Cowboy churches spread, thanks to laid-back approach

Posted: 2/16/07

Cowboy churches spread,
thanks to laid-back approach

By Barbara Bedrick

Texas Baptist Communications

STEPHENVILLE—On a chilly morning in Central Texas, a man in ostrich-skin cowboy boots stood shivering in a water-filled horse trough. Charles Higgs quickly dunked him. Higgs, the pastor of Cowboy Church of Erath County, also baptized the man’s wife and two children that same day.

The family-style baptism is just a sign of the times, Higgs said. He was a pastor at traditional churches 28 years but now says he has a passion for people interested in cowboy culture.

In six years, 7,000 people have been baptized at Texas cowboy churches.

Cowboy churches like the one in Erath County are growing in popularity as a way to appeal to non-Christians who avoid potentially stuffy conventional churches. And water-trough baptisms are an increasingly common occurrence for the laid-back group.

Based on openness and grace, the movement appeals to people living the cowboy lifestyle—or city-slickers with a cowboy attitude. Suits, ties, pews and theological nitpicking are foreign to the movement. Instead, services often come before or after rodeos, branding days, roping events and barbecues.

It’s difficult to track national numbers of cowboy churches, since most of them are nondenominational, but the website www.cow-boyministers.com lists cowboy church groups in 29 states.

In Texas alone, 7,000 Christians have been baptized in cowboy churches since the western heritage movement began in 2000, according to Baptist General Convention of Texas records.

The average size of a cowboy church congregation is about 200 people; many churches divide when numbers outgrow the barn or arena used as a meeting place. And the appeal—old-time cowboy ethics—is spreading.

“You can really feel grace” in a cowboy church, Higgs said. “We preach that we are saved by grace, but we also try to react with grace.”

As the director of the BGCT’s western-heritage ministries, Higgs said the movement has the potential to attract millions. Roughly 20 percent of the Texas population—about 5 million people—embrace the western-heritage culture, he noted.

“Eighty percent of the (cowboy church) baptisms are adults. We baptized a lady who was 57 who had not been to church in 43 years,” he said.

The movement continues to grow, with more than 80 cowboy congregations started in Texas in the last six years, the BGCT reports. Church planters nationwide have taken cues from the growth in Texas and are eager to build on that momentum.

“Our goal this year is to create 40 new cowboy churches in 2007,” Higgs said. “Five of them will be vaquero cowboy churches,” or Spanish-speaking, Hispanic western-heritage congregations.

To that end, the Texas Fellowship of Cowboy Churches recently kicked off a $1 million “Riding the River with the Cowboys” fund-raising campaign to start more than 200 cowboy churches in Texas by 2010.

“We want to build on the foundation laid by the BGCT,” said Ron Nolen, the director of the Waxahachie-based fellowship. “We need a foundation that will support 250 cowboy churches being planted in Texas.”

The campaign will help reach more non-Christians and develop a 178-acre western youth camp in Whitney to meet the needs of 1,500 teens across the state, he explained.

“We also need to reinforce the BGCT’s congregational strategists,” Nolen noted. “Very few of the BGCT’s church starters are in the (cowboy) culture, and the strategy is radically different from Baptist life.”

The BGCT is putting spurs to this effort to help equip cowboy church leaders and church starters by sponsoring four cowboy church-planting schools this year, Higgs added.