Sex and the Church — Safe haven for strippers

Ever driven past a strip club and turned your head so you won’t have to think about the people who work there? Or felt disgust for the workers and patrons?

For years I drove down North Dixie Drive in Dayton, Ohio, and pretended the strip clubs there didn’t matter to me. Then one Sunday, a strip-club dancer walked into our church. That was a miracle in itself because, as you can no doubt imagine, sex workers do not usually come to church. They feel so ashamed and out of place that they refuse to even try.

When I approached the woman and introduced myself, “Angie” turned out to be quite open about her lifestyle. Angie shared that she had been in jail at one time, and that she attended her first church service in jail. She said it felt so good to hear someone read the Bible and pray.

The morning she visited our congregation, Angie said she had driven up and down our street praying for God to show her where to go to church.

I met with Angie for several months. As she told me about her life, I realized she harbored similar hopes to my own. She wanted to know that God loved her and heard her prayers. She wanted to marry, have a family, have friends, and have a fulfilling job. But for the grace of God go I.

Angie told me that sex-industry women need a mother. The women, usually estranged from their families, have lost the respect and support most of us take for granted.

Sitting in cars and praying

For several months two other women and I sat in our cars and prayed in the strip-club parking lots. We wanted to be sure God was leading us to begin a ministry there. Quite honestly, such a ministry was a “risk-taking outreach” that frightened me. I didn’t know if people would support us or think we were out of our minds.

Oasis House, Dayton, Ohio, ministers to women involved in sexually oriented businesses, such as the strip clubs that surround it.

After those months of praying, we had to start this ministry or I would never be at peace with God otherwise. We opened the doors of Oasis House in May 2006. I now believe God sent Angie to our church so we could see the potential of loving and serving these women on the fringes of society.

The first thing we did as a new ministry, even before opening Oasis House, was to take Christmas gift bags to the women in the clubs. We continue to do so, preparing gift bags of toiletries, journals, pens, candles, nail polish and girlie things. We deliver gifts four or five times a year.

We go all out with large, beautiful bags of gifts at Christmas. We host an annual children’s Christmas party, too. While the children are partying with Santa, each mother chooses Christmas morning gifts for her children. The gift bags and children’s gifts are supplied by Dayton-area church women’s groups.

100 people weekly

Most contact with the women occurs during our Wednesday evening outreach. Two teams go into five clubs with homemade food prepared by local churches. The teams also carry in lots of love. We spend one to one-and-a-half hours in each club developing relationships with dancers and staff. We describe how the services Oasis House offers can benefit them.

It serves as an oasis where women can talk, receive Christian counseling.

We minister to approximately 100 people weekly. We take “Get to Know You” forms and prayer cards, which we ask the women to fill out. Then we follow through with phone calls and schedule appointments.

Oasis House occupies a rented building among the sexually oriented businesses. It serves as an oasis where women can talk, receive Christian counseling, participate in GED (General Educational Development) tutoring, computer training and self-empowerment classes. They can also get help with personal issues such as substance abuse.

Our services are virtually unlimited in their scope. When the need arises we locate furniture and food from our local churches. We also direct the women to agencies that provide free medical and dental care. We have even helped some women obtain formal documentation such as birth certificates.

Food important to ministry

Food is an important part of our ministry. At Thanksgiving we have a caterer prepare a dinner with all the trimmings. Everyone in the clubs is served. It is a time when the music stops, the lights come up, people sit together eating. There is a hush that speaks of family, friends and peace. For a few minutes, each person experiences God’s goodness.

We have helped women set up businesses.

Oasis House is an Ohio Benefit Bank Network Representative. As such, we assist the women in establishing eligibility of state benefits, such as food stamps, home energy assistance, tax assistance and child-care subsidies. We have helped women set up businesses by providing them with cards, flyers and resumes. Two women have graduated from our local college earning Associate Degrees.

