California- A film depicting an ex-stripper from Riverside who made it her mission to tell exotic dancers and porn stars about God has generated a buzz online and on the film festival circuit.

The documentary, “The Pussycat Preacher,” is at times a humorous romp and other times a David and Goliath story.

Heather Veitch and Matt Brown, the young pastor of Sandals Church in Riverside who helped her start the ministry, are depicted as the little guys facing down powerful pastors and others who disapprove.

The film follows the busty, platinum blonde Veitch as she and friends from Sandals venture to strip clubs, bringing the Gospel to the performers.

Later, Veitch and two friends banter with a porn director as he shoots sultry photos for the ministry’s Web site, called JC’s Girls — JC for Jesus Christ.

Then they go back to the director for tamer photos after Brown hears from angry people who think the site is too risqué.

The film drew attention in the Cinequest online contest, gaining a spot at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose.

In two weeks, it will screen at the Nashville Film Festival.

The cast of characters has changed since filming wrapped.

It ends with Veitch and her husband, Jon, moving to Las Vegas so Veitch can reach out to the strippers there. Several months after the move, Veitch and her husband separated.

That caused a falling out between her and Brown, as well as with some members of Sandals, a young, 3,000-member church with a casual style but a conservative Southern Baptist doctrine.

In an interview after the film’s release, Brown said he had some misgivings all along about the ministry, especially the media frenzy that surrounded it at times.

“We had (TV) cameras in our worship service,” he said. “It was a scary time in terms of staying focused.”

Brown said the film inaccurately suggests a rift between Sandals and the 15,000-member Harvest Christian Fellowship.

Harvest is also based in Riverside, about a mile from Sandals. Sandals rents worship space at Cal Baptist University, where its members meet in the gym.

In the film, a man shrouded in black and identified in the film only as a Sandals staff member, said ministers, including Harvest Senior Pastor Greg Laurie, complained about JC’s Girls.

The clip is followed by an interview with Brown.

“That’s kind of scary, when you have someone you look up to, someone who’s wiser than you, more experienced than you, telling you, ‘Hey, I think it’s OK to try this, but the one thing I would do is step as far back away as possible as you can from Heather,’ ” Brown said in the film.

Brown now says Laurie was merely giving him advice.

“I think he was looking out for my best interests,” Brown said. “I think he was right.”

Laurie never took a public position against Veitch or her ministry, said John Collins, an administrative pastor at Harvest. Laurie simply said he would not have been involved in the ministry, Collins said.

The filmmaker, Los Angeles resident Bill Day, said he screened a rough cut of the film last fall for Brown and others at Sandals and later for Collins at Harvest.

Day said he offered to film additional material to update the reference to Harvest, but Collins insisted it be removed.

Day declined, saying it was fair to use Brown’s initial reaction to the meeting he had with Laurie.

Veitch is enthusiastic about the film, although she said it’s sometimes disconcerting that people she meets for the first time know so much about her.

She now runs her ministry with support from Central Christian Church in Las Vegas. Last year, she began making a series of videos called “Saving Sex City” with former prostitute Annie Lobért.

Veitch said every time she came to Vegas with her former JC’s Girls partners at Sandals, she felt called to work with people there. She said she likes to tell people that even in the world’s fantasy playground, God is still present.

“This place isn’t off limits,” she said. “There still are consequences to your actions.”

“The Pussycat Preacher” was not Day’s first foray into the Inland area or unusual ministries. His last film, “Missionary Positions,” was about XXX Church, an anti-pornography ministry founded by a pair of friends living in Corona and Lake Elsinore.

He met Veitch at a screening of “Missionary Positions” in 2006 and began filming her soon after.

Day calls Veitch a heroic figure. Brown agrees, saying he believes God gave Veitch a vision and she pursued it with passion. But he thinks her work was undermined by a need for attention.

If he had to do it over again, Brown said, he still would have supported an outreach to strippers but would have tried to steer the emphasis away from Veitch.

Sandals welcomed strippers who attended services after the outreach in the clubs. But Brown said he’s not aware of any who still attend Sandals.

In the movie, Brown talks about how Veitch changed not just his congregation but him. He said that as a pastor he knew he should love people, but he didn’t love those working in the sex industry.

“What she did was she birthed that in me and she’s responsible for birthing that in my congregation,” he said in the film.