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WESTERN THEME HIGHLIGHTS COWBOY CHURCH MEETING

By Larry Fugate/ SPECIAL TO THE COMMERCIAL
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 12:15 AM CST

Cowboy churches have been spreading across Arkansas, and organizers hope to round up some unchurched Christians in the Pine Bluff area interested in the cowboy lifestyle.

The Harmony Baptist Association sponsored a meeting Monday evening at Meadow Lake Stables off Middle Warren Road to explain the cowboy church concept and to measure the interest. Some 30 individuals signed cards expressing interest in forming a cowboy church, said Dewayne Tanton, association missionary, following the meeting.

Danville, Hot Springs, Clinton, Mt. Pleasant, Harrison, Pea Ridge, Nashville, Mountainburg, Batesville, Alma, Heber Springs, Gentry and Bentonville are among sites for cowboy churches. Bill Howse, a church and community ministry consultant for the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, said 80 percent of the individuals attending a cowboy church service are not affiliated with another church and have not been in a church for 25-30 years.

While the ministers of some of the unconventional churches might deliver a sermon from horseback inside a rodeo arena, services are also held in church-owned buildings, at fairgrounds, movie theaters, closed bars, and three conduct services in livestock sales barns, added Howse.

Southern Baptists in Arkansas are aligned with cowboy churches that reflect the biblical standard of a New Testament church, explained the Rev. Don Jones, who, with his wife Mary Ann, were among the organizers of Crosspoint Baptist Church in Nashville near Arkansas’ western border.

Jones used the terms “western heritage” and “cowboy” interchangeably in describing Crosspoint, which was started 3 1/2 years ago and met for the first two years at the Nashville Stockyards. The church has since acquired land, erected a building and a horse arena, he said.

Music at a cowboy church places the emphasis on Southern gospel hymns, the president of the Arkansas Fellowship of Cowboy Churches said Monday as he stood inside the 26,000 square foot stables on Pine Bluff’s western edge.

Crosspoint began with 12 in a core group and had 21 in attendance the first Sunday. Now Sunday attendance usually exceeds 100, he added, and averaged more than 200 in May.

“That’s the beauty of the cowboy church - you are reaching people,” said Jones. “Church membership is not that big an issue. It really is people and their relationship with the Lord.”

Some of the most faithful in their attendance are Methodists, “but we don’t push the issue.” An enlarged horse trough serves as a baptistry.

“It’s a movement of God,” Jones emphasized. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my 40 years of ministry”

Tanton said individuals who expressed an interest in forming a cowboy church will meet at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Meadow Lake Stables.

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