Todd Stevens - How to Pick Up a Stripper and Other Acts of Kindness: Serving People Just as They Are

I believe faith that gets out of the pew and goes out and just loves on hurting and broken people right where they are is the most powerful form of the gospel known to man. It is the exact ministry of Jesus. How to Pick Up a Stripper and Other Acts of Kindness illustrates beautifully this idea in action. This book could change your life and the way you live out what you believe!

Jeff Foxworthy

Comedian and Host of The American Bible Challenge

Service, generosity, kindness, outreach, compassion and love are just a few things you will pick up on when reading How to Pick Up a Stripper and Other Acts of Kindness. This book is not a how-to guide to start a stripper outreachit is a how-to guide on how to live your life every day and see where God might lead you. You will walk away from reading this book with practical and tangible ideas for outreach and service in your local community, and maybe even your local strip club.

Craig Gross

Founder of XXXChurch.com and Strip Church

Erin Stevens passion for reaching women in the sex industry is contagious, and this book is even more contagious! It will leave you feeling inspired and ready to make an impact in your community the minute you start reading. In How to Pick Up a Stripper and Other Acts of Kindness, Todd and Erin share practical and spiritual tips on how anyone, whether young or old, introvert or extrovert, rich or poor, can change someones life in their community by one practical act of kindness or generosity. I believe the heart and passion behind this book coincides with the compelling heart of Jesus.

Tara Ulrich

National Strip Church Coordinator

2014 Todd and Erin Stevens

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Page design and layout: Crosslin Creative

Images: CanStockPhoto, BigStock

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from The Voice translation. 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.*

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

ISBN: 978-0-5291-1687-1

ISBN: 978-0-5291-1689-5 (eBook)

* Note: Italics in quotations from The Voice are used to indicate words not directly tied to the dynamic translation of the original language but that bring out the nuance of the original, assist in completing ideas, and... provide readers with information that would have been obvious to the original audience (The Voice, preface). Author emphasis in quotations from The Voice is indicated with the use of boldface type.

14 15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

DEDICATION

Dedicated to Friendship Community Church, aka The Island of Misfit Toys

CONTENTS

Special thanks...

To Katie and your two precious girls. May blessings and favor pour out on you for allowing us to share part of your incredible story.

To the girls. Please dont ever forget that you are valuable to God and valuable to us.

To Neil and Mindi, who love us unconditionally and provide the friendship that every pastors family needs.

To Elijah, Daniel, and Levi, who are mighty men of God in their generation. You are game changers for the kingdom of God, and we cannot wait to see what God has in store for your surrendered lives. We love you all the way.

To our parents, who believed in the vision of Friendship Community Church from the beginning.

To John. Thank you for not saying no.

To Jason and Julie, who have been our cheerleaders and sounding board.

To Teri, the best career placement person in town. Thank you for being a vital part of Nashville Strip Church.

To Kathy, who filled our freezer with delicious food. Our family is blessed by your generosity and kindness.

To Maleah, our editor and friend, who saw the potential for this book.

To Jesus, who showed us how to love and serve people. We worship You and give You all the praise that is in us.

Sometimes when we talk to others outside our spiritual ring, our words come out sounding a lot like a foreign language. The problem isnt just that we only speak English. Whats more we speak with a particular accent, depending on where we live. Imagine for a moment that most people dont understand what we are saying.

Lets learn how to speak the way those around can understand, whatever that may be. Todd and Erin Stevens have started a church that focuses on the international language of Kindness that changes everything. The story of what has happened in Nashville shows there are lots of people who speak the same mother tongue.

God made each of us with needs and desires that are impossible to ignore. Its also true that all of us need to experience kindness and generosity. We are vulnerable to it, so when we experience it our hearts rejoice. We think, So this is the way life is supposed to work.

As you read this book, imagine yourself as a dry sponge that needs a good soaking. Put aside your expectations of what outreach or evangelism is supposed to look like. Let the waters of newness soak their way in and allow for a new perspective. I believe you will look back in five years and agree that this will have been one of the most influential books youve read.

Steve Sjogren

Author & Coach, Kindness.com

We had no idea about the journey God had in store for us.

Im a pastor, and my wife hangs out in strip clubs. I used to be a computer programmer, and she was a human resources director. We were respectable and successful people and had lots of respectable and successful friends. Then God showed up and wrecked all of that. Im so glad He did.

When my wife, Erin, and I first started meeting with the group of people who would become the launch team for Friendship Community Church in 2006, we had no idea about the journey God had in store for us. The group that assembled for those first planning meetings had a shared vision for a church that would actively demonstrate Gods love in our community in practical ways by meeting needs and doing acts of kindness. We believed God could use this type of church to change the face of our city.

Since that time, weve been blessed to see transformation begin in our community. Weve had the opportunity to see hundreds of lives radically changed by the message of Jesus. But the change that has occurred in Erin and me has been even more radical.

Erin used to hang out primarily with other suburban moms, and the only dancers she knew were the ones on Dancing with the Stars. Now she leads a ministry called Nashville Strip Church, which is reaching out to the dancers and other employees of inner-city strip clubs with the message of Gods love.

I used to spend all my time with people who had been in church for most of their lives. The closest I had been to any kind of addiction was my own infatuation with pepperoni pizza. Now my circle of friends includes addicts and ex-cons. When we first began the church, Im not sure I even knew those people existed in my community. Now I cant imagine what my life would be like without them.