First Story —
Bikini-clad strippers protest church in rural Ohio
Dancers counter congregants who have picketed the club where they work
On Sunday, four of The Fox Hole’s seven strippers and more than a dozen supporters garnered both scorn and compassion from churchgoers — and quite a few honks from pickup trucks and other passing vehicles.
New Beginnings is one of four churches in this one-traffic-light village of 900 people, 60 miles outside Columbus. There’s one gas station and a sit-down restaurant that serves country staples like mashed potatoes with gravy and Salisbury steak.
By JEANNIE NUSS 8/27/2010
WARSAW, Ohio — Strippers dressed in bikinis sunbathe in lawn chairs, their backs turned toward the gray clapboard church where men in ties and women in full-length skirts flock to Sunday morning services.
The strippers, fueled by Cheetos and nicotine, are protesting a fundamentalist Christian church whose Bible-brandishing congregants have picketed the club where they work. The dancers roll up with signs carrying messages adapted from Scripture, such as “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” to counter church members who for four years have photographed license plates of patrons and asked them if their mothers and wives know their whereabouts.
The dueling demonstrations play out in central Ohio, where nine miles of cornfields and Amish-buggy crossing signs separate The Fox Hole strip club from New Beginnings Ministries.
Club owner Tommy George met with the preacher and offered to call off his not-quite-nude crew from their three-month-long protest if the church responds in kind. But pastor Bill Dunfee believes that a higher power has tasked him with shutting down the strip club.
“As a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil,” Dunfee said. “Light and darkness cannot exist together, so The Fox Hole has got to go.”
As reported in this story —
Dunfee and members of his congregation have been protesting in front of the Foxhole North on U.S. 36 in Walhonding almost every weekend for four years. In the past, they have taken photographs and videos showing the license plates of the club patrons and posted them on a now-defunct website and once used an amplifier to shout at the patrons. Their intent has been to deter patrons from entering the club and to introduce the exotic dancers to Christianity.
Second Story —
Waco ministry reaches out to exotic dancers
By Erin Quinn / Tribune-Herald staff writer
Saturday July 10, 2010Baylor University graduates Brett and Emily Mills of Waco spend their days, and many nights, reminding the city’s 40 or so exotic dancers that Jesus loves strippers.
The couple’s “Jesus Loves Strippers” ministry reaches out to individuals they believe the church inadvertently casts away.
Every month, the couple and about a half-dozen volunteers hit the Waco strip club circuit — Sonny’s BYOB, Show Time and Two Minnie’s — with bags of gifts from local sponsors filled with makeup, cookies, bandages and school supplies in August.
Wearing purple “Jesus Loves Strippers” T-shirts, Emily Mills and the female volunteers approach the dancers in their dressing rooms early in the night. They use the gift bags as ice-breakers and, more often than not, conversations flow from there.
The volunteers don’t bring Bibles. They don’t launch into talk about God.
Many of the strippers, they find, have long felt disconnected from faith.
“Only God can change a person,” said Emily Mills, a 32-year-old mother of three. “Our goal is not to go in and change them, but make them realize that God loves them no matter what they do and where they are.”
Instead, they talk about their children. Their boyfriends. School. Hopes for the future or just for the night.
Brett, 34, from Houston, and Emily, from Tyler, met at Baylor among 2,000 students in a large-group Bible study.
They met singing in the Bible studies and, together, questioned the effectiveness of what they were doing.
“For me, there was beginning to be a disconnect,” Emily Mills said. “Church was not relevant to everyday people. I feel like there were a lot of people out there who Jesus would have walked with that probably feel alienated by the church.”
They visited other types of ministries, including one in Austin that reaches out to strippers.
They were determined to build a similar ministry in Waco.
“The church can reach out to the homeless and the down-and-out, but it doesn’t know what to do with sex,” Emily Mills said. “It’s just so taboo.”
So, in 2005, they started Jesus Said Love, followed by its extensions, Jesus Loves Strippers and Jesus Loves Truckers — all divisions of Bartimaeus Ministries Inc., a nonprofit organization.
Brett and Emily also tour as a Christian music duo, but their full-time jobs are expanding the ministry.
With a pack of volunteers, they make their rounds at the clubs once a month, but spend the rest of their time developing the relationships with the women.
“Ninety-nine percent of them don’t really want to be there,” Emily Mills said. “Most say that they’re just going to do it for six months until they can make enough money to get on their feet. The danger is that it becomes a lifestyle. That’s when it takes a toll on a woman’s soul.”
One 31-year-old mother of four daughters explained she started stripping in September, after having danced in similar clubs for a decade or more.
When times got rough and she couldn’t pay the bills last fall, she turned to taking her clothes off to make more money. She told Emily Mills in the dressing room of a Waco strip club that she felt she had no other choice.
The dancer asked the ministry volunteers if they could help her find a different job. Emily promised to see what she could do.
