NEW ORLEANS (BP) -- New Orleans' Bourbon Street is awash nightly in neon
light and lewd images. Some in the crowd disappear into the strip clubs
that line the street. Others come only to gawk. One Crossover team
prior to this year's Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting -- all
women -- came to pray.
Three couples from First Baptist Church
in Florence, Ala., joined with Mosaic, a church plant in New Orleans'
Mid-City area, during Crossover to serve alongside Inward, a ministry of
women from New Orleans churches that is reaching women in the sex
industry.
The Florence team served in New Orleans days after a
strip club dancer was found brutally murdered and one day after Inward
successfully helped another woman escape her pimp.
"These women
[of Inward] are on the frontlines of ministry," said Rickey "Ric" Camp,
pastor of First Baptist Florence and vice chairman of the North American
Mission Board's board of trustees.
Inward, in its third year of
operation, goes into the clubs to show God's love. As a result, several
have left the sex industry. One dancer came to faith in Christ.
The
Florence team women, two of them retired, prayerwalked along Bourbon
Street while Inward members delivered gift baskets with gift cards and
snack items to club dancers and workers.
While the women
prayerwalked, husbands gathered at Mosaic to pray. Camp said he texted
Scripture verses such as Joshua 1:7, "Be strong and courageous," to his
wife, Lisa Camp.
"I was really frightened at first," Lisa Camp said. "These women showed us how to look at people and see them as God sees them."
Ric
Camp said that while the men prayed, the women sent text message
updates. One message read, "Pray that we get into the club," and later,
"We're in."
The murder victim worked at the club where Inward has
hosted six breakfasts after closing time in order to share the Gospel
with club workers.
"We felt an urgency to pray," Ric Camp said. "There is a sense of lostness and darkness there."
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