WHY I WORSHIP (Part 5) “COWBOY CHURCH”

WHEN I WORSHIP (Part 5)—“COWBOY CHURCH”

A little over a year ago, Bishop Mike Rinehart made mention of the “Cowboy Church” up in Montgomery County up the highway a piece from Grace LC where he served prior to being elected bishop.  I wasn’t exactly sure about all the details…I noticed a short story about Cowboy Church earlier this year about the time of the Houston Rodeo… not sure still what that meant and I’ve lived in Texas long enough to know about Kicker Cowboys, Drugstore Cowboys, Rind stone Cowboys and even Cosmic Cowboys…curiosity lingering in the recessions of my brain…who is the target audience here and is a pick-up truck required for admittance?  Do I need to own a horse or just know someone who does?????

This past Summer I saw two venues for “Cowboy Church” …one just up the road from Camp Lutherhill in LaGrange and the other over on FM1604 Anderson Loop in metro San Antonio.  After a quick GOOGLE search, it turns out the Cowboy Church may be a new striving to be mainline church as there are quite a few here and there in Texas, the South and even in Australia…  So, I took a drive…and found my way to Cowboy Church…

As I headed toward the building…which was a huge hall and not a sanctuary looking kind of place….there were about 6 boys in the yard…and all seemed to be eating ice cream… the music was pretty loud and could be heard in the parking lot…perhaps that was the intent…and the song didn’t sound like any church song I heard before…in fact it sounded like and old Buck Owens song that I used to hear on the TV show, “Hee Haw,” and sure enough it was…

There wasn’t anyone in what I call the narthex welcoming people as they came in the door…and the sign said, “come as you are…” so I did with a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and my soon to be replaced almost worn out pair of “crocks.”  I got a couple of good stares from the people who were standing near the back and most people seemed to be preoccupied with the food…which there was… a cowboy smorgasbord of sorts that I guess you only knew about if you were an ‘insider’…there was an older gentleman sitting at a round table and I asked, “is anyone sitting here?” And he just shook his head in a negative motion…so I sat and took a good look around…

Over on the one side was about 10 ladies…line dancing to the music… and they looked like this was not their first rodeo show…and I thought…if my mother were here…she would feel like she had died and gone to heaven… which I quickly retracted quietly as my mother already has died and gone to heaven…but what I meant was she would fit right in to this kind of place and this kind of setting… country music, good food and ladies her age to do some holy ‘boot-scootin’ gospel boogie…and upon further review I realized that I was about the 3^rd youngest person in the room…and I had the feeling more like being at “The Oak,” a favorite bar in downtown Seguin, TX only without the smoke and the smell of stale beer on the hardwood floor.  Behind the band were silhouettes of Roy Rogers on the left and John Wayne on the right and I wondered for just a brief moment…”Is this was Jesus had in mind when he said…”Go, tell, preach, teach, baptize and make disciples…” and I sincerely wanted an answer…

The house band included acoustic and electric guitars, a bass, drums, a fiddler and some pedal steel…which made the music presentation very tight (and that’s good) by my personal standards.  Little did I realize that the house band was actually the back up band for a different guest artist each week… so as I tried to draw my spirit to a time of worship….like using the words… “here I am to worship…here I am to bow down…here I am to say you are my God….” Etc…I found myself interrupted with a song I’ve heard many times before…just not in a church as the band chirped out Bob Wills and Texas Playboys’ famous hit, “Waltz Across Texas (With You in My Arms)” which was done quite well but I remained a bit confused if I was supposed to waltz Jesus across Texas or if HE was suppose to waltz me…? 

Either way that thought ended quickly as the pastor stood up at the microphone to welcome everyone and began with an opening prayer….ahhhh…God is really gonna show up now…this was just the warm up to get people to come…kind of like singing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Stones…just before the Rite of Confession of Sins… and after the welcome the band played the “Welcome to Cowboy Church” song and all were asked to get up a go around the room and meet someone they didn’t know…sounded good… except… well you guessed it… being the fresh face in the crowd just about everyone walked right passed me to greet their old friends first…most likely people they walked in the door with or hadn’t seen since last Sunday…not even the old codger at the table with me stood up or said hello…until one young man…about 19 or 20 came to me, shook my hand and welcomed me to Cowboy Church.  Turned out he wasn’t from around there either and was visiting, too… Note to self.  Preach “hospitality” Fall 2010…

Then when we sat down the band commenced to playing some more…and they were a very talented group of men…and everyone began to sing along as we heard those great hymns of the church…

• Wille Nelson’s ‘My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”
• “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (maybe the saddest of songs ever written)
• And just before the offering, “Blue Suede Shoes” done with an Elvis-style twang…

And for a moment I thought the preacher might be able to combine the songs lyrics into a message of “people will let you down”…“moving beyond grief and pain” by remembering “beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news…” no matter what color shoes you have on….but no such luck.  Instead, there was a message about “how far off God seems sometimes in our lives…” which was odd because the average age of those in attendance had to be in their 70’s and people I know that age normally have a deep and abiding faith and don’t consider God far off at all… and certainly have a more dependable faith than those half my age who actually do believe that “God has left the building…”

And then as a good worshiper should do…I stopped being critical and asked the simple question… “why is the preacher speaking this message when I’m here and the preacher had no idea I was planning on being present here tonight…? “ Asked and answered.  God is faithful.  God is trustworthy.  God IS near.  Thanks be to God. 

Last word…

 While the church service does have Holy Communion on the first Sunday of each month…I was there on the 5^th Sunday…so I missed out on the sacrament again… and realize now that I have not been to the Lord’s Table since August 8th  … so for the next Sunday…I’ll need to figure that out in advance… but the other thing worth mentioning was the slogan used to advertize this worship venue… “NOT JUST ANOTHER WORSHIP SERVICE” … which I believe they accomplished even though the people there didn’t look (or act) any different than the good folks at New Life…

My mother truly would have loved being there, but I left to return home as if I had been to a concert in a tavern by the band on the stage and the message could have replaced with an announcement for taking up a special offering to defray the costs for the Pearland Little League expenses to Williamsport for the LL World Series… and perhaps that’s the lesson learned for me as preacher and worship leader… and a question we must ask ourselves as the church in mission Sunday after Sunday… “is this worship experience filled with the goodness of God to send a person home empowered to be God’s child at work in the world and at the same time wanting to return the next Sunday to get more of the same?”

 I’m interested now in what you say?  Can you write a short reply about your worship posture for others to learn from?  Anybody else been to Cowboy Church?

     Brian