Please scroll down for latest updates.
Schedule
April 13 Pleasant View Mennonite Church, Winesburg, OH for a speaking opportunity
April 18-19 Waynesburg, PA--SEBRA Bull Riding
--April 20 Walnut Creek, OH at New Grounds Cafe--teaching Sunday Night Service
May 3--Abingdon, VA--SEBRA Bull Riding
Dates subject to change. More dates to be announced
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:
We currently need to raise approximatley $4,000 toward our Nov. 2007 to Oct. 2008 budget of $12,000. Operating on a very tight budget, we're able to bring a Christian message and support to hundreds of cowboys and bull riders but we can't do it without your help. Fuel is the greatest expense, a cost that continues to rise.
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: Stuck in the Mud
April 1, 2008 update
Who would have realized that sitting in the van, stuck in the mud in the middle of the night, would lead to one of the greatest encounters I’ve had with God.
Sitting in the dark in the van, pouring rain and 1:30 in the morning with no chance of a tow truck for hours, I was pretty frustrated from a run-around with roadside assistance. I was feeling extra pressure worrying that Reuben needed to be home for work in the morning and my mistake meant we’d be lucky to be home by 5 a.m.
We were on our way back from Abingdon, Virginia, a trip we took over two days making stops at stores in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio that sold furniture handcrafted by Yutzy Brothers Woodworking. Reuben is a Yutzy brother and one of the Christian bull riders I had met in Ohio this winter.
He drove two other bull riders to Abingdon Tuesday and we sent them back to Ohio with Reuben’s truck while we took my van back, making the sales calls. We decided it’d be a great way to spend some time together as we worked our way back to Ohio where I planned to spend a few weeks between SEBRA bull ridings taking place in the north.
We had great conversations, many of them unfinished and I was disappointed to be back to pick up his truck already, just outside Columbus. The time had gone by very quickly. We’d covered so much ground, most of it from a Christian and Biblical perspective and I learned a lot about this young man that I’d taken such a liking to back in January.
Reuben struggles with confidence in sharing his faith, yet he’s one of the most determined riders I’ve seen. He won’t let go or give up and I’ve seen him complete a ride upside down off the back of the bull, his legs in the air. Where other riders would have let go, Reuben held on ‘til the horn told him his eight seconds were up. I’m almost sure he’s wrestling with some mistakes he’s been making, some he doesn’t want to tell me about even though I think I’ve accidentally pieced it together. My prayer is that God will use our time together on this Ohio trip to strengthen him in his faith with the same strength he has a bull rider. He needs help to withstand the temptations he has faced and will be facing through some upcoming efforts of his to help another bull rider who is firmly rooted in the world and Reuben’s past life.
As the rain let up, we loaded his stuff in his truck and I was going to follow him back to Sugarcreek, Ohio, but his truck wouldn’t start.
Using my van headlights for light, we exhausted any tricks to try to get it started. We had even prayed, thanking God for the time we’d had together, acknowledging that we were trying to be in His will for us and asking if He’d allow the truck to start so we could get back to where we thought we needed to be.
It would soon become more apparent that where we needed to be was right there, stuck in that mud.
As the rain poured down on us again, I joked, “Have you figured out what God wants to teach us from this?”
“Yes, to take better care of my truck,” said Reuben, matter-of-factly.
I reloaded him in my van and we were ready for the last leg of our trip. It had rained so much and the ground was already soft and saturated from the melted snow. As I worked my van around in the tight parking area, surrounded by six other vehicles, I managed to put my front tires over the lip of the driveway, on a bit of slope in the wet, muddy grass. In less than a minute, we were firmly stuck beside the driveway.
After an hour of waiting on roadside assistance to tell me they hadn’t even dispatched a winch truck yet, and that the only one they had wouldn’t be available for three to four more hours although it was only 15 minutes away, I was ready to lose it.
While I was cold and shivering, my frustration wasn’t for myself but the fact that my error in judgment backing the van around was ruining what had been a great trip and because surely Reuben was going to be mad about being stuck there that long. How could I blame him?
That’s when I was humbled. While Reuben had expressed some frustration earlier, when I hung up the phone from roadside, he just sat back in his seat and asked, “Which conversation do you want to finish first?”
I didn’t have an answer because I was still angry at the situation and roadside assistance. Reuben decided for us and pulled out a Bible study we’d actually been working on part of the way down the road and I didn’t have time any more to be angry because Reuben called God back into the situation.
It’s so hard to explain what happened through that Bible study process over the next hour or so but I think we both learned a great deal from each other and Reuben’s positive attitude about it all made me really look hard at my own.
Instead of seeing us stuck in the mud, Reuben saw that we were being given what I had wanted in the first place—more time together in fellowship. It’s one of the few times I truly believe I did feel God’s presence around us, sitting there, stuck in the mud.
