Lessons I Learned From the Strip Club #1

I have written this blog 5 times and erased it. I have a really hard time expressing beautiful and holy moments.  That is what I experience each week that I walk in to the strip club - I experience a beautiful, sacred moment. I don't have the perfect words to express it, which is why it seems silly for me to blog. Blogging is about words and I don't usually have the right words.

However, I feel like these moments are too amazing not to share. So this is my attempt to let you walk in to the club with me and experience the light of God filling a dark place that seems as though He has forgotten it.

I feel like that teacher or missionary that goes in to an inner city school or the slums of an African village. They always say "I went there to teach them something and offer them something, but they gave me much more than I could ever give them".

It sounds so cliche but it is so true. I have learned a lot from these women. My first experience in a club was during a trip to Dayton, Ohio. The small stretch of road was littered with strip clubs and motels. I went in to a lounge with three women who I did not know. They were going to teach me how to do this type of ministry, how to operate things and keep my eyes off the naked bodies surrounding me. After twenty minutes of excruciating discomfort, I started talking the dancers. I learned one thing very quickly. It's one thing that stuck with me on the ride back to Anderson as I bawled my eyes out for the dancers we left behind. It's one that thing that sticks out to me when we go to the club in Anderson.

These women have hope. I have yet to meet a girl who isn't living for something. They all look forward to things. They have hope in the fact that they might find a new job. They have hope in their new boyfriend, hope that they will be able finish school, hope in the government, hope in friends, hope in their grandmother or they money they make. There is no shortage of hope in this place. Everyone is hoping for things and placing their hope those things.

This is not what I expected. Maybe I was naive but I expected them to not know what to live for, to wander aimlessly and be... well ...hopeless. Instead they dive in to their hopes and dreams and that is what keeps them going. I learned that we are hard wired to hope. We are created to hope and dream and wish and pray and long for things we can not see. Sometimes we don't know what to hope for so we hope for just another tomorrow that was a little better than today.

I pray - I hope - that I can show them something better to place their hope in. One thing I feel when I walk in to the club is pressure. This is my chance, this is my shot to be Christ. This is my opportunity to be hope.

Colossians 1:27 "...Christ in you, the hope of glory."