I wrote an article for WORLD two years ago about A Way Out, a ministry in Memphis that rescues women from prostitution and topless dancing.  More than anything, I was struck by the fact that I just didn’t know many Christians who were down in the cracks of society looking for people to help.  A Way Out is way down in the cracks, trolling for hookers and handing out Bibles, picking up hookers from apartments where pimps with guns want to shoot them (the volunteers), you name it.  I thought about all this while reading an article about XXXChurch, who visits porn conventions and hands out Bibles that look like this:

In case you can’t read that, it says, “Jesus Loves Porn Stars,” and it’s a Bible.

There is no question that patrons and performers at the porn convention are open to [...] XXXChurch and the handful of other ministries. But after watching these interactions, I wasn’t sure how effective they were. A lot of people listened, few people turned down the “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” Bibles handed out by XXXChurch, but they seemed to think it was more kitsch than Gospel.

Craig Gross, who runs XXXChurch, told me that people ask him all the time whether he feels like he is making a difference. And at one point he wasn’t so sure. In his book The Dirty Little Secret, he writes about a guy who he thought he had helped free from the bondage of porn — only to find the guy later fly off the deep end.

Some Christians are cynical of Gross and his colleagues, claiming they’re a bunch of perverts who want an excuse to cavort with unnaturally endowed women. In a documentary, “Missionary Positions,” one of the guys from XXXChurch (I can’t remember who) gets smacked by a more fire-and-brimstone preacher who thinks Gross is doing the work of the devil.

There’s no doubt that a ministry like this should go where it needs to go, but there’s also no doubt that it’s dangerous, and not for the weak of spirit or the faint of heart.