Baylor University graduates Brett and Emily Mills of Waco spend their days, and many nights, reminding the city’s 40 or so exotic dancers that Jesus loves strippers.

The couple’s “Jesus Loves Strippers” ministry reaches out to individuals they believe the church inadvertently casts away.

Every month, the couple and about a half-dozen volunteers hit the Waco strip club circuit — Sonny’s BYOB, Show Time and Two Minnie’s — with bags of gifts from local sponsors filled with makeup, cookies, bandages and school supplies in August.

Co-founder Brett Mills and volunteers Leah Colucci, Kellie Gibson and Kristen Campbell gather bags of makeup and food to bring to Waco strippers.
Rod Aydelotte/Tribune-Herald

Wearing purple “Jesus Loves Strippers” T-shirts, Emily Mills and the female volunteers approach the dancers in their dressing rooms early in the night. They use the gift bags as ice-breakers and, more often than not, conversations flow from there.

The volunteers don’t bring Bibles. They don’t launch into talk about God.

Many of the strippers, they find, have long felt disconnected from faith.

“Only God can change a person,” said Emily Mills, a 32-year-old mother of three. “Our goal is not to go in and change them, but make them realize that God loves them no matter what they do and where they are.”

Instead, they talk about their children. Their boyfriends. School. Hopes for the future or just for the night.

Brett, 34, from Houston, and Emily, from Tyler, met at Baylor among 2,000 students in a large-group Bible study.

They met singing in the Bible studies and, together, questioned the effectiveness of what they were doing.

“For me, there was beginning to be a disconnect,” Emily Mills said. “Church was not relevant to everyday people. I feel like there were a lot of people out there who Jesus would have walked with that probably feel alienated by the church.”

They visited other types of ministries, including one in Austin that reaches out to strippers.

They were determined to build a similar ministry in Waco.

“The church can reach out to the homeless and the down-and-out, but it doesn’t know what to do with sex,” Emily Mills said. “It’s just so taboo.”

So, in 2005, they started Jesus Said Love, followed by its extensions, Jesus Loves Strippers and Jesus Loves Truckers — all divisions of Bartimaeus Ministries Inc., a nonprofit organization.

Brett and Emily also tour as a Christian music duo, but their full-time jobs are expanding the ministry.

With a pack of volunteers, they make their rounds at the clubs once a month, but spend the rest of their time developing the relationships with the women.

Emily Mills, 32, listens to the manager of a Waco strip club. Mills and her husband, Brett, started Jesus Loves Strippers in 2005.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

“Ninety-nine percent of them don’t really want to be there,” Emily Mills said. “Most say that they’re just going to do it for six months until they can make enough money to get on their feet. The danger is that it becomes a lifestyle. That’s when it takes a toll on a woman’s soul.”

One 31-year-old mother of four daughters explained she started stripping in September, after having danced in similar clubs for a decade or more.

When times got rough and she couldn’t pay the bills last fall, she turned to taking her clothes off to make more money. She told Emily Mills in the dressing room of a Waco strip club that she felt she had no other choice.

The dancer asked the ministry volunteers if they could help her find a different job. Emily promised to see what she could do.

Forming a connection

Most of the women love the “Jesus Loves Strippers” shirts. Volunteer Leah Colucci, 23, talks about trading her ministry shirt with a dancer who wore a shirt that read “Sinful.”

Brett Mills and any other male volunteers don’t go in the clubs. They wait in the parking lots, acting as security and chatting with the club managers and patrons loitering near the entrances.

Jennifer Ledford, a 30-year-old bartender at Sonny’s BYOB, called Brett and Emily her “heroes.”

Last year, when Ledford needed extensive dental work, Emily Mills found a dentist to give her a discount. When Ledford was debating going to school, Emily Mills contacted a friend at McLennan Community College, who guided her through registration.

“Brett and Emily don’t push anyone to change their life,” she said. “They just really want to help you. They’ve changed my life.”

Two weeks ago, when the 1-year-old daughter of a Sonny’s dancer was taken by medical helicopter to Scott & White Hospital in Temple after suffering a series of seizures, Emily Mills had volunteers at the hospital to pray with the family within hours.

The dancer didn’t believe in God until that day, said Heather Bonge, a 26-year-old former Sonny’s employee.

Emily and Brett Mills gather in the parking lot of Sonny’s BYOB strip club. The Waco couple started the Jesus Loves Strippers ministry in 2005.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

“Brett and Emily deserve everything good that happens to them,” Bonge said. “They are absolutely not judgmental. If I need anything, any time, day or night, we know we can call them.”

The couple’s newest venture is Jesus Loves Truckers.

Brett, Emily and their volunteers set up in the parking lot of the Flying J truck stop with bags of burritos and travel essentials.

“We’ve had some guys come by who said they hadn’t talked in two days,” Emily Mills said. “Truckers are lonely.”

Everyone needs to be reminded that they’re loved by Jesus, they said.

Their other ideas to expand their ministry: Jesus Loves Doctors or Jesus Loves Housewives.

Strippers, truckers, doctors, housewives. It really doesn’t matter. Because reaching out to the seemingly very different groups would essentially be the same, the Mills said.

While society might discriminate, their message is that Jesus does not.

“I’m not going to save the world one stripper at a time,” Emily Mills said. “What I’ve realized is that I am her and she is me. We’ve both been broken. We both struggle. We’re all in need of more grace than sometimes we’re willing to admit.”

equinn@wacotrib.com

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