Cowboy Churches Reaching Missing Generations:
Three Congregations Having New Impact

Ask Pastor Jon Coe about the need for a new kind of church across the USA, and the southwest in particular, and he will describe these missing generations in most of today’s churches. “There are over 30 million individuals who are tied into the western heritage culture in the United States,” Pastor Coe notes. “They don’t feel comfortable in most churches and there hasn’t been anyone reaching out to them. Most of these new Cowboy Churches that have already started are growing, but have not even begun to scratch the surface. Their potential is huge.

“Churches using this ‘Cowboy Church Plant Model’ in other evangelical denominations are seeing phenomenal growth. Of the 44 churches we have worked with in the Texas Fellowship of Cowboy Churches, all average 300 or more in worship attendance. As a group, they are currently experiencing a 58% annual growth rate.”

But beyond the impressive worship counts exists an underlying focus on the sense of mission in these new works. Pastor Jon says, “This new ‘culturally relevant ministry’ is all about reaching unchurched individuals in the western heritage background. We are not focused on ‘already churched’ individuals. In fact, we strongly discourage our leaders in training from trying to reach the already churched as a target group.

“Depending on the church, its style, location and leadership, nearly 80% of the people attending a new Cowboy Church have not been attending a church, except when they were children. In the current new Cowboy Churches on our district, 70% of the people have not attended a church in the last 15 years, from one survey we took. And, only 15% attended worship a couple of times in the last 15 years, for any event including Easter and Christmas.

“Of those who have come to faith, 73% are adults and 70% of these are males. In those conversions, 23% of the new believers are over the age of 65. This shows an older generation who wants to know God, but has not been reached by our typical churches. Cowboy Churches are reaching the generations of individuals that other new contemporary and older traditional churches do not reach.”

Looking toward the future, Pastor Coe remains optimistic for this new kind of new church. “The potential is unlimited. We have found in the cowboy movement we are only limited by the vision we have of lost souls. God has sent more people to the church each year than was in my five year plan.

“My parents had 25 acres of pecan trees. As kids we used to harvest the pecans for spending money. At the start of the season the pecans were everywhere. You just walked out and loaded up a sack and off you went. But as time went along there were less and less pecans to harvest. It got to a point that we were going up the tree to harvest the pecans.

“Right now in the cowboy movement the fruit can be plentiful. These opportunities are everywhere just waiting for individuals and sponsors to come along and reach them. By planting churches now, instead of later, we could be reaping a great harvest. This may not be the case 10 years from now. The western heritage culture is ‘ripe for harvest.’

“If we have the faith and do our part God will always exceed our greatest expectations. Each time that God has asked us to step out in faith and do our job, He has always followed it up with great results. I am really learning the hard lesson of getting out of God’s way and letting Him do His job.”

And Pastor Coe describes many people who have been transformed by the Good News from these new ministry efforts: “people like Sam, who work as a day rider off a horse rounding up animals and doctoring cattle for a living.

“When Sam came to the church, he had not been in church since he was a teenager. Sam has given his heart to the Lord and is working on cleaning up problem areas in his life.

“Today Sam is so excited about God that he shares that excitement with others,” says Pastor Jon. “There are probably 20 people now coming to the church because of Sam, his testimony and his sowing efforts.

“Not long ago Sam came to me and informed me that he felt God was calling him into the ministry. Sam will probably be the next Associate Pastor we hire to help us start another Cowboy Church. God is changing lives and raising cowboy pastors in our midst.”

But Sam is just one of the many who have found new faith and this new church. When they launched the first service of the Lone Star Cowboy Church, Pastor Coe remembers “It was a day of joyful celebration on July 15, 2006 when 27 individuals showed up in a tractor barn to celebrate the occasion.

“The church was only able to meet in the tractor barn for four weeks before it outgrew its first meeting place with an attendance of over 100. We had to move the service to a hay barn on the property. Lone Star has watched God add to the church weekly.

