Jesus

Church For Cowboys?

/ Erin Kirk / 4 Comments

Not long after we moved to Texas, our neighbors invited us to Cowboy Church.

At the time, I was in a deep state of apostasy, not reading The Bible, and furious with the church, but I needed to make some friends. Sam just wanted to rope. So we went.

The best explanation for Cowboy Church I’ve ever heard came from our pastor Dennis, a 30-year-old beanpole with a booming voice and a heart for Jesus. He’ll baptize a grown man in a stock tank, preach in his spurs and once rode his horse across Texas carrying a stack of bibles.

“Cowboy Church is a place where men can be men,” Dennis says, because if a man gets saved, he adds, the whole family gets saved.

In the early 80’s there were about five cowboy churches in Texas. Today there are an estimated 750 nationwide. They’re all about John Wayne and Jesus and that’s why you won’t hear any churchy hymns or see men in too-tight suits struggling with their neckties in the back.

Last weekend, Wood County Cowboy Church hosted its annual fall gathering, with a pasture roping, a chuckwagon, worship and two ranch rodeos. I don’t have time to explain what all that is to the non-Texans, so here are a few pictures.

You can hardly throw a rock in Texas these days without hitting a cowboy church, but if you don’t happen to live here and want to find one, here‘s a good place to start. If you live in a town where cowboys still exist, chances are they’re meeting on Sundays at the local sale barn and would love to have you.

How To Solve Your First World Problem.

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

Learning to live biblically, I think, is like losing a lot of weight, and the best way I know to describe it is to show you before and after pictures of myself.

I got some good snapshots this afternoon at Urgent Care, moments before the doctor stuck a needle in my foot, gliding it into the same hole occupied by a shard of glass, the size of a Tic-Tac, that I had corkscrewed into the ball of my foot.

That really wasn’t on my agenda today.

So naturally, waiting in the doctor’s office for 45 minutes, I got impatient and began to wonder what was taking so long. “I mean, what’s up, it’s not like they were that busy….Ugh, the American Healthcare system, especially in a small town…Are there even any doctors on duty? I mean I need some competent help and….”

That is snapshot A – Me exercising my considerable gift of criticism.

Snapshot B was taken five seconds later when I thought,  “I wonder how long it would take to get this glass out of my foot if I were Haitian.”

Would there be a doctor and a nurse standing by in Port au Prince with sterile instruments and anesthetics to numb the pain while they very capably dug the glass out of my foot? After their success, would there be a nearby pharmacy from which they could order a round of antibiotics for me; and if all this did exist, could I pay for it?

Repent has to be the most misunderstood word in the Christian lexicon. Before I read The Bible, I hated that word because it was the battle cry for every crazy, white-haired, bible-thumping fundamentalist in the world.

But the word repent in the Greek is metanoia and it means, to change your mind, to turn and go the other direction; and I think this is another way to look at Jesus’ teaching on the broad and narrow paths – something I talked about in a post called Two Paths.

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. Matthew 7:13

In snapshot A, which used to be me all the time, I would have scarcely concealed my irritation when the doctor did get to me. That’s a broad path so often chosen that First World Problems are a meme. Who’s life am I improving with that behavior? Nobody’s. It’s destructive.

But because I have invited God’s Holy Spirit to invade me, Haiti popped into my head and helped me “repent” onto the narrow path where Jesus and his example live. As such, I thanked that doctor and nurse about 15 times for helping me and I meant it.

I’m not telling you this to excite you with my awesome holiness, I’m sharing it because I’m having some weight-loss success. The Bible is changing me from an occasionally sweet but mostly critical, impatient, eye-rolling, selfish American into something new and better. The work is ongoing and it’s often hard, but on days like today, I’m encouraged.

So, how To Solve Your First World Problem? Pack it up and mentally go to Haiti. How does it hold up there? Did it disappear and leave you feeling grateful instead? Repeat this every time you catch yourself complaining. It’s not easy or magic, it’s a narrow path practice.

Increase Your Joy In One Easy Step.

/ Erin Kirk / Leave a comment

*If you’re in a hurry for joy, skip to the challenge at the bottom.

Orange Tree

Photo Credit: Creative Commons amycgx

Yesterday, I prayed with an elderly, black woman in the foyer of busy Goodwill store, out loud.

I’m still shaking my head about it because I am not the woman who prays in public with strangers, because it looks Christiany and weird. But that’s what happens when you let Jesus have his way with you. He messes with who you think you are.

Ever since I posted about Susie Davie giving her Coach purse away, I’ve been thinking about actively bearing fruit. As I walked into Goodwill, I noticed a woman slumping in a plastic chair and leaning on her cane.

“You should talk to her,” popped into my head, but I ignored it because I mind my own business, especially when I have something more important to do – like scour Goodwill for bargains. Plus, I could tell, she’s the kind that would hold me up. So I ignored her sad face and went in the store. Forty five minutes later, I walked out and she was still sitting there.

“Are you waiting for a ride?” I asked.

“No, I’m just resting. I think I’m a little stressed out,” she said launching into a story about her son and the girlfriend, and the drinking and the fight and the baby and the long walk after she kicked him out of the car.

“Mmmm…family,” I said, listening and deciding what to do next. Offering to pray for her occurred to me but I was afraid to.

“I just trust Jesus about it,” she said giving me the permission I was clearly looking for.

“Would you like me to pray with you?”

“Oh yes I would.”

So I sat down next to her holding my Goodwill bag and prayed. I was nervous that Sam would pull up just then and ask what I was doing, but for the most part I spoke in the same way, to the same God I talk to every day in the quiet privacy of my office.

The thing is, Jesus has no interest in staying in the quiet privacy of my office. He said the world is in sick, sad shape and he’s the answer, so go tell people about it, help them, encourage them and not just in places where it won’t look weird.

Why am I so afraid of that? Why am I so afraid people will think I am a Jesus Freak? I am.

Jesus helped me with depression. He helped me with anxiety. He helped me write a book. He helped me not worry about money when we had no jobs in Texas. He helped me believe that I am here for a reason that’s bigger than I can imagine.

Why would I hide loving a man like that?

In case you’re wondering, I am not one bit holier today than I was yesterday in Goodwill, I’m just a little less selfish and a tiny bit braver. Because of that, I am demonstrably more joyful today.

*So here’s the challenge: Sometime this weekend, do something selfless for a stranger, something that interrupts you for a minute or two and surprises them with its kindness. Report back, I’d love to hear what happens.