WHITNEY, Texas (ABP) — Cowboys and cowgirls are finding new lives on the open range.
Large numbers of farmers, ranchers and horsemen — and those attracted to the lifestyle — are encountering Jesus at the eight-week-old Open Range Cowboy Church in Whitney, Texas.
Nearly 180 people came to the opening service of the country-and-western church, and by July 18, attendance had grown to a building-packed 280. In the first month, 14 individuals were baptized in a horse trough that sits near the altar.
Worshippers are naturally attracted to the church because it connects with their lifestyle, said Rick Pinner, one of the church's first members. A country-western praise band leads the service, and many church leaders set the example for the rest of the congregation with Stetson hats, jeans and cowboy boots.
Church leaders do not pass a plate for an offering but let worshippers drop off an offering envelope at the back of the church. The church may look different, but “we're basing this on something that is very powerful, and that is God's Word,” Pinner said.
Open Range Cowboy Church is one of the latest rapidly growing ventures in the Baptist General Convention of Texas' cowboy church-starting effort, which has initiated 27 cowboy churches since 2000. One of the first, the Cowboy Church of Ellis County is now averaging 1,100 in attendance. The Cowboy Church of Atascosa County is averaging 500 people weekly.
Leaders hope to have 75 such congregations in Texas by 2008. Through the Ranchhouse School of Cowboy Church Planting, other leaders have been trained in Florida, Wyoming, Montana and Washington.
Hundreds of Texans have been baptized in cowboy churches, including many adults who have not gone to a church for years.
“Western-heritage people represent a large pool in Texas that not many are seeking to evangelize. [As a result], they have written the church off,” said Ron Nolen, a consultant for the BGCT Church Multiplication Center who works with these congregations. “Now Baptist people are reconnecting them.”
The center estimates 4 million Texans would best be served by cowboy churches. “It is grass-roots Christianity,” Nolen said. “It is taking the church to the pagan world.”
The BGCT recently purchased a trailer that will be used to haul several cowboys and their horses around the state, probing and reporting on areas where there are enough western-heritage people to start a cowboy church.
Organizers at Open Range Church said they have watched people slowly become more involved in the congregation despite some initial skepticism. Visitors start out standing by the door. After a few weeks they are sitting in the back of the church. Eventually, they are getting baptized and sitting in the middle of the congregation, they said.
“It's getting to a particular group of people that other churches are not ministering to,” said Edwin Snelgrove, the praise band's drummer at Open Range. “It's like it says, this is a cowboy church. We just want to get you in. We'll let the Lord clean you up.”
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