My little buckaroo

Recently Maw Maw went shopping for Jonathan and got him all fixed up with some Wrangler jeans, boots and belt. Aunt Pam got him a few western shirts so I had to take some pictures of my little buckaroo. Recently a friend of my mine named Rob gave me a cd of a country singer named Rodney Adkins and on that cd was a song called my little buckaroo (I think). It is about how a father notices that his son is growing up and watching daddy in everything he does. Well Jonathan is growing up fast I hope you enjoy the picture.

And so it begins!

We are back from a trip to Fairfield, TX where the Texas Fellowship of Cowboy Churches hosted a Cowboy church planting school. It was a two day event which kicked off Saturday at 12:15 pm and lasted till 9pm and ended with a concert of three different Cowboy bands. It was a great time to be had by all. On Sunday it started at 7am with a chuck wagon breakfast and then started our classes and went on till about 2:30pm.

The one thing that I forgot to tell you was that the temperature was around 100 degrees outside both days and yes after two days of sweating it sure felt good to be back home in our home. Although we were lucky we had our fifth wheel camper so we did have hot showers and A/C at night. We were probably a lot better off than 90% of everybody else. There were people sleeping in their horse trailors and in hotel rooms that were rather quiet expensive.

I was able to take my core group with us to the school. There were 7 of us all together. Keith Wright which is my brother in law which will be our lay pastor of chuck wagon cooking, Rex Crenshaw which will be one of my starting Elders. Darlene Estes which is our Singles Director, Joe and Leigh Rush a sweet couple with a great heart for youth. He used to be a Pro Bull rider. He is either aweful brave or really crazy, which to be honest you need to be a little of both to want to work with Youth, and then there was Caye and I.

It was a great time, and there was about 400 people there for the school. There are going to be a lot of cowboy churches started this year. They think there will be 250 cowboy churches by 2010. Cowboy church is done differently and is more comfortable for those people that are not of the traditional church mindset. It is about bringing people to God in an enviroment that they can understand. When you come to a cowboy church you may hear country and western praise worship music that you might think sounds like honky tonk music and I love it. Sometimes you can look up during praise and worship and see a couple doing the two step or the jitterbug swing during worship. I don't think you will see that in a traditional church. Maybe we need to all rethink our pirpose of church.

We can't expect the lost to jump to when we start reading KJV, it just ain't going to happen, and yes "ain't" is a word in the Cowboy church. Cowboys want to know how God relates in their lives and they are not complicated. It reminds me of Joe Friday "Just the facts!" They want to know that you are a straight shooter and that you don't have any hidden agendas and that you just don't want their money. Which the average cowboy don't have money to throw around. They are loyal people when they are attached to someone or something. They ride for the brand and yes God even wants to save cattle rustlers and horse thieves although everyone else wants them hung for their crimes God wants to pardon them.

So in the spirit of doing something different we are going to be doing team roping's and team ranch rodeos as well as trail rides. God is spreading his grace on Cowboy Churches because they are missionary minded because they are reaching a lost people group right here in the U.S.

Blessings,

stan