Florida Strip Club With Drugs and Prostitution Converted into Church

What do you do with a dirty, rundown, former strip club? Why, you turn it into a church, of course! (Honestly...only in Florida.) Evangelical Pastor Dumont Pierre of Boynton Beach, Florida, believes that the former "adult club with nude dancing" will make the perfect place to worship. Pierre called the former club "very, very, very bad," but his Bible was his "leader" in deciding to transform the club into a church. He said sin there ran rampant for too long, and stood proudly in the middle of the building pointing out where the dancing poles used to be. So, will this new church have any parishioners? It already does—around 250 of them.

One young man reminisces about the former strip club, saying he used to sneak in through the back when he was only 16. It was called the Platinum Showgirls club back then. "Most of the strippers would be on the wall over there," he said, "and then on this side there would be DVDs of pornography, CDs and everything." He is now one of the church's most active and enthusiastic members, saying that he and the building had both been transformed. He said it seemed like he was "meant to be here."

The club, which not only housed strippers but was also a supposed haven for drugs, prostitution, and was "eyesore," was raided by SWAT teams and shut down in 2009. The building underwent about $100,000 in renovations, and the city of Boynton Beach couldn't be happier. One has to wonder what a strip club-turned church looks like on the inside—maybe they kept the mirrors on the ceiling, or turned one of the poles into a cross?

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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