As we worked through the Bible study, Reuben questioned when people feel the greatest joy. That started a discussion about being in God’s will. While the secular world doesn’t understand that true joy doesn’t come from accomplishments or possessions, we were learning that it comes from serving Him and being where He wants us to be, glorifying Him…including being stuck there together in the mud.
Such a simple situation became one of the most profound moments in my own walk because I have recently felt like I’ve been stuck myself…not growing the way I need to be. I grew that night and while I’m sure I will still get frustrated, the experience has helped me focus better not on the problem but on the opportunity it offers. It reminds me just how far I have left to go in my own walk as a Christian.
Abingdon Wraps Up
Thanks to those who took prayer requests seriously about what I perceive as a spiritual battle taking place. Some simple but wonderful things happened in Abingdon, Virginia last Tuesday night as the winter series there wrapped up and I believe prayers were answered.
While I never used to pay attention to who was at cowboy church or not, it had come to my attention that some key Christian riders were consistently missing, being distracted by so many different things that was keeping them from fellowshipping and sharing in God’s word.
Last Tuesday, the only one missing from church was the one who has fallen so deeply back into the world. I delivered a tougher than usual message and flat-out told the cowboys they needed to choose to let their lives be influenced by the cowboys around them that want to live in the world or by the Bible and a real relationship with Christ. That has been the theme of the past eight weeks or so every Tuesday night.
Constructively, I offered some steps to take to help reduce the temptation of sin from understanding Scripture the way Jesus used it against Satan when tempted in the wilderness to simply removing yourself from the situation.
Removing yourself from situations where you will be tempted was one of the biggest tools I tried to promote. Your travelling partners can be the biggest cause of a fall. Going down the road with a group of guys who want to party means you’re going to end up at the bar or hotel room where the party is happening and once there, you head even further down a slippery slope that leads to even greater sins. The problem is, it costs so much to go down the road that it becomes a pressure to make poor choices just to save a little money.
It felt like an important message and I wanted to end the series with some constructive tools because I’ve actually seen some of these young men take it seriously when I’ve given a message they can apply.
But perhaps the most significant moment was Matt, the clown for the bull riding and brother-in-law to Eythan and Caleb, who I have written about in the past. He told me the timing of the message was perfect. The issue of outside influences, who you travel with and the damage it can do came up in the truck as they drove up to Abingdon together and he said it was something they realized they needed to be looking at before they even heard the message.
Cowboys Quick Guide to Christianity
Riders at the end of the Abingdon series were given a single-paged breakdown of the different topics we’d discussed about what an evangelical Christian is compared to how the world defines it and how an authentic relationship with Christ impacts your life and what it looks like to others.
The guide was left with an explanation of a concordance and a challenge to the riders to look up a set of key words I provided and read the scriptures that go along with those words. I challenge them in the guide but also asked them at cowboy church to take it seriously and spend the hour it would take working through it to find and read the scriptures for themselves that support the topics covered in the guide.
My hope from this is to get at least some of them to open up their Bibles and discover how God can speak directly to them through it as they start looking up the different scriptures.
What’s Ahead
I was amazed by a great turn out at cowboy church in Newbury, Ohio where I’ve been only once before. It’s largely a new set of riders with only a handful that I see regularly at other SEBRA events. I was told almost every rider was there and I recognized one stock contractor that came over as well which seldom happens. It was very encouraging and led to several fruitful conversations with some of the riders, one who lives not too far from where I’m staying who has asked if I can talk with him later this week about some struggles he’s having.
Thursday will mark the first of two Thursday nights at Pleasant View Mennonite Church where I’m hosting a seminar/Bible study of sorts for area bull riders dealing with what the Bible teaches about worry and being content. It’s a big topic and I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time but in most areas, the riders are spread too far apart. Here in Sugarcreek, there are about a dozen who are less an a half-hour away.
Realistically, while about 20 people have been invited by phone and the event is being promoted online on Facebook where several other riders belong, I’m going to be excited to see six bull riders present.
Following that, I’ve been given an opportunity by Pleasant View to speak briefly about the ministry in hopes of generating some support and sharing with the congregation about the ministry that serves about six bull riders that attend church there.
I’ve also been given a chance to speak at the Christian café where they hold a Sunday night church service. Many youth attend the service and several are involved in rodeo and bull riding or have an interest in the sport because of the others that compete.
It is looking like it could be a very fruitful few weeks with an opportunity to stay at the homes of two Christian bull riders, Reuben from the story above and Henry Mast, who I’ve mentioned in previous updates. Both have roommates who are Christian bull riders as well and it’s already generating some great discussions.
Don't forget to check out this month's Behind the Bucking Chutes on the appropriate page
For more information:
865-293-2668
Contact: ridingforchrist@gmail.com