Not surprisingly, most women in the sex industry need a GED, a high-school equivalency diploma. They also need to know that someone loves them and believes that they can fulfill their dreams. We are “Women Helping Women.” That means unconditional love and support.

These women have been used and abused long enough. We know from statistics that 80% of sex workers have been abused as children. They don’t need to hear that they should change their lives or that they are sinning. They have had negative input their whole life: They have been beaten up and beaten down. They need encouragement and hope.

Body of Christ ministry

Nine different denominations support Oasis House. We are a body of Christ ministry, and I am sure that pleases the Lord. We are inspired constantly at the compassion shown by women in our churches for these sex-industry women, who typically are disenfranchised and forgotten.

We are inspired constantly at the compassion shown by women in our churches for these sex-industry women.

Oasis House volunteers also minister at the Montgomery County Jail. As trained chaplains, we visit women arrested for solicitation. We want to build long-term relationships through continuance of care with the expectation that this will reduce recidivism. We arrange for Crisis Care for problem assessment. As is often necessary, we initiate a plan of recovery by connecting a woman to drug rehabilitation.

Our dream is to have a residential facility for women after drug rehabilitation. In that facility, they can continue their recovery, receive services and job training.

We are now partners with the city of Dayton, which has organized a Prostitution Intervention Collaboration (PIC). The collaboration includes the police department, judicial system and various city social service agencies. PIC’s purpose is to provide services for prostitutes who have been arrested and released, then a short time later arrested again: the revolving-door syndrome.

Oasis House has been invited to participate as PIC’s faith-based representative. We have been designated as the lead agency to proceed with establishing that residential facility, I mentioned earlier.

A learning experience

It has been amazing to watch God open doors for Oasis House. We just followed God’s leading and blindly took our first steps. It has been quite a learning experience. We had to learn about a whole new culture. That culture involves generational dancing and prostitution, drug use, lack of education and living day-to-day.

Some women have been raised in the sex-industry culture.

Some women have been raised in the sex-industry culture. They think they have no other options. I have met young girls who told me their mothers brought them into a club to audition. Angie told me her mother was a dancer and met her father in a club. Angie remembers as a child falling asleep late at night in the corner of the club.

Now, after Oasis House’s three years on the strip, club managers send women with drug issues to us. We have presented our ministry as an employee-benefit program. By presenting our services as such, some club managers have become willing to let us take problems off their hands.

The church must go to the people that need Jesus. We can’t stay behind closed doors and hope they will come to us. Jesus commanded us to “Go.” That is exactly what will build the Kingdom of God, providing an oasis for the least and lost among us.

Discussion Questions

1. When you read this article what biblical story comes to mind?
2. When you drive by a strip club or porno shop, what are your reactions? Do you think these are Christ-like?
3. I invited a dancer to church who replied: “I can’t come to church. I am living in sin.” How would you respond to that?
4. Is the “sex industry” a victimless industry? Some people say: “Well it is the oldest profession, and it will never be stamped out. The women agree to it and the men like it, so who is it hurting?” What do you think?
5. Do you know someone or a population group shunned by society? How do we as Christians address that?
6. One dancer said: “Why are you, church women, coming in here? Church women hate us.” What does that say about the church? How would you respond?
7. Listen to “Does Anybody Hear Her” by Casting Crowns. Discuss your reaction to it.

Amos

Editor’s note: The Rev. Sharon Amos is Executive Director of the Oasis House Ministry and pastor of Higher Ground United Methodist Church, both in Dayton, Ohio. Amos received her Bachelor of Arts in Social Work from Wright State University and her Masters of Divinity Degree from United Theological Seminary. For four years, she developed and conducted programs at Parkside Homes, an inner-city housing project that ministered to women and children.

More information is available by contacting Sharon Amos.

This article is one of an ongoing series. An overview and other articles are available on the General Board of Church & Society website at Sex and the Church.

Other articles in the series are: