Exodus Cry - The Prayer Movement to End Slavery

Craig Gross' new book rebrands the most powerful message: the Gospel
by, Bret Mavrich

If Craig Gross has a bumper sticker, it probably reads, “I’d rather be debating porn stars.” Let me explain.

Craig has a ministry that is the quintessence of “edgy.” He regularly attends pornography conventions. His ministry hands out special bibles with the message “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” printed on the cover. His church, positioned on the main drag of Las Vegas, is called The Strip Church.  His ministry targets prostitutes and members of the porn industry. He travels around the country in a tour bus debating the famed pornographer Ron Jeremy. Craig boasts that he's got dozens of porn-star contacts in his phone, and few "ministry" contacts.  Like I said, he’s edgy.

And it’s no mystery why he tends to be a lightening rod for the debate over modern missions and presentations of the gospel.  He gets blasted by critics for watering down the gospel so much that people don't  forsake sin in order to get saved.  And people in Craig's camp fire shots back at Christians who are too concerned with hell and damnation to actually love people out of it.

His new book, Jesus Loves You This I know, co-written with Jason Harper, could be considered the latest fire-fight in the War on Dogma, except that these guys are not really fighting. Love, on the cover of the book, is spelled with a Valentine’s Day heart. This is not so much a triumphant riposte as it is a cuddly PR piece. Craig feels that the Church has a problem: Jesus has been hijacked and needs rebranded (his words) because the Church, incrementally and inadvertently, has communicated to the world that Jesus doesn’t have time for broken people.

Craig’s experience has proven that plenty of unchurched people have heard the bad news about hell, but have been alienated from the very community that could save them from going there. The current ministry approach needs inverted: if currently people are accepted only after they change their ways to reflect their beliefs, we ought to instead broaden our acceptance to include all of the hurting people out there so that they can gradually come to a belief in the life changing message of the gospel. This, Craig insists, is how Jesus did it.

But he’s not debating. He’s not even really making assertions about what he believes. He’s simply starting conversations, telling stories, and asking questions, an approach which worried me at first. As a believer who stands on the human trafficking front, compassion is a prerequisite, and I am thus (probably too) quick to jump in the boat of anyone who champions the cause of the outcasts. But a lot of times “edgy” ministries, in their attempt to be inclusive and relevant, take such care to evade any statement with biblical clarity that if you’re a reader with doctrinal conviction you’re left with one foot still on the dock. I was bracing for Craig’s book to go something like, “Jesus loves everybody, whatever that means. Here’s a story. See what I mean?” which would have left me sighing in dismay, because that hardly ever puts to rest my inner Champion of the Faith. It wasn't quite like that.

Craig and Jason set out to right the wrongs chapter by chapter, demographic by demographic: Jesus loves the Crooks, the Broken, the Outcasts, the Forgotten. The strength of the book is, in fact, the stories offered by both Craig and Jason, that illustrate how broken people can powerfully encounter Jesus’ message when they encounter a Jesus follower who is not afraid to reach out. The stories are all touching, but they also come with impressive ethos

Not surprisingly, the book crescendos to apogee with the chapter, Jesus loves the Porn Star, which Craig uses to describe his friendship with Ron Jeremy, a famous pornographer. Here, the rebranding machine is chugging along at max capacity, juxtaposing unlikely words and images with inscrutable results: “blending the seedy with the sacred,” “Porn King v. Porn Pastor,” “the world divides; Jesus unites.” At one point he uses the words TOLERANCE, COEXIST, and INCLUSION on the same open face page. (I sighed a lot through that part.)

But while I pined for clarity, it would be wrong to say that I didn’t understand what he was driving at. When Craig says that Jesus loves Ron Jeremy he's not saying Jesus approves of pornography, or that Jesus is mitigating the disastrous effect it has on human souls. And (I hope) Craig's not saying that if Ron resisted Jesus' love past his dying breath that Jesus wouldn’t send him to hell after all. What Craig is saying is that Ron is dear to Jesus, that he's important to Jesus, and Jesus doesn’t write him off, even before Ron makes a decision to follow Jesus. Jesus takes Ron seriously. He's saying Jesus came to serve Ron just like any of us, and because of His great sacrifice, Jesus is the furthest thing from indifferent towards Ron. And finally, if Jesus were to engage Ron he might wrestle him like Jacob, or debate him like Job, because He's already done things far more humiliating, namely dying for Ron's sins on the cross.

What Jesus Loves You points out to us is that the space between a well-known propositional truth like “Jesus loves me” and the practical ways that we live that truth on a daily basis can be a gulf. When you see someone with a ministry like Craig’s-- rubbing shoulders with porn stars at a convention for porn stars, fraternizing with exotic dancers who are not ex-exotic dancers, hobnobbing with homosexuals at, well, anything-- you can’t help but get provoked. “Jesus loves broken people,” we all know it’s true, but forget for a minute whether or not you think Craig and Jason are living this thing out in the right way and ask yourself a hard question: “Am I even trying to live this truth out at all?”

And I think if Craig’s stories force that question, he’d be happy that you were that much closer to understanding his bumper sticker.