A booth at the porn convention. A Bible publishers refused to print. Billboards on the highway. A forty-day fast. Ron Jeremy as a debate partner. Christian Cannabis on Easter weekend at Coachella. Good Morning America to Saturday Night Live, the New York Times to Vice. Before Billy Loves Willie, there was this.
Sacramento kid, Billy Graham crusade · Craig Gross, 1998–2019 · Craig Rose, now · Same six words: start with I love you
A booth inside the Las Vegas porn convention while other Christians protested outside.
Profiled repeatedly across two decades, starting with 'Suffering the Pornographers' in 2004.
Starving Jesus: a forty-day fast and a cross-country tour, turned into a book.
The American Bible Society said no. He printed it anyway and handed it out by the hundreds.
A teenager in Sacramento watches Billy Graham fill a stadium in his hometown, with dc Talk on the bill singing Jesus Freak. That night is the origin of everything on this page — and of a billboard in Billy Graham country thirty years later.
A degree in Biblical Studies with an emphasis in Youth Ministry from Hope International University, then ordained as a minister at Eastside Christian Church and a run as a youth pastor in Orange County.
Founds Fireproof Ministries and hits the road as a youth evangelist and crusader, running the Billy Graham playbook for a generation raised on Jesus Freak. Fireproof becomes the nonprofit umbrella for everything that follows.
With Mike Foster, Craig launches the world's first online anti-porn ministry and walks into the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo with a booth, free Bibles and t-shirts that say Jesus Loves Porn Stars. The church is furious. The industry is confused. Both keep talking.
The first of several Times pieces. The same year, the documentary Missionary Positions follows the ministry into the conventions. X3watch, the free accountability software, goes on to millions of downloads.
Hundreds of churches take on the subject on the same Sunday, Super Bowl weekend, with NFL players on camera. Saturday Night Live turns it into a joke. The NFL later cracks down on church Super Bowl parties and Christianity Today puts XXXchurch in the story.
The American Bible Society refuses to print a New Testament with 'Jesus Loves Porn Stars' on the cover 'out of a sense of propriety.' ABC World News Tonight runs the story. Albert Mohler says the line has been crossed. The Bibles get printed elsewhere and handed out at Erotica LA.
Craig and the most famous porn star in the world tour colleges, theaters and churches arguing on stage — and become friends. Good Morning America calls them 'America's ultimate odd couple.'
Forty days without food, a bus tour across the country, and a book (with J.R. Mahon) daring Christians to get off the pew and into the world. Forty days is not a new number for him.
Five boards around Jacksonville for Valentine's Day: 'Her gift for Valentine's Day — stop looking at porn.' Local news covers every one. The playbook for Canton was written twenty years ago.
Relocates the ministry to the Strip and plants a church for the people who work there. The Las Vegas Sun: 'Porn Again.'
Thomas Nelson publishes Open. When Anthony Weiner's scandal breaks, the New York Daily News calls the 'Porn Pastor' for comment. By now he is the person the media dials when faith meets sex.
On 4/20, the day before Easter, he goes into the desert and launches Christian Cannabis. Vice, High Times and the Washington Post cover it. He hands XXXchurch to a former porn star and her husband and walks away from seventeen years of it.
A pop-up conference on the benefits of psychedelics, covered by FOX 11 Los Angeles. Same instinct, new room: go where the church says not to and start with I love you.
Holy Water, the Hollow Bone Initiative, and forty nights in Billy Graham country. The man this site calls Craig Rose spent the first thirty years as Craig Gross. The kid who watched Billy fill a stadium in Sacramento is putting up a billboard down the road from The Cove. Same story, one more chapter.
The Gutter (2005) · Questions You Can't Ask Your Mama About Sex (2005) · Dirty Little Secret (2006) · Starving Jesus (2007) · Pure Eyes / Eyes of Integrity · Open (Thomas Nelson, 2013) · Go Small (2014)
You do not get to be this controversial for this long unless somebody keeps deciding you were telling the truth.
Every chapter above was called a stunt on day one and covered as a story by day three. Forty days in Asheville is not a new idea for this man — he fasted for forty days in 2007 and dared people to watch then, too. The difference now is that the deadline is federal, the town is Billy Graham country, and the sentence is still the same.