Reaching out to the porn industry.

Reaching out to the porn industry.

Below is an interesting article on reaching out to those involved in the porn industry.  When I was in the Navy, I did from time to time go to X rated movies, found them enticing, but also came away feeling empty and even more lonely than before I went to see the movie.  I don't know if that is a common experience or not.  Perhaps it was based on my already developing faith, and my simple knowing that that kind of entertainment was not meant for me.  Like most men I am very visual and the images would stay with me for a long time.  So to see a porn movie was not just something that took a couple of hours, but was rewound, and played over and over a gain. 

Peace
mitch

XXXMinistry
Reaching out to the porn industry.
Reviewed by Greg Taylor

The Gutter:
Where Life's Meant
to be Lived
by Craig Gross
Relevant Books
172 pp., $12.99
 
Graig Gross's book is about so deeply feeling the work of Christ that pulled us out of our gutters that we re-enter the gutters in order to call others out as well.

Gross says the gutter is "the place where we discover that we need God most." Poverty and immorality are two of its faces, but Gross wants Christians to realize that we've each had gutters we've come from and where we're called to return. His working definition of the gutter is "the place I am least likely or inclined to go because it is a place where people are not like me; they are not Christians." Yet those are the places Jesus calls us to enter.

This is not some ivory-tower incarnation theology written from a spotless church environment. The book tells the story of Gross and Mike Foster, both pastors, who launched a ministry in 2002 called XXXChurch.com, a ministry to porn addicts, by attending a pornography trade show in Las Vegas.

Foster said God spoke to him in the shower one morning and said only one word: porn. Gross was so taken with the idea of a ministry to pornography addicts that he raced to register a website name for the ministry: XXXChurch.com. But they were also racing into a fight against pornography that would lead them to the red-light district in Amsterdam, to a porn rehab center in Kentucky, and into conflict with fellow Christians.

Their wives were cautiously supportive. They also attended the trade show and hung a banner that said, "XXXChurch.com: #1 Christian Porn Site." They handed out postcards saying, "Jesus loves porn stars." And they even enlisted a walking bunny mascot to draw attention. "We're not stupid," said Gross's wife, Jeanette. "Do you think we're going to let our husbands go to a porn trade show without us? Who do you think was in the bunny suit?"

The mainstream media showed overwhelming interest in the story of two pastors taking on the porn industry from the inside and without hatred. But much of the Christian media, such as The 700 Club, was critical. Pat Robertson said Jesus would not go to a porn convention.

Gross says he believes Christian media are scared. "They think we went too far. That we're becoming 'of the world.'"

The book is divided into three sections. "My Gutter" tells the story of the XXXChurch.com ministry.

"His Gutter" explains Christ's radical compassion, call to repentance, and his redemptive work to pull us out of our gutters. "This is the very thing that defines our faith," says Gross, "that we no longer live in our gutters," but modeling Jesus' incarnation, we return to the gutter to fulfill our mission.

What is that mission? The Cross—the "ultimate gutter"—is the model for the last section, "Your Gutter," which argues that "[O]ur mission is to get in the gutter and provide Hope." Gross contends that those in the gutters—the poor in spirit—aren't interested in church. "So it's up to us to take the church to them, and that's why Mike and I were at the porn show. That's why we do everything we do."

While the book is strong on calling Christians into the gutter, it is weak in equipping and training them to go there. A friend of Gross's suggested that he add a chapter about the dangers of entering the gutter, particularly one as insidious as pornography. Gross appreciated the advice but declined, saying that enough voices were talking about staying away and that he didn't want to discourage people from doing what they are called to do.

Yet Gross says he knows the struggles of those working in this ministry, and he's cautious about how far to take the people who work with him. An intern, for instance, had struggled with pornography and finally ripped out his modem. "That's the kind of person I want working with me in this ministry," Gross says. The intern told Gross that he could never go to a porn show. Gross replied, "I'm never gonna take you."

Pornography is reportedly a $13 billion dollar industry, and Foster and Gross have entered a battle as David to pornography's Goliath. Yet, incredibly, one of the major porn filmmakers, Jimmy D., offered to pay for and make a commercial for XXXChurch.com.

They made the commercial with a puppet that urged children to say no to pornography and suggested that if they found magazines in the closet or under the bed with pictures of naked mommies to ask their parents to get rid of them. The commercial aired on some news outlets and as public service announcements. Being the highest-profile thing they'd done at that point, it was also the most controversial. Most Christian media were critical of the ad, of entering erotica conventions, and of partnering with porn filmmakers. "If Jimmy D. became a Christian, more people would like us," Gross said. "But I look at the gutter differently. Gutter residents aren't notches on a Bible or marks on a Christian scorecard—they are real, hurting people, people who are so lost they'll break your heart. Most of the time, it takes more than a gospel browbeating to help them realize their plight."

The website, meanwhile, has had millions of visitors who can download free accountability software called X3. When installed on a computer, X3 sends an e-mail every 14 days to a chosen friend or friends with a list of the websites visited by that computer. The site also features testimonials from porn addicts, prayer and Bible study resources, and an open forum called "The Prayer Wall," with hundreds of thousands of posts from addicts, spouses of addicts, and more recently, porn stars themselves.

Lately, XXXChurch.com has moved into helping those within the porn industry. The ministry has received letters from porn stars wanting to get out. One said she was trying to decide whether to e-mail them or Jerry Springer. Another said that when she found out her 12-year-old daughter was having sex, she knew she had to find other work.

"There's nothing enticing about this [porn] industry," Gross says. "I go to a trade show, and all I see are a bunch of miserable, unhappy people. People looking to fill their lives with this crap that's leaving them empty. I'm happily married. I don't want what they have; they want what I have."

Greg Taylor is managing editor of www.wineskins.org and author of the novel High Places (Leafwood, 2004).

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August 2005, Vol. 49, No. 8, Page 71