At Cowboy Church, every happy trail leads to God
“Round ’em up!” is the call, and with that everyone knows it’s time to take a load off and get some Jesus.
“It’s great to be in the Lord’s house.”
A canopy of cowboy hats nods in approval.
“AY-men.”
The bug zappers in the Lord’s house are silent tonight (it’s cool out, so the horse flies are a no-show), but the chapel — the cedar-paneled Tack Store Restaurant inside the enclosed arena at the Circle M Ranch in Pelzer — is humming with believers.
This is the Happy Trails Cowboy Church, where boots keep time with a country/gospel show, the dogs meander in and out, and the saved are baptized in horse troughs.
“Cowboy Up & Come Worship With Us,” the handout reads, and it lets us know in no uncertain terms that even the city slickers are, like, sooo welcome here.
Follow the roadside placards planted in the dirt. No fancy church signs with “Exposure to the Son may prevent burning” or “It’s hard to stumble when you’re on your knees.” Just “Cowboy Church” and an arrow to point the way.
Here, the handshakes are firm but the stiff upper lips are a little more relaxed. Cowgirls rub their cowboys’ leathery tanned necks. The Word takes the edge off.
The arena is dark and the dirt is settled; chairs that seat 2,800 are stacked a story high; the horses are in their stables. We’re gathered here tonight, outsiders embracing their outsiderness and inviting others to be outsiders, too.
Here you go: a free, green “Equestrian Edition” New Testament to take home. Get up for some coffee and homemade brownies and pound cake if the mood strikes. We’re not passing a plate around, but if you’d drop some bills into the silver feed buckets by the door, we’d be much obliged.
And keep them hats on, unless it’s time to pray.
***
“I’m one of these, I can’t sang unless I can wiggle my toes,” Sarah Harper tells the small crowd as she slips off her shoes before she and her husband, Tommy, start to ministerin’ with song.
They’re from Fair Play, asked to come tonight to share their voices and stories and get people ready for the sermon that lasts longer than it was promised to last.
Tommy explains how he was saved in 1991. He wasn’t a very likeable guy, and he was never much for crying. But salvation led him to tears, and it didn’t feel so bad.
Still, it’s easier to sing than cry.
“This song here sums it up pretty good,” he says. “I hope it blesses you.”
The hats nod back and forth. Knees rise up and down and boot soles tapping the lacquered brick floor sound suitably like horseshoes clopping on pavement.
***
“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”
As the Good Book tells it, Peter and his brother Andrew were the fishermen. They left their trade by the Sea of Galilee and followed Jesus.
Today, the cowboys are doing their part the American way, roping in the faithful and the wayward instead of calves.
Happy Trails has about 30 members and part-members, and all told about 70 different people have walked past the dirt-filled arena and into the Happy Trails Cowboy Church.
Services are on Tuesday nights because so many of those in the equestrian culture work and compete on the weekends.
The church has already had three “salvations,” says Candace Kuykendall, a Happy Trails founder, in the month-and-a-half since they’ve opened their doors and propped a cement block to keep them open.
Another will be baptized soon.
Pinned on Candace’s shirt is a red bandanna folded into the shape of a rose (red bandanas identify the people who can answer questions; the men’s hang out of their back pockets).
She explains how attendance is growing slowly but steadily as word gets around. How they’re close to hiring a permanent pastor. How they always hope to get just enough to pay the band — and how they always seem to.
The church has grown out of programs offered at other churches for horse enthusiasts and professionals. Happy Trails is its own — it’s a church as churches are — evangelical and interdenominational with roots in the Baptist faith.
Nationwide, there are more than 400 cowboy churches, most of them out West and concentrated in Texas. Happy Trails is the first cowboy church in South Carolina.
Floyd Tidsworth, president of South Carolina Equestrian Ministries and a church founder, points to the words of the Apostle Paul and his call “to become all things to all men” to reach as many as possible.
“The message, we can’t adjust this,” he says. “The method, we can.”
Loren Hodgens and Sheila Rogers are both trail riders. They’ve been coming since Happy Trails opened.
Neither had been to church in years. For them, this is church.
“I remember church and running through the pews as a kid,” says Sheila, 49, “but when I got up a little older, I started listening to some of the members talking about what Jane did yesterday and what John did the day before. The main thing is to be able to come and be us and worship God.”
Sheila and Loren finish each other’s sentences, even if they are separated by a generation.
“Yeah, be us,” says Loren, 19. “Not have to put hose on, not have to put a dress on, in uncomfortable shoes, sitting in a pew for however many hours. We’re here from the heart. We’re not here for appearance or our neighbors to see us and say, ‘Oh, they’re Christianly people.’”
Don Snyder marries the two churchgoing experiences, here at Happy Trails and at his Fountain Inn hitching post, Pleasant Grove Baptist.
In the cowboy church, you can be a member or a “partner.” Being a partner (or is it “pardna”?) allows you to keep your membership at a primary church.
The 47-year-old rancher grew up on the Ohio plains, surrounded by cornstalks and miles away from his nearest neighbor. He learned how to ride at age 7. He remembers tying his fishing pole and his baseball glove and bat to the saddle and taking off for a spell.
“Your nearest friend was five miles away,” he says. “We didn’t ride a bike on gravel roads. We rode a horse. That’s how we lived. Going back to those places, they still live like that.”
Here, at Happy Trails, away from the homeowners associations and the lights of neon marquees, the cowboy life is alive.
Don has come straight from his ranch in Fountain Inn, in black cowboy hat and jeans, after “literally feeding my steers and horses before I got into the car to leave.”
Come, all ye faithful. Smudged and ingenuous.
“Our people,” Candace says, “they may have their Sunday clothes and it’s a starched pair of jeans. If they come in dirty, we don’t care.”
***
The music has ended.
Pastor Phil Bryson — visiting from Beaver Dam Baptist Church in Laurens — steps up in his big buckled jeans and pulls off his hat to pray before preaching about forgiveness.
The kids — four of them fresh out of the dirt “playin’ dead” — are headed out to “Kids Corral” with Candace, where they will paint suncatchers to learn the lesson of “letting Jesus’ light shine through.”
Pastor Phil promises the sermon will be short even if it won’t be.
“Don’t you like to get dirty?” he asks. Hats nod. “I do. I like to get out there with my bushhog and mess around. When God forgives, God forgets. All that dirt just goes down the drain.”
Never mind the mixed metaphor (“dirt” is “sin” and the listeners have said they like getting dirty), the message is well-received.
Pastor Phil preaches. And preaches. Hats turn up from their Bibles, nod, then look back down. Everyone is here looking for the righteous trail.
Outside in the arena, the children — Mikalah Smith, 8; Madisyn Kuykendall, 5; Dakota Bogle, 9, and his little brother Jacob, 3 — have finished their suncatchers and are learning their own lessons in forgiveness.
They’re getting restless, the night is winding down, and the paint has flowed a little too freely.
“Maaaadisyn wiped paaaaint on my shiiiirt,” Mikalah says.
“Was it an accident, Madisyn?” Candace asks.
“Yes.”
“Apologize.”
“I’m soooorry.”
Mikalah flashes displeasure.
“She said, ‘Sorry,’” Candace tells her. “That’s when you have to forgive, right? Can you put a smile on your face for me?”
And she does.
“OK, now finish that up and play in the dirt here where I can see you.”
And they do.
Inside, the hats nod.
