Please visit our NEW, IMPROVED WEBSITE
www.ridingforchrist.com
Cowboy Church starts approximately a half-hour before each performance, usually near the bucking chutes. In most cases, the public is welcome to attend unless in an arena where security issues prevent access.
Although these dates are reasonably firm, if you're planning on joining us, please give an email or call to confirm plans haven't had to change for that particular rodeo.
Please note, our links page and contact forms are not working properly, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please keep scrolling down for the latest content and news.
Who We Are
Riding for Christ Ministries is an organization devoted to providing cowboy church and Christian outreach at rodeos and bull ridings through the Southern Extreme Bull Riding Association (www.sebranow.com) and Rawhide Rodeo in Ontario (www.rawhiderodeo.com). Our work within these organizations and abroad allows us to connect with hundreds of cowboys each month.
Cowboy Church:
Life on the road for most cowboys and bull riders means they are unable to attend church and often, we're told this is the 'only church' a cowboy gets. Cowboy church is a short service usually a half-hour before a bull riding or rodeo begins. We give cowboys a short Bible-based, life-applicable message, a chance to share and a time of prayer before they compete. For those who don't normally attend church, this is also a chance to reach them with a Christian message as many will attend cowboy church, drawn for the prayer time before they engage in a very dangerous sport. We attend more than 100 events each year.
What Else we Do:
Riding for Christ Ministries distributes "cowboy Bibles" (small Bibles with cowboy-related covers that make it more comfortable for a cowboy to be willing to pick up and carry with him).
We send out monthly teaching material and are in regular contact with more than 300 cowboys and bull riders across North America.
We make hospital visits where possible.
We provide prayer support and fellowship.
How you can help:
he Year Three Fund Raising Campaign officially ended Nov. 1 but we still need your help. We are currently needing to raise approximately $3,500 more toward an $18,000 annual budget for our third year of ministry beginning Nov. 1, 2008. This is an increase from a budget of $12,000 the past two years due to increased fuel expenses of the past summer, increased living expenses and an increased number of events we are attempting to attend as the Southern Extreme Bull Riding Association continues to expand.
Please consider a financial donation with a tax receipt available in both countries.
In Canada, please send your donation to:
Blyth Community Church of God,
308 Blyth Road,
Blyth, Ontario,
N0M 1H0.
In the United States, please send you donation to:
Maryville Vineyard,
419 S. Farnum St.
Friendsville, Tennessee,
37737.
IMPORTANT: Please be sure to include "For Rodeo Ministry" in the subject line and on the envelope.
Down the Road--Can you be a Christian and a Cowboy?
November/2008 update
Two Years of Ministry and Year Three Fund Raising Wrap up
Oct. 31 marked the final day of two full years in full time ministry and it's hard to believe how much God has done in my own life and in the lives of people around me. Together, we've seen baptisms, relationships with Christ formed and strengthened, opportunity and growth through injury and hardship and so much more. There've been plenty of bumps and challenges along the way but so many affirmations that God has His hand on these rough, tough and wild young men of bull riding and rodeo.
Thanks again to everyone who has contributed to this year's fundraising campaign begun in August. The hope is to raise approxim ately $20,000 for the Third Year of Ministry that begins Nov. 1.
Just eight more people are needed to come forward with a $500 commitment to reach a basic operating goal.
With additional costs this year in a budget expanded from just $12,000 last year, approximately $4,000 is still needed to cover the coming year's expenses taking us to a total budget of $18,000. The extra $2,000, if we can reach it, will go toward a vehicle repair and replacement budget of which there is currently $2,000 raised through the Horse Farms Tour.
If you have been thinking about contributing, we are in the home stretch and any help is appreciated. I've once again included fliers that you are encouraged to share with your home churches or others in your circles who you could share this ministry with or who might have a heart for supporting it. Please remember to be sure to include "for rodeo ministry" in any donations so that it is directe d toward this ministry and a tax receipt will be issued by the churches who are helping by receiving donations.
In essence, you are contributing to a ministry that serves as a mobile church reaching a large group of young men who compete or work in the bull riding or rodeo industry whose lifestyle prevents them from being a regular part of any church. This ministry focuses on reaching out with a gospel message, teaching Bible-based messages styled to reach this unusual group of men, and discipleship and mentoring. It is our prayer that when these men retired from this sport and return to more stable lives, usually under the age of 35, they will be ready to participate in their home churches and communities.
Please consider making a contribution. Remember, there's just eight more people needed to come forward committing a $500 contribution to meet this budget. Please pray about how you might support or consider that if you can't contribute financially, helping connect with others who might. We're almost there.
