Skip to main content

Cowboy Church

The horseshoe of seats in the auditorium was already three-quarters filled and humming with anticipation. As we slid into vacant chairs, the band struck up a spirited rendition of "Amazing Grace". To the tune of "Ghost Riders in the Sky". Yippee-ai-ay!



The last guitar chords settled into silence. The guitarist, a man with a stiff grey moustache, said, "Let us pray." There was an instant flurry of movement as dozens of cowboy hats were removed and held respectfully in laps. Once the prayer was over they were resumed, although a few were later used as collection baskets for the offering.

After a few more country 'n' worship songs, the preacher stood up to speak. For 22 years, he said, the Shepherds Valley Church had been praying that there would be a Christian service at the Fort Worth Stock Show, yet the organisers had been against it. All that time they had been making friends, cultivating connections, and finally somebody recommended that, since all the other stock shows had a church service, perhaps Fort Worth should too. 22 years of prayer and work had paid off; yet the church still wasn't insensitively triumphalistic. Instead, they bought 200 rodeo tickets to support the event. I was reminded of Jesus' parable of the shrewd servant in Luke 16, and his comment: "Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon..."

In his late 50's, with a weatherbeaten face and well-worn cowboy boots, the preacher went on to speak about attitude. It's easy to have a good attitude when things are ticking along as usual, he said. When you suddenly face unexpected prosperity or unmerited persecution, that's when your attitude really gets tested. And attitude, over time, adds up to disposition. Have you ever had an animal who just had a bad disposition, he asked. About half of the audience raised their hands.

Finally, the pastor led the congregation in a prayer to receive Jesus as Saviour, should anyone have not done so already. The blue-jeaned band rematerialised to sing a final song about finding God in the open prairie and the face of baby calves. And we wandered out into the bright farmyard-smelling sunlight with the faint strains of "yippee-ai-ayyy..." ringing in our ears.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Canterbury Cathedral

We were booking a trip to France, and I persuaded the family that it was madness to drive four hours to Dover and get straight on the ferry. "We should definitely stay overnight somewhere," I said. "Oh look, Canterbury is very handy - just twenty minutes from Dover." Of course, my suggestion was not influenced in the slightest by the fact that Canterbury contains England's most famous cathedral. On the way down, we stretched our legs on Dunstable Downs, an area of chalk grassland owned by the National Trust. I was pleased to spot a scarlet pimpernel for my 100 Plants Challenge . We also enjoyed watching gliders ascending and descending. We turned onto the M25 and made our way through busy traffic to the Dartford Crossing. This is one of those mythical points on the UK road network, like Scotch Corner and Watford Gap: the name familiar from traffic reports on the radio; the reality - for someone who grew up west of London - a hazy blur of imagination. It turns ou...
Post a Comment
Read more

Laid-back Lille and Bustling Brussels

After a night in a tiny AirBnB in Canterbury , where there were chocolates on the table and artwork on every inch of the walls, we boarded a ferry with an absolute minimum of fuss, enjoyed a smooth crossing of the channel, and were deposited in the decidedly unscenic surroundings of the port of Dunkirk two hours later. Once we got past the cranes and shipping containers, though, the countryside was flat but pleasant. We stopped at a small town called Cassel, reached by cobbled roads winding up a hill. On the summit was an old windmill and a topograph telling you the distances to various improbable places; St Omer may have been visible in the haze, but Manchester was surely over the horizon.  In Lille, we found our apartment, unpacked the luggage (one rucksack apiece), and set out to find food. Our first choice was fully booked, so we embarked on that kind of aimless wandering where everyone is hungry and no one wants to actually choose a restaurant. We reached a Lebanese place call...
Post a Comment
Read more