JC's Girls

Background founded JC's Girls after becoming a Christian and leaving a four-year career in the sex industry as a stripper and pornographic film actor. Veitch worked as a stripper for four years By 2005, Veitch was working as a hairdresser in Riverside, California. One of her clients was Lori Albee, Veitch and Brown started Matthew's House, an organization they founded as "a ministry to help people working in or addicted to the sex industry". Riverside chapter On Good Friday in March 2005, Veitch, Albee, and six other women went to a strip club in Riverside and paid for lap dances. Instead of accepting the dances, they talked with the strippers, telling them that they were loved and accepted by God, that churches were composed entirely of sinners, and that they would be welcome there. Two months later, Huerter, who also had no experience with the sex industry, said, "I have a heart for these girls. I believe God created sex for marriage. But God will meet these girls where they are."—the largest trade fair for pornography in the United States. By December 2005, the organization had received messages through its website from pornographic film actors and men with pornography addiction who said that JC's Girls had changed their lives. Without asking for payment, The PussyCat Preacher, a documentary film about Veitch's experiences starting JC's Girls, was released that February. The following month, pornographic film actor Sophia Lynn left the sex industry after becoming a Christian; she underwent more than a year of counselling with Veitch through JC's Girls. Veitch had flown to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to spend a weekend educating Celebrate Community Church about the sex industry. The church soon gave Lynn a job in its office, a scholarship to go to college, and a place to live. Lynn said, "I hope I don't have to wake up from this. I feel like my life has been saved." San Diego chapter In San Diego, Theresa Scher, a stripper and call girl, was looking for a way out of the sex industry when she watched a CNN interview with Albee about her work with JC's Girls in Riverside. Scher contacted 1 because they understand from personal experience the situations of the women they are trying to help. By 2011, members of the San Diego chapter of JC's Girls were visiting strip clubs twice each month. At the Miss USA 2009 competition, Prejean became the subject of a controversy because of her response to a question about same-sex marriage. Scher said that the controversy would not affect Prejean's involvement with the organization and that the issue of same-sex marriage was not relevant to the group's activities. Together, Brown and Donewald negotiated a peace accord between women working at a strip club and members of a local church who had been picketing the club for four years. The peace accord received much publicity, but the church's members, That July, Veitch resigned from JC's Girls so she could spend more time with her family, handing the leadership of the organization to Scher and Brown. In June 2012, By 2013, the organization had established guidelines regulating the transition of women from the sex industry into participation in the evangelistic activities of JC's Girls. The woman must consistently attend a Bible study for four months, read Francine Rivers' book Redeeming Love, and be interviewed by the chapter's leaders, who then decide whether the woman should join the organization's outreach team. These guidelines were established because some women who had quickly gone from working in the sex industry to evangelizing with JC's Girls soon left the organization and returned to the sex industry. Brown left JC's Girls in April 2014 and Laura Bonde took over leadership of the organization. ==Programs==

to women in the sex industry such as Sophia Lynn, a pornographic film actor who subsequently became a Christian. JC's Girls, also called the JC's Girls Girls Girls Ministry, JC's Girls connects female sex workers with churches the organization believes to be non-judgmental, If women express a desire to leave the sex industry, JC's Girls attempts to support them in doing so. and backcombed hair to convey the message that such things are, in their view, not sinful. ==Reception==

When JC's Girls first started receiving funds from Sandals Church in 2005, some of the church's members were displeased that their tithes and offerings were being given to strip clubs. In 2006, Brown said that funding the activities of JC's Girls was worthwhile because the sex industry "has been largely ignored by the evangelical church," and the budget allotted to JC's Girls is small compared to the money made by the sex industry. Annie Lobert of Hookers for Jesus, a similar group that collaborates with JC's Girls, said around the same time that Christians make the same kind of comments about her and her ministry—"They say my T-shirt is too tight", said Lobert, "but, hey, when in Vegas, do as Vegas does". Controversy regarding his involvement with JC's Girls threatened to lose Brown his church facility on the California Baptist University campus, but the church united in support of JC's Girls and remained in the same location. Barone said that Baptists might find viewing the JC's Girls website awkward, but that it was not intended for them. Sarah Sumner, author of Men and Women in the Church, said in Bill Day's 2008 documentary film The Pussycat Preacher that some Christians might oppose the female-led JC's Girls because of 1 Timothy 2:12, a Bible verse that can be interpreted as restricting positions of authority in church to men. Brown said elsewhere in the film that it made more sense for women to lead JC's Girls "because a woman would be the most welcome in the industry". included an image of Veitch, Albee, and Huerter in his 2007 book Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry (pictured). In its first year, JC's Girls was criticized for allowing DiGiorgio to take glamorous photographs of Veitch, Albee and Huerter In his 2013 book Evangelicals and the Arts in Fiction, writer John Weaver writes that science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote about evangelicals as being sexually repressed and eventually undergoing a sexual revolution. Weaver offers JC's Girls and XXXchurch.com as evidence that Heinlein's fiction is becoming a reality. By 2007, adherents of UFO religion Raëlism had responded to JC's Girls by forming "Raël's Girls", an organization with a similar outreach program but a very different message, encouraging sex workers to try to maximize their own sexual pleasure while serving clients. In 2006, a Baptist minister from San Bernardino, California, criticized JC's Girls for not explicitly encouraging women in the sex industry to quit. At the 2006 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, photographer Michael Grecco photographed Veitch, Albee, and Huerter and included the image in his 2007 book Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry. In the image caption, he called the trio a "devout Christian trinity". Philip Sherwell of the Calgary Herald called the organization's evangelism "America's most unusual Christian outreach operation". A journalist for UK newspaper The Observer compared JC's Girls to XXXchurch.com, writing in 2006 that both of "these ministries are in some way reforming the church as well as their would-be followers." ==Notes==