Pleasant Prairie Baptist Church's 40th Anniversary - November 10th, 2008

Yesterday we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of our home church, Pleasant Prairie Baptist Church. This was probably one of the most memorable ceremonies I've been involved with. We had several "charter" members travel to share with us and, of course, we had a big pot-luck fellowship after. The entire two-hour service was dedicated to remembering how the Lord has used this rural church over the years and our pastor gave a challenge for us to continue aligning with God's Word and to continue to reach out for forty more years. If you are interested, our pastor produced a video of the country church's multistage construction and several outreach events throughout the years. Check it out...

Meet Logan, The Sky Angel Cowboy - November 10th, 2008

This video was emailed to me a few days ago. If you have a few minutes, it would be worth your time to watch it. The video speaks for itself...

American Royal Rodeo Ministry - October 17th-25th, 2008

This past week I've been at the American Royal in Kansas City ministering at the youth rodeo. We were able to pray with the students behind the chutes at several of the performances and help a local church Cowboy Church, Open Range Fellowship, with a booth in the trade show.

If you've known me for any amount of time then you have likely heard me talk about the American Royal. I've got quite a history of performing, trick riding and ministering at the Royal. In fact, when I was riding with the Rodeo Kids I had the opportunity to perform in the Royal's educational shows from 1986-1999. As you can see from the chubby picture above, there is even a life-size picture of me from my Rodeo Kids days in the American Royal Museum and Visitor's Center. In 2000 our college trick riding group, Flying Flamboyance (I have no idea why we selected that name!?!), were asked to trick ride in the American Royal Wild West Show. Since then I have been helping Paul and Linda Scholtz with cowboy ministries and Cowboy Church Services during the Royal's annual rodeo. The Scholtz have been ministering at the Royal since 1979 and have never missed a year. Our partnering with the Scholtz at the American Royal has been awesome as they are looking to phase into retirement from the Royal and we are looking to become even more involved.

I say all of this because this year our ministry at the American Royal was dealt a pretty heavy blow. We found out just a few short weeks before the Rodeo was to start that there was no place in the schedule for the Cowboy Church Service. To the best of my knowledge, this was just a scheduling problem as the American Royal administration simply couldn't find facility that was available during the times we had for the service. As you can imagine we were pretty bummed about this. In fact, I went through half the week feeling like a failure...It was even worse as people kept coming up to us and asking when the service was!


As it turns out, I was able to further our relationship throughout the week with the leadership of the American Royal and, hopefully as a result, this should help us become even more involved with the rodeo next year. I'll be having a meeting with the American Royal leadership in January to discuss some specifics about our involvement next year! Please be praying for this as we would like to not only hold our services and pray with cowboys behind the chutes, but I also hope to be able to help with the American Royal's youth rodeo committee. Pray also for our continued relationship with the Open Range Fellowship cowboy church as they also have a heart to minister at the American Royal. (The picture above is the booth that their church put together for the Royal's trade show.)

Abundant Life Baptist Church Children's Sunday School Cowboy Day - October 12th, 2008

We had the opportunity to help the Sunday School ministry of Abundant Life Baptist Church on October 12, 2008. Abundant Life was my home church after I placed my faith in Christ. The church, along with its home city of Lee's Summit, MO has grown quite a bit over the past several years. We were able use our camp horses to help us teach the kindergarten through fifth grade Sunday School classes about bridling their tongues and trusting in the Lord. Bridling the tongue is found in James chapter three and uses a horse's bridle as an example of control. Having the horses there really gave the kids something to remember as they consider honoring the Lord with what they say. I've also found, the longer that we work with horses, that a horse's relationship to the rider is an excellent illustration of the relationship of man's responsibility and God's responsibility. It is all about trust!

Click here for a few more pictures of this ministry...

First Baptist Church of New Castle

On September 28th, 2008 I had the opportunity to share our ministry with First Baptist Church of New Castle, CO. The church reminded me quite a bit of our home church both with the friendliness of the people and the size of the church (the major difference was the view - as you can see above). I was encouraged by both the fellowship with the church and with the pastor. I'm excited to see how the Lord builds and strengthens this new relationship!

