Stripped: Uncensored Grace on the Streets of Vegas
by By Wilhite, Jud and Taaffe, Bill (CON)
Category: Religion , Christianity , History

“Uncensored grace is what you get from a loving God when all the religious types have gone home, and every last hope for your own effort has blown up in your face.”What comes to mind first when you think “Las Vegas”? Maybe glitz and glam. Or dealers and dancers, high rollers and hell raisers. And why not? After all, the town they call Sin City is an American icon, an anything-goes shrine to pleasure, money, sex–and another lucky roll of the dice.Probably when you think Las Vegas, you don’t think about God or grace.Neither did Jud Wilhite when he was first invited to become the senior pastor at the city’s largest church. But the people he’s met since moving there with his family have changed all that. Today, Vegas stands for something much different and more surprising for Jud. He doesn’t think of Vegas as Sin City anymore. Now, to him, it is Grace City.Working with veteran journalist Bill Taaffe, Jud takes you past the neon and the hype to another side of Vegas–where people whose lives have been marred by loneliness, addiction, and despair are finding hope and freedom in a vital community of faith. Stripped is an account of what happens when ordinary people get honest with each other and an extraordinary God. In its pages you’ll meet gaming industry movers and shakers. You’ll meet working exotic dancers, a Flying Elvis, an American Idol contestant, a cop who won the hearts of a crime-hardened city, and more.Each of them has encountered what Jud calls “uncensored grace.” He writes, “Uncensored means that there is no formula or membership or performance that stands between you and God’s goodness.”Stripped is their unforgettable account of people who are betting everything on a very big idea: that as wide and deep and high as your mountain of personal ruin might get, God’s transforming grace is always wider and deeper and higher.