Members of Pillar, Mercy Me, Relient K, Spoken, Disciple, and TobyMac are hitting the links – the golf course kind, not the Web kind – against porn here June 6 in a benefit to raise money for XXXchurch.com's anti-porn ministry.
“This is going to be a pretty radical day,” says Pillar lead singer Rob Beckley in announcing the golf fundraiser. “I can’t wait to see what happens when rock-n-roll and golf collide to raise awareness about pornography. Now that’s something to talk about.”
XXXchurch.com founding pastors Craig Gross and Mike Foster say in the golf announcement that Beckley himself rounded up members of the other bands for the event. The two pastors also will participate.
“Having bands like Pillar talk about issues and write songs about topics like pornography have helped raise awareness of this problem," Foster says. "We are so thrilled that they are using their platform to help this cause. We just hope the 'Bible Belt’ is ready for us."
Foster and Gross founded XXXchurch.com as a Net-only ministry aimed at helping "people who struggle" with adult Internet content, particularly younger people. The ministry is predicated on the view – challenged by many others – that porn can be addictive.
“We noticed the number of kids in our youth groups with porn-related problems growing rapidly,” Gross says. “Since we set up the website, over 170,000 people have downloaded our anti-porn software. People are beginning to realize that porn can be addictive.”
XXXchurch.com offers a free software program, X3Watch, aimed at helping surfers who don't want to bother with adult material. It saves the names of sites which might have "questionable" material and emails a user's "accountability partner," chosen by the user, a list of all such sites every month or two weeks, depending on user preferences.