Homewood Christian Community Church - August 24th, 2008

Leslie and I had the opportunity to visit our friends at the Homewood Christian Community Church in Homewood, KS this past weekend. Homewood was actually where I preached my first message about eight years ago and they were the first local church to partner with our ministry with Golden Spur Ministries.

Homewood is a rural church that is around fifteen minutes from Ottawa, KS. Please remember Homewood Christian Community Church in your prayers as they are working on building a new sanctuary to replace the hundred-year-old sanctuary that had been deteriorating over the past few years. They currently have the foundation completed and are going to begin exterior construction over the next few weeks. Pray that the project remains safe and that they would raise the funding needed to complete the project.

National High School Finals Rodeo - July 18th-27th, 2008

On July 18th-27th, 2008 I was part of a ministry team from the Fellowship of Christian Cowboys that ministered at the 2008 National High School Finals Rodeo in Farmington, NM. Last year was my first year of attending the National High School Finals Rodeo and if you recall I was absolutely blown away by the response from the students. I was even more encouraged this year!

The ministry started off with our crew arriving in Farmington on Friday and we spent most of the evening setting up our booth in the trade show. This particular booth was a scaled down version of the booth that we set up at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. We had a free table (stocked with Cowboy New Testaments and Bible tracts) and a table that contained a few FCC logoed items for sale. We also had a testimony DVD showing on a TV that showed a few well known cowboys sharing what the Lord's been doing in their lives. I was pretty surprised how many students would stop in our booth and just sit down and watch that video (sometimes the entire 30 minutes). The booth was open each day from 10am to 7pm and served as our "office" throughout the week. I call it our "office" because, while sitting in a booth for six or seven hours a day is not exactly the most exciting opportunity (especially during the slow times), we were able to use that booth space as a place to meet with and build up relationships with the students throughout the entire week.

Sunday was the final day for contestants to check in and Sunday evening was the first performance of the rodeo (there were 13 performances total). We held a Cowboy Church Service that morning in the Memorial Coliseum and there were around 950 people in attendance. That is by far one of the largest services that we have ever held! While that service was encouraging, I was even more encouraged by the students and families who talked to us throughout the rest of the week about the service (either thanking us for being there or sharing with us how they were touched).

If we were not in the booth or sleeping (or at the service on Sunday), then we were at the rodeo performances behind the chutes and in the announcer's stand praying with the contestants and helping out where we could. While at the performances, we each wore a vest that identified us as Rodeo Chaplains. Usually, I'm apprehensive about drawing attention to myself in that manner, but I believe that the Lord used that identification for His glory during this rodeo.

On Friday night (the second to last night of the rodeo) one of the bull riding contestants suffered a serious neck injury. I'm not sure of the specifics, but the doctors had said that his fifth and sixth vertebrae impacted and the result was that his sixth vertebrae was above his fifth. Ordinarily, people do not survive an impact of that magnitude and given enough time (hours in fact) they would definitely be paralyzed. The Lord used two factors to prevent this young man, Corbin, from being paralyzed. The first factor was that a nationally renowned sports medicine neurosurgeon happened to live in Farmington, NM. Within hours of the injury this same doctor had Corbin in surgury and within a day he was already starting to regain feeling in his lower body (he had lost feeling from the neck down in the arena). The second factor, and I believe that this is greater than the first, is that there were literally hundreds of people praying for Corbin throughout the rodeo and the city of Farmington. In fact, several times while we were still wearing our chaplain vests a group of students would stop us and ask us to pray with them for Corbin's recovery. What an awesome testimony...The Lord was using this tragedy to bring genuine thoughtful prayer into the sport of rodeo!

The Lord also used the identification that we had with our vests to lead a contestant to us late one evening so that he could pray to place his faith in Christ. Our team was standing in line at a concession stand after Thursday night's performance and the kid walks up to us and asks, "Can I be saved?" He was so bold and surprising that it took a few seconds for it to register with us what he was wanting. I've never experienced that before!

I left the 2008 National High School Finals Rodeo totally encouraged by the Lord's work there and my head swimming with ideas about ministries and opportunities for the next finals. Too bad it's a year away!

For more pictures from the ministry click here...