Editor’s Note:In the decade since Craig Gross launched a ministry to people impacted by pornography—those who are addicted, those who produce it, and those who are “performers”—he has fueled a national conversation about the devastating impact of a “victimless” sexual activity. XXXChurch, and its popular Web site (XXXChurch.com), are now ground zero for a movement, inside and outside the church, to expose pornography for what it really is and help bring freedom to those who are caught up in it.
Almost a million people are using XXXChurch’s free accountability software. The ministry just rolled out a premium service that offers instant text-message alerts and other services. And Gross has been working to produce 10 videos featuring guys from 10 Christian bands talking about how they stay “clean” from porn with all the temptations they face on the road all year long. These videos, he believes, will be a huge help for youth pastors who want to start a conversation about pornography in their ministry.
Doug talked to Craig at his office on Los Angeles.
Fields: First, we hear a lot about the number of ministry people who are dabbling in pornography or addicted to it, but how do you realistically arrive at how big this problem is for those involved in ministry?
Gross:It’s hard to really know the real numbers behind it, whether or not you’re in ministry. First of all, nobody thinks they’re addicted—the basic problem with this is denial. Most people in ministry are not going to admit they’re addicted or even dabbling in pornography. So in the church more than any other profession, it’s hidden. But it eventually comes to the surface, and that’s where you see the headlines. Someone does something stupid and they end up losing their job. But there are countless numbers of people I’ve encountered over the last nine years in ministry who are dealing with this—it’s a bigger problem than any stat would say.
Fields: Is there something inherent about ministry that sets people up to become addicted to pornography?
Gross:As people in ministry we can think we’re immune because we’re doing the Lord’s work. Most porn—it’s crazy—is downloaded between the hours of nine to five, while people are at work. I have a friend who works at a large company in southern California, and he says they have people whose job is to basically monitor the computers there to make sure no one’s accessing pornography during work time.
I know so many church people who could’ve kept their job if they’d simply gone to their senior pastor with their problem. There’s nobody I’ve met in almost 10 years of doing this that has overcome this on their own. And for most people I meet, it doesn’t just end with online porn—it progresses into offline sin. The Bible says your sin will find you out. Had you worked on this a year prior to when you got caught, you could have kept your marriage, your family, and your job, but now it’s all gone.
Fields: What about somebody who’s getting sucked into the world of pornography—what are the exit ramps they could use to get them out?
Gross:Every week I’m sharing these three steps: Confess it to God, confess it to somebody else, and then decide to clean it up. In Proverbs it says something like, “A fool goes back to his sin like a dog goes back to his vomit.” What needs to happen first is people need to want it more than I or their wife or their senior pastor wants it for them. Most people I talk to are not there. They’re dabbling, so they don’t think they really need help.
I was at an event last month in Orange County—85 percent of the people there were signed up by their wives. For most men, we don’t think we’re lost—we can always find ourselves. That’s our mentality. We don’t want to get free or to get well. We live in a “shortcut” culture, but there’s not really a shortcut that works for dealing with a growing addiction to pornography. The first three weeks of most inpatient treatment programs for addiction focus on the whole idea of denial. You’ve got to go after this realizing you’re in the fight of your life.
Fields: What’s the difference between sexual sin and other types of sins that we battle against?
Gross:In 1 Corinthians 6:18 it says: “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.” I know people who’ve pulled themselves out of bankruptcy or lost 160 pounds or completed five Ironman Triathlons in five days, but they can’t break their addiction to porn. You can hide an addiction to porn better than, say, an addiction to food. You know that one’s going to show. So the easiest thing to do in church is to just ignore the elephant in the pew.
Fields: Is pornography as big of a deal with teenagers, and is it easier to talk to with kids than it is with adults about this?
Gross:Today, every kid’s online—their homework’s sent to them on email and they all have laptops or iPods or iPads or phones that access the Internet. The average age of someone seeing porn online is 11 years old—90 percent of kids will see porn online before they’re 16, most of them while doing their homework. So yeah, we’re missing a huge opportunity if we don’t bring that up in youth group.
Fields: So if you had a small group of teenagers tonight in your living room—a guys’ group—what are the three questions you’re asking?
Gross:Are you looking at porn? Are you masturbating? Are you involved sexually with someone? And the fourth would be, if you’ve answered no to any of these questions, how’s your thought life? You probably don’t have enough time in that small group to get around the circle. It’s important to create the kind of atmosphere in your youth group where you can have that kind of conversation. And at XXXChurch we have this accountability software that can help guys stay accountable to each other. And this is not just a one-night conversation—you’re going to continually bring up these things because these are the questions that most young people aren’t being asked.
If a youth pastor’s willing to basically go where no one else is going, that’s a crucial thing, because kids are not really comfortable having that conversation with their dad or mom. Because most youth pastors are looked up to, the kids are honored to spend time with them. They can leverage that situation by asking them serious questions. That’s what my youth pastor did for me, and when I got married he was one of my groomsmen.
Fields: A lot of times pornography is seen as a victimless crime. Could you weigh in on some of the ways you’ve seen it impact people who’ve gotten involved with it?
Gross:Oh, it wrecks lives—just complete devastation. We see all sides of this industry from the consumers to the producers to the performers, and the biggest question I always get asked is: “Hey, when you go to a porn show or when you’re around that,” (which is five times a year), “how do you handle that?” And I tell them that if some complete stranger walked into a porn show he might think “This is awesome,” but we see it for what it really is.
When your email inbox is filled every day with notes from porn-addicted people who say they’re in jail or have lost their marriage or have a spouse who committed suicide, you approach things way differently. I met a guy who was in recovery from porn addiction—he led a men’s group at his church and he wrote for us for two years on our Web site. Well, he fell back into his addiction and ended up taking his own life.He had three kids, and I did the funeral. It was probably the lowest day for me. I had to ask myself: “What the heck am I doing? Is it worth it? If we can’t help—if this is going to happen to one of our own, then just what are we doing here?”
An addiction to pornography can get into any home, into any marriage. Of course, not everybody ends up in jail. But, to be honest, I have three unopened letters in my backpack right now. They’re all hand-written, which means they’re probably in jail. And they’re sitting in my backpack because I can’t, just now, open them. You’ve gotta get prepared to read somebody else’s story like that, when they say: “Hey man, I’ve lost it all.”
Every Sunday that I’m at a church I’ll go to a back table where we have information about our ministry, and (always) a woman will come up to me and she won’t even get out her name before she starts crying. And she’ll say, “This is why I’m divorced.” Last week I got to go to New York and go on the Martin Fisher Show. I’ve been on Good Morning America. And people go, “Oh that would be so great!” But when 95 percent of your day is dealing with people whose lives are in shambles, that are on the brink of losing everything, it’s not so great. Pornography leads to a dead-end, sooner or later.
Fields: Well, Craig, you guys are bold—you’re doing great things. Your software’s unbelievable. I’m grateful for your ministry, so thank you. ◊