Ryan Russell – Leader – Coach – Development – Seattle, WA
Jesus loves poker players!
Come share his grace with us @ the World Series of poker.
July 2-5 | $750*
StripChurch.com – - -a Las Vegas missions trip like you have never experienced before.
* You get your airfare & food; we get everything else! – 1x only pricing to get these trips rolling!
Everyone wants to be relevant in ministry, but no body asks “are we IRRELEVANT?” If you were, how would you know? Who would you ask? By what measure would you be satisfactorily convinced that the ministry you are working in is not really connecting with those who are in need of God’s grace. If some people show up Sunday, does that make you relevant? If a newspaper writes about your church, does that count? What about if you hold a concert or a conference?
How about this…. What if the neighborhood or city in which your church exists doesn’t know that you exist? There was a church within walking distance from where I lived and the only thing I knew about them was that they had preschool registration open — evidently that was the most important sign they felt compelled to put out on a very busy street.
Here is my commitment – I am not going to just ‘do ministry’. What I do for Christ needs to have traction in every day life… and not just on the preschool open registration level.
How about your church; are you making a difference in the different cross sectors of your community?
Took another crazy trip for StripChurch.com with those crazy gals from GirlfriendIT.com — we are looking at putting together a very unique ministry trip for ladies. This trip had us starting the morning out EARLY (text messages began around 5:30am). My compadre Stephen & I picked up Patty & Lisa from the airport in the StripChurch bus (have you seen it yet?).
We swapped the bus & stephen for Craig and a scion and headed 4 hours to nowhere. Do you know where Ely, NV is? I didn’t think so. Ely is home to the oldest legal brothel in the state of Nevada. There are quite a few words that could describe the experience: weird, interesting, depressing, run down, desolate, removed from ‘normal’ life. Our mission for the day had 2 objectives.
1) Build relationships between StripChurch, GirlFriendIT and the owners of the brothel.
2) Scout a new kind of ‘missions trip’ for a group of ladies – it will be a make over (of sorts) to bring life, love, hope and grace to the gals who live in very bad conditions.
The controversy: Should any time, relationship and money be invested into renovating the living conditions for prostitutes working in a brothel? Your opinions and thoughts will be intriguing. The mission will chart on. Look for the trip near October.
I was invited by some friends, Lisa & Patti, to be on the ‘Joni Show’ to talk about Las Vegas, StripChurch.com & our ministries that are aimed at showing up in the darkest of places. The coordinators of the show, being vaguely familiar with one of our other ministries, xxxChurch, decided to make that the primary subject for the show. However, it became apparent rather quickly that not everyone there had done their homework before having me on. In an awkward moment for them in the greenroom, the producer decided she need to double check some last minute info. because she apparently couldn’t figure out exactly who I was. “You haven’t worked IN the porn industry as an actor… have you?” It was classic. I have been referred to as a lot of things before, but a ‘porn star’ is not one of them. I had to resist some smart-ass remark like, “no, I’m not qualified”. You would think that they would have nailed this bit of info. down before I flew to Dallas, came into the studio passed their double guarded doors and sat in their make-up chair for my touch-ups. Evidently, the subject matter was making them nervous.
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