In 2005 we held the first weekly cowboy church service. We began with a test service on a Wednesday night. 75 people attended and we knew… God had had a great idea! One of the members remarked later that week, “I finally found what I didn’t know I’d been searching for all my adult life!” We have had several different band members and guest musicians and vocalists help us out over the years, but the current lineup of Gary Bell, Dale Askren, Ilah Rose Askren, Paul Davault, Sue Davault, Max Lierz, and Tim Ahlgren, has been playing together for several years now.
The start-up of our second service (Cowboy Church) is an interesting story. It begins actually; in 2004 with a problem- not enough worship space. We began making plans to add another service, and began surveying the obstacles, and the benefits.
First the benefits. God wants His church to grow, no doubt about it. Jesus Himself said that His reason for coming to this earth was to “seek and to save that which is lost”. This means that sharing the message of Jesus is our responsibility as well. This means that whatever we can do that will help move people from where they are and encourage them to step across the line of faith, we need to do it. By adding another service, we were able to go from being over 90 percent full each week, to adding another 80 seats to worship in each week. That meant that ideally we would have room for 80 more people to drop their old life and pick up the one God wants them to have!
The situation was not without its obstacles to be sure, but the people of the Circleville Christian Church rose to the occasion as they have always done historically when a challenge was placed before them. The one of the biggest difficulties was determining when to have this new service. Another day of the week was not an option, as we wanted to create a service for those that weren’t currently attending CCC, and all the data shows that when people decide to come to church… It’s on a Sunday morning. Our only real option was to hold a service during the regular Sunday school hour. As it turns out, 9:15 is an almost perfect time to hold a worship service! You can sleep in a little (unless you’re a teenager… for them that’s still pretty early), plus you can go to church and make it to the Pizza Hut way before the rest of the Sunday Crowd!
So we needed a way to make it happen. Luckily for us, Gary Bell knows every musician this side of the Mississippi, so in addition to the talent we already had lined up… he was able to call in a few friends to help get us off the ground! The whole process from start to finish was all God’s idea and plan and He deserves all the glory for including us in his plan to bring the Gospel to Northeast Kansas!
Our cowboy service is designed to be down-home and comfortable. While many of the people that attend the cowboy service aren’t actually “cowboys” some in fact are. Our musical style would probably be described as more bluegrass than country, we usually have a Banjo, Mandolin, Drums, several acoustic guitars, plus several vocalists leading the singing. The sermon is always the same as in the other services, and we always offer communion and take an offering as part of our worship as well.
