Richard Nelson has seen firsthand the conflict between the Christian community and the growing LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) movement. In fact, he has lived it, attending local-government meetings where he, as a representative of a group espousing conservative values, has been in the minority.

Recalling one such meeting when he spoke against a sexual orientation and gender identity ordinance, the Commonwealth Policy Center executive director recalled: “I was a little afraid.”

Not so Tuesday night, when Nelson was one of three panelists for an event called “How to Love Your LGBT Neighbors without Losing Your Convictions” at the Eastwood Baptist Church South Campus in Alvaton.

Nelson and fellow panelists Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family and Andrew Walker of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission were greeted not by animosity but by an occasional “Amen” and warm applause from the crowd of about 120 people.

They came to hear a message about how Christians can address societal change reflected in the LGBT movement through the biblical principles of grace and love. Although all three speakers acknowledged the difficulty of dealing with LGBT issues, all said it can and must be done.

“We’re not called to win every argument,” Nelson said. “We’re called to win people. We’re for people, their well-being and their happiness, and we’re called to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.”

But Nelson emphasized that he’s not calling for compromising traditional Christian values.

“I’m not suggesting that we should water down our ethics,” he said. “We should lead with grace and truth. Then I believe we’ll begin to see people change.”

But even the idea of change has connotations that are at odds with the traditional values the panelists espoused Tuesday in the second of their three Kentucky forums.

Walker, after first pointing out that the forum was juxtaposed with the news of a transgender person winning a seat in the Virginia state legislature, emphasized what he sees as fallacies in the gender identity movement.

“God made us male and female,” he said. “He knit those differences down to our chromosomes.”

But in the gender identity culture, that evident truth isn’t so evident. Walker pointed out that some men and women suffer from gender dysphoria, a perceived misalignment between a person’s gender identity and their biological sex.

“We need to begin with compassion for those persons who are genuinely struggling with dysphoria,” Walker said. “But a man can’t become a woman and a woman can’t become a man. Chromosomes can’t be re-engineered. Biological sex is objective and discernible.”

Saying the transgender movement is “based on falsehoods,” Walker said the gender identity debate is “over the nature of reality itself.”

“The transgender revolution puts forth the idea that man creates his own nature,” Walker said. “There’s no such thing as objective maleness or femaleness.”

While he believes such thinking is demonstrably wrong, Walker said Christians need to address LGBT issues with “courage, conviction and compassion.”

“We have to give sound, rational explanations for what we believe,” he said. “But if we’re not compassionate, we’re not going to deserve to get a hearing from our transgender neighbors.”

Focus on the Family’s Stanton said Christians must find a middle ground between being judgmental and being too liberal in dealing with the LGBT community.

“The middle ground is where Jesus lived,” Stanton said. “He came down and lived among us, full of grace and truth. That’s the center line between the two extremes.”

Like Christ, today’s Christians must show love even to those who may not be conforming to church teachings, Stanton said.

“Churches should have a banner saying that only sinners need apply,” he said. “Do gay people belong in the church? There’s no better place for them to belong. We should welcome everybody.”

But, like Walker and Nelson, Stanton isn’t for watering down the Christian message.

“There’s no church manual for this kind of thing,” he said. “We have to be creative. But there is scripture. We need to preach the word of God lovingly and passionately and trust that it will work in the lives of everyone who comes into your church.”

The message resonated with listeners like David Gifford of Bowling Green.

“I think the graciousness that each speaker displayed was very instructive,” said Gifford, a pastor. “There’s a clash between the Christian culture and secular culture today. But it’s not the first time the two have clashed. This (the LGBT debate) is just the topic of the day.”