“In 2006, we saw 48 individuals become new converts with 36 of them being baptized in a horse trough. We saw 51 of those attending become members of the church. By the end of December, we had an average attendance of 108, with a high Sunday of 167 in worship. It has been unlike anything any of us has ever experienced.

“In 2007, the growth continued,” Pastor Coe recalls. “We had our lowest attendance the second week of January with 93 in worship. Then our high attendance of 302 came on Easter Sunday.On the church’s first year’s anniversary in 2007, we had 324 in worship. And, we saw 51 individuals become new converts, with 39 of them being baptized as the church’s membership grew to 113. We went through three building phases to enlarge the facility so that we could handle the growth. Then, during this time we felt led to sponsor a new satellite Cowboy Church.

“On April 8, 2007 we went 45 miles from our current location and started our first satellite Cowboy Church, Lone Star Cowboy Church of Navarro County meeting at 8:30 on Sunday mornings.

“The band, my wife Mary and some other members of the Red Oak Church would drive down to Corsicana every Sunday morning and set the building up for service. We would hold service there and then drive back to Red Oak to do the later service.

“We had 46 new individuals from the community show up for that first service. By the end of 2007, we had 83 new people attending the church in Corsicana. We saw 21 individuals become new converts, with 15 being baptized and 47 becoming members.

It was also in Nov. 2007, when this sponsoring church and pastor began working with their second sponsorship project. Pastor Tye Howard began to lead a Vaquero Ingelsia Movement on their existing property.

Pastor Coe remembered how “Tye, his family and five others came onto the church property to start a Hispanic Cowboy Church. This new church grew to 80 individuals in the first year. This new Hispanic congregation has been going now for some two years with an average attendance now over 130.

“In 2008, the Red Oak church climbed to an average of 255 in worship attendance, with a high of 435 on Easter. There were 31 new converts with 28 of them being baptized and the membership grew to 160. The Corsicana church had an average attendance of 101 with 9 people being saved and 3 baptized. The membership grew to 63.

“Then, in October of 2008 we brought Jarvis and Esther Smith on board as associate ministers. We hired them to be Campus Pastors for the church in Corsicana. We did this so we could get ready to start our second satellite church out of the Red Oak and Corsicana churches.

“Now we have identified five new cities where we want to start new satellite churches.

We have already begun to pray and fast, asking God in which cities He wanted us to start the next of 10 churches. By this time, we were being led to go to Mexia to start the third Lone Star Cowboy Church.

“On April 5, 2009 we had our first interest service in the town of Mexia, Texas. We had five people from the community come and say they would help us start a new Cowboy Church. We decided to start the next week with our service. We hired Jake and Christie Hershey as the Campus Pastor for Mexia satellite, and did a week of heavy advertising, including hanging up banners on a building we were renting. The next Sunday we had 101 individuals show up for service. We actually had new people drive off because we ran out of room in the parking lot. In that service we had three people who got saved and wanted to be baptized.

“From January 2009 to date, the sponsoring Red Oak Cowboy Church has an average attendance of 313 in worship, seen 57 new converts, 27 baptized and 22 received into the church’s membership.

“The Corsicana Cowboy Church has an average worship attendance of 203, with five new converts, four baptisms and nine new people joining the church.

“Between the Lone Star churches we saw 728 new individuals in worship, 35 salvations and seven baptisms. If you add the Vaquero Church there were over 878 people on our property that day.

“The story is about the same between each of these new churches: the greatest percentage of people who attend are un-churched, the age groups of those being saved, and the growth rate are about the same.

“Of the people coming to faith, 70% of them are adults. The average growth of the Cowboy Churches is between 46% and 62% per year.

“To date, our church has not only planted two other satellite Cowboy Churches, but we have helped sponsor two others in Waco, Texas. One is running over 250 in morning worship and the other around 70 in attendance. We have also sponsored two other congregations, one in Springtown, Texas and the other in Lucus, Texas, both are running over 100 in weekly worship. We are now looking at starting one in South Houston in the next couple of months.”