By Carol Reeves
Gazette-Times reporter | Posted: Saturday, January 20, 2007