.559 --> 00:22:48.517
I didn't realize that there was an enemy after my children and after my family, and I wish somebody would have pulled me aside when my kids were little and said hey, do you know that Satan's after your kids?
00:22:48.517 --> 00:22:50.517
Because I would have been like what are you talking about?
00:22:50.517 --> 00:22:53.759
Because I really didn't understand that like I do now.
00:22:55.770 --> 00:22:56.813
And what type?
00:22:56.813 --> 00:23:02.144
I mean, obviously you're a Christian and you go first and everything.
00:23:02.144 --> 00:23:05.700
What was his walk with Christ like?
00:23:05.700 --> 00:23:15.463
Did he have one growing up and you know, did you have a discussion with him about that and say, hey, you know, this is wrong.
00:23:15.463 --> 00:23:17.395
What was that discussion?
00:23:17.616 --> 00:23:28.798
like you know, that's a great question, and I find that for myself, and even like a lot of the parents that are in my group, that they will all say we did the right things.
00:23:28.798 --> 00:23:41.941
We went to church, they went to youth group, they went to Christian school, they went to Christian college, they sang and worshiped bands, they did all the right things, and so you know the works was all there.
00:23:41.941 --> 00:23:45.990
So you know the works was all there.
00:23:45.990 --> 00:23:55.354
But I always like to say, if I could go back and do it again, I would say I would not take my kids to church.
00:23:55.354 --> 00:24:02.585
Well, what I mean by that was I wouldn't spend all of my time thinking that a Sunday morning and a Wednesday night, you know, or a Sunday night, that those were going to be enough things.
00:24:02.585 --> 00:24:05.796
I would really focus on taking my children to Jesus.
00:24:05.796 --> 00:24:11.175
And so I think that we have to get to a place that we're teaching them hard things.
00:24:11.175 --> 00:24:13.424
We're talking about hard things with our kids.
00:24:13.424 --> 00:24:22.955
We're talking about how God can, you know, can fix things and mold things and help you with things, when sometimes we just don't talk about those hard things.
00:24:22.955 --> 00:24:32.498
And so when the hard things come, they don't know how to process it and they don't know how to fix it because we haven't allowed them to go through hard things and let them see how the Lord can walk with them.
00:24:32.498 --> 00:24:43.759
And so, you know, we've had lots of conversations over the years and I will say that I believe my child's faith is strong.
00:24:44.040 --> 00:24:47.164
As far as I know, he still believes.
00:24:47.931 --> 00:24:48.935
I know he still believes.
00:24:48.935 --> 00:24:50.355
I know he still reads the word.
00:24:50.355 --> 00:25:14.892
I know that this is a struggle that he has and, you know, one of these days it's somehow God's going to take that word, because all of those things that we did, even though they may not have been enough from a standpoint where I'm at now, those were seeds that were planted into my child, and those seeds are going to come out and they're going to grow in due season, and so I just keep watering those seeds.
00:25:14.892 --> 00:25:24.751
One of the things we pray in our group is that, you know, god would remind our kids of every sermon they ever heard, every worship song they ever sang, every prayer, they ever prayed.
00:25:24.751 --> 00:25:33.021
That he would bring that to their minds, that he would remind them of who they are in Him, that they would never forget where their roots are.
00:25:33.021 --> 00:25:41.845
And so we have had lots of conversations about that and it's hard, but I do still see some fruit there.
00:25:41.845 --> 00:25:47.041
I just have to believe that in due season God's going to multiply that and bring it forth.
00:25:48.750 --> 00:25:57.247
Do you ever see any type of government from people, either in the church, your family or your friends?
00:25:59.833 --> 00:26:02.340
you know, I think everybody has an opinion on this.
00:26:02.340 --> 00:26:09.499
Everybody's got a different opinion and I'm going to be honest, I had a different opinion about it seven years ago.
00:26:09.499 --> 00:26:12.214
I had to, kind of.
00:26:12.214 --> 00:26:16.097
You know, I have always been the person that have.
00:26:16.097 --> 00:26:20.939
Um, I've always told God, you know that I'm going to let the theologians hash that out.
00:26:20.939 --> 00:26:22.250
I'm just going to love people.
00:26:22.250 --> 00:26:23.613
I don't want to think about it.
00:26:23.613 --> 00:26:24.192
I'm going to let.
00:26:24.192 --> 00:26:25.835
I'm going to let the theologians hash that out.
00:26:25.835 --> 00:26:26.655
I'm just going to love people.
00:26:26.655 --> 00:26:27.737
I don't want to think about it.
00:26:27.737 --> 00:26:30.721
I'm going to let people smarter than myself think about all those kind of hard things.
00:26:30.721 --> 00:26:32.342
I'm going to just love people where they're at.
00:26:32.362 --> 00:26:39.069
And it wasn't until that dropped into my lap that I was forced to kind of get in the fight and decide.
00:26:39.069 --> 00:27:02.077
And so I knew that, especially right now, kind of politically, you know, it's so hard because we talk about like things like bathroom issues and you know, transgender people going in the wrong bathroom and how people that stirs them all up so much and I completely understand that.
00:27:02.077 --> 00:27:17.615
But then at the same time, as a mom, I get worried about my child going in the wrong bathroom, also because of retaliation and violence against his lifestyle, and so it's really hard because there's people that think this, you know, and can just ignore it and go on.
00:27:17.615 --> 00:27:22.806
And then there's the people there's that strong kind of group of people that think this, you know, and can just ignore it and go on.
00:27:22.806 --> 00:28:05.813
And then there's the people there's that strong kind of group of people that think this and act violent toward this community, and so, as Christians, you know, next time you're, you know, scrolling social media and you see this issue talked about in an article go to the comment section and see the Christians and some of the things they say, and it's absolutely mind blowing, um, what, what we say and what we allow to come out of our mouths against, you know, children of God, and so, um, you know, I, I think I get it Like I understand the issue and I understand why people think the way they do, um, and I understand some of the rules and laws and things we have and I completely would agree with those.
00:28:06.173 --> 00:28:20.960
But at the end of the day, I think sometimes we all have to remember that there really are good people caught in some deception and a lie, and this seems to be the issue the church really likes to focus on they don't want to talk about.
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You know all the sins that we have on the inside.
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You know we don't want to talk about.
00:28:23.416 --> 00:28:24.804
You know all the sins that we have on the inside, you know we don't want to talk about.
00:28:24.804 --> 00:28:27.787
You know our obesity problem and we don't want to talk about.
00:28:27.787 --> 00:28:32.829
You know pornography and we don't want to talk about sex outside of marriage and those types of things.
00:28:32.829 --> 00:28:37.454
You know we only really like to focus on this one issue of the church.
00:28:37.454 --> 00:28:40.617
It's always kind of comical to me that that's kind of what we.
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That's the one thing that kind of, you know gets us all cranked up.
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