Forming a connection
Most of the women love the “Jesus Loves Strippers” shirts. Volunteer Leah Colucci, 23, talks about trading her ministry shirt with a dancer who wore a shirt that read “Sinful.”
Brett Mills and any other male volunteers don’t go in the clubs. They wait in the parking lots, acting as security and chatting with the club managers and patrons loitering near the entrances.
Jennifer Ledford, a 30-year-old bartender at Sonny’s BYOB, called Brett and Emily her “heroes.”
Last year, when Ledford needed extensive dental work, Emily Mills found a dentist to give her a discount. When Ledford was debating going to school, Emily Mills contacted a friend at McLennan Community College, who guided her through registration.
“Brett and Emily don’t push anyone to change their life,” she said. “They just really want to help you. They’ve changed my life.”
Two weeks ago, when the 1-year-old daughter of a Sonny’s dancer was taken by medical helicopter to Scott & White Hospital in Temple after suffering a series of seizures, Emily Mills had volunteers at the hospital to pray with the family within hours.
The dancer didn’t believe in God until that day, said Heather Bonge, a 26-year-old former Sonny’s employee.
“Brett and Emily deserve everything good that happens to them,” Bonge said. “They are absolutely not judgmental. If I need anything, any time, day or night, we know we can call them.”
The couple’s newest venture is Jesus Loves Truckers.
Brett, Emily and their volunteers set up in the parking lot of the Flying J truck stop with bags of burritos and travel essentials.
“We’ve had some guys come by who said they hadn’t talked in two days,” Emily Mills said. “Truckers are lonely.”
Everyone needs to be reminded that they’re loved by Jesus, they said.
Their other ideas to expand their ministry: Jesus Loves Doctors or Jesus Loves Housewives.
Strippers, truckers, doctors, housewives. It really doesn’t matter. Because reaching out to the seemingly very different groups would essentially be the same, the Mills said.
While society might discriminate, their message is that Jesus does not.
“I’m not going to save the world one stripper at a time,” Emily Mills said. “What I’ve realized is that I am her and she is me. We’ve both been broken. We both struggle. We’re all in need of more grace than sometimes we’re willing to admit.”
Which story is part of the gospel story?
Jay,
You pose a challenging question – not because it is difficult to answer, but because it is difficult to live.
Jerry
The first story reminds of the attempt of a small church to burn the Koran – not really a soul-winning strategy.
Alexander
Neither story provides any tangible results to help evaluate.
Jesus did both. He overturned tables and healed an ear. He also knew people's hearts and the best way to get their attention within a given situation.
Personally, the first story seems harsh. The second seems soft. Perhaps the second will have long term positive results.
Rich W,
I'm not sure tangible results are really the measure, you know.
Jay,
I was really loving the second story until I read the part about the guys having to stay outside as security and not getting to enter the clubs. That is utter sexism… the part about the guys I mean.
🙂
Scott
Jesus does love strippers, doesn't he. The thing about the 2nd story is that those people have to make a commitment, not just on the day they go out to distribute their gift bags, but when they offer to help those girls, that means they have to inconvenience themselves to do favors for them, babysitting or taking them to the doctor or to a job interview. Helping people is a lot harder work than standing outside a strip bar with a protest sign. I think there should be little doubt as to which way is more likely to help people or lead them to Jesus. One of my favorite elders used to say that you don't preach people into the church , you love them into the church. Why is that such a hard lesson for us to understand?
This reminds me of a story I heard on NPR as I was driving to work nearly 15 years ago. It was reported that Norma McCorvey ( "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade) had come to repentance and faith in Christ and had been baptized by the leader of Operation Rescue, the pro-life group that had been protesting in front of the abortion clinic where Norma had been working. During the months of protests, pro-lifers had become friends with Ms. McCorvey and had taught her about Christ. They never abandoned their call to repentance, but they also reached out to those who opposed them.
It's important to oppose sin. It's important to let people who are involved in those sins know that we oppose those sins because of the pain and damage that the sins are inflicting on everyone who practices them. It's important to let them know that it brings pain to God to see them destroying themselves. And it's important to let them know that we are there for them and will help them at any time.
If we are to follow the example of Jesus, I can't say either is right or wrong, I don't recollect hearing of Jesus "hounding" sinners in either fashion.I do believe we can do more good meeting with people one on one, become a friend with a person, and you both gain from the experience. plant the good seed and see if it won't up root the bad seed. But I never was "hounded" into doing something I wanted to do.
Yes we need to water the seed, but watch out that we don't drown it.
Scott,
That was one of my reactions, too. Then I noticed how much more attractive the Christian women in the photos are than the strippers. So maybe hanging out with the Christian women in the parking lot is the better deal anyway. Or maybe I just have a thing for good Christian women … 😉
Pingback: The Naked Gospel: Two Stories: Another Observation | One In Jesus