Jc's Girls: A Case Study

The organization was founded by Heather Veitch, who worked as a stripper for four years before becoming a Christian and leaving the sex industry in 1999. She founded JC 's Girls on Good Friday in March 2005; it was based at Sandals Church in Riverside, California, with the support of the California Southern Baptist Convention. In January 2006, JC 's Girls went to Las Vegas to operate a booth at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo that received much traffic and news coverage. By 2008, Veitch had moved to Las Vegas and based the organization at Central Christian Church in nearby Henderson, Nevada. Former stripper and call girl Theresa Scher and social worker Sheri Brown founded the San Diego chapter of JC 's Girls at The Rock Church in 2007. Veitch, Scher, and Brown resigned from JC 's Girls in 2011, 2012, and 2014 respectively, leaving the leadership of the organization to Laura Bonde. As of 2014, the sole chapter of JC 's Girls is in San Diego.

Terry Barone, spokesman of the California Southern Baptist Convention, said that JC 's Girls members "are doing what Jesus did ... He ministered to prostitutes and tax collectors."[1] JC 's Girls members have been criticized for dressing like sex workers, a look that Veitch said is intended to help women in the sex industry identify with the group. A Baptist minister from San Bernardino, California criticized JC 's Girls for not explicitly encouraging women in the sex industry to quit, and quoted Matthew 6:24, a Bible verse that states that a person cannot serve two masters. In response to the idea that strippers should quit their jobs before attending a church, Veitch said, "Do we ask gluttons to stop eating too much before they come to church?"[2] Philip Sherwell of the Calgary Herald called the evangelism of JC 's Girls "America 's most unusual Christian outreach