Rodeo ministry helps develop good character in the arena of life
By Mike Haynes
Fourteen
young people, half male and half female, stood in a semi-circle, their feet in
the deep dirt of a rodeo arena. All their eyes were on a man in a black western
hat, black vest and blue jeans.
Three other
men wearing similar hats stood nearby under the bright lights of the indoor facility.
The young
group, most of them members of the Clarendon College rodeo team or the ranch
horse program, all were bareheaded, and they tended to have on shorts and
T-shirts instead of their normal Levi’s and button-down shirts.
They were
about to get wet in a small, metal stock tank.
 |
| Fourteen young people connected to the Clarendon College rodeo team listen as the Rev. Thacker Haynes of McLean explains the significance of baptism before they experience it April 30 at the college Livestock and Equine Center arena. (Photo by Bobbi Stalls) |
A few had
attended high school in the Texas Panhandle, and more had been recruited to
Clarendon by Bret Franks, director of the rodeo and ranch horse programs, from
as far away as Iowa and Alabama.
Their paths
to these baptisms on April 30 had started with attraction to a quality rodeo
program, from a years-long Christian ministry and from a tragedy involving one
of their friends and teammates.
Two years
ago, a potential student and his parents visited the college. “They said they
wanted to come on a Tuesday night, because that’s when we have church,” said
the Rev. Thacker Haynes, the guy in the black hat and vest who from the
beginning has helped coordinate a ministry that now feeds about 75 people with
a hot meal and the Good News of Jesus weekly during the school year.
Haynes
(this writer’s cousin) is pastor of the Methodist churches in McLean and Heald.
He said 85% of those congregations’ members participate in the rodeo ministry
or a multi-church youth ministry, mostly on cooking teams. Also involved in the
eight food teams are One Way Church in McLean and the Methodist church in
Clarendon.
“It’s
home-cooked food,” Haynes said. “Hamburgers and hotdogs but also sausage-potato
casserole, enchiladas and banana pudding.” Bobbi Stalls keeps the meal ministry
going, and her husband, Randy Stalls, helps with the evangelism.
Almost a
decade ago, the rodeo coach at the time, Cody Heck, told Randy Stalls, a McLean
cattleman, he needed help getting his students on the right track as some were
tempted by drugs, alcohol and partying. Stalls and Haynes came up with the
weekly meetings at the rodeo-ranch facilities.
Stalls and
Haynes bring in people, primarily with ranching and rodeo backgrounds, to talk
to the students about their lives and how faith in God can give them direction.
They range from Cowboy Church pastors such as John Paul of Woodward, Oklahoma,
to world champion roper Stran Smith of Childress and his wife, Jennifer Douglas
Smith, an ESPN rodeo commentator.
Haynes said
a central theme tends to emerge each year without the speakers consulting each
other. “This year it was relationships, whether with each other or with God,”
he said.
Franks said
the ministry has played a major role in his programs’ success, which included
Clarendon College placing third last month at the College National Finals Rodeo
in Casper, Wyoming.
“It was the
first time we’d been able to send a full team,” Franks said.
Riggin
Smith, who Franks had recruited from Iowa, won the saddle bronc competition,
and his cousin, Teagan Smith, placed third in saddle bronc. Dylan Jones
finished fourth in team roping.
That kind
of success in the rodeo arena stems from developing good character in the arena
of life, according to Franks, and he credits the rodeo ministry for building
that foundation.
“My role is
about trying to influence these kids’ lives, make them better citizens,” he
said. “A lot of them come from broken homes; their parents weren’t there. We
need to face those problems first and foremost.
“When I
recruit kids and have their parents here, one of the first things I tell them
is that we’re a family, just like a church. We’re together from 2 o’clock in
the afternoon to dark every day, we meet together, we have fellowship on
Tuesday nights. It’s more of everybody helping everybody than a lot of other
places.”
That family
came even close together on March 18, when 20-year-old Dalton O’Gorman of
Shamrock, Dylan Jones’s roping partner, was killed in a skid loader accident.
“Not making
light of the tragedy, but it turned into a huge blessing for most of the kids
when they realized everybody was backing them,” Franks said. “When you’re a
family living with each other for a couple of years, you have a lot more than
most.”
Franks said
Jones also was O’Gorman’s best friend. “When Dalton passed away, every time
Dylan got on a horse or picked up a rope, it brought back all the memories. He
never talked about quitting, but he dang sure wanted to step away from it for a
while.”
Franks
convinced Jones to compete at nationals. “That was a huge blessing in itself.
It got him back on a horse, and he got to go up there and represent the school
and Dalton’s legacy and memory.”
The night
of O’Gorman’s accident, “within a couple of hours, we had Thacker and Randy and
John Paul and people in the community and administration here consoling those
kids and praying with them. We were pretty fortunate to have that ministry in
place, because it held us together.”
The heartbreaking
experience helped focus the students on life’s priorities, leading some, which
included O’Gorman’s high school-age sister, to request baptism. Haynes said that
before granting the request, he, Stalls and Paul asked each one, “Why?”
“Man, they
gave some good answers,” Haynes said. “And we spent a lot of time crying with
them.”
On June 6,
Haynes and the Stalls couple received the Harry Denman Evangelism Award at the
annual meeting in Lubbock of the Northwest Texas Conference of the United
Methodist Church. They had been nominated by the Rev. Kirk Watson, a former
Clarendon pastor who assisted the rodeo ministry for three years.
Watson
wrote in his nomination form, “They are building relationships with these
students on a name by name, event by event basis. They invest in the lives of
these students. …
“These students get a sense that
they matter to the people involved in this ministry, and through that they
start to believe that they matter to Jesus.”