Prayer support for the growth of the cowboys and of this ministry are always appreciated.
See below for donation addresses.
Can you be a Christian and a Cowboy?
I know a bull rider who struggles constantly with wanting to be in church one Sunday and getting in bar fights the next Saturday night. He wants to follow God's path for his life and do what he knows is Biblically right. The Holy Spirit keeps tugging at him, pulling his moral compass back toward God but he never stays very long before he's drawn back to the wilder side of life.
Every time he comes back to church and starts looking at what he thinks a Christian is supposed to be, he gets real uncomfortable and disappears again. It's back and forth, back and forth as he struggles to find himself in Christ. He feels terrible guilt for the things he does as a cowboy and tries to be what he thinks is a 'good' Christian. Then, when he fails, he runs from the church because of the shame he feels.
The problem: he sees himself as two different people. One week he's a cowboy, the next week he's a Christian. He thinks being a Christian means giving up being a cowboy. He doesn't see how he can be both, that becoming a Christian doesn't mean you become this passive guy who walks around with what feels like a fake smile on your face turning the other cheek all the time.
He doesn't see that it takes real strength and courage to fight through the mistakes and to persevere in his faith.
What he doesn't understand is that when you become a Christian, you find yourself making different choices. Yes, you turn the other cheek but you find yourself in situations where you aren't going to have to back down from a bar brawl in the first place because of the different choices you start marking. That's what happens in a life transformed by Christ; you don't give up being tough, you find yourself using your strength to make different decisions.
You just have to look around a bull riding to see examples of good and bad choices. At one event, it ranged from a bull rider getting drunk over losing a girl and causing trouble while the event was going on to another choosing to try to make things right rather then get into a fight with him that everyone else around him was encouraging.
Earlier this month, at a SEBRA bull riding in Dallas, North Carolina, I had the pleasure of meeting a bull rider who had been missing from the scene for a few years before I had come on board as SEBRA's chaplain. He introduced himself after cowboy church and shared some of his story. How he'd started down a slippery slope of casual drug use with some other riders and how it led to harder drugs, addiction and eventually ruined what had been a successful bull riding career.
He found strength through his faith to fight his way back from addiction. Then he had to summon up the courage to come back to the bull riding circuit and face the young men who knew what he was and what he had become, not knowing how they would react to him and what they knew of his past.
That's a real cowboy. He showed strength, courage and perseverance, qualities we're called on to use as Christians that still match qualities you'd expect to have in a cowboy.
Being a Christian can actually be pretty hard and being able to draw on the parts of you that make you a cowboy can actually help. When you accept Christ as your savior, that's a pretty bold move to begin with that often takes courage because of what it means to the rest of your life; fighting against your old self, fighting against the pressures of friends and peers who are still rooted in non-Christian living and attitudes and fighting against what you feel like are your own limitations to be able to study the Bible or understand a message in church.
And being a Christian requires standing up for your faith and what you believe in. That requires being bold, tough and strong, characteristics you find in a real cowboy.
It's characteristics the disciples had as they traveled with Jesus and later spread the first church. Peter got to walk on water. They witnessed Jesus turning over tables and chasing out people who made a mockery of the Jewish temple, they confronted and challenged kings and their society's elite and faced certain death for the stands they took.
There's nothing soft about these men.
Look at Paul. In this set of verses we see nothing less than strength and boldness.
2 Corinthians 10: 2-6 "I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete."
There are volumes that can be taught from this set of verses. But one thing you can take from this is that our attitude of what is a demonstration of strength and courage can't be measured by the people around us who don't know what it means to be a Christian. If you are a Christian cowboy, there's some tough questions you can ask yourself.
To the cowboys, I recently asked during cowboy church, who is going to be the bigger influence on them: the drunken cowboy you're sharing a hotel room with or Jesus and his teachings you can find in the Bible sitting in a drawer back in their hotel rooms?
Who is stronger: the one who goes along with the crowd or the one who goes against it by letting his relationship with Christ influence the choices he makes?
Donation Addresses
PLEASE BE SURE ALL DONATIONS ARE MARKED: RODEO MINISTRY
Blyth Community Church of God
Blyth, Ontario
N0M 1H0
Maryville Vineyard,
419 S. Farnum St.
Friendsville, Tennessee,
37737.
Tellico Lake Church
P.O. Box 784
Vonore, TN 37885
For more information:
865-293-2668
Contact: ridingforchrist@gmail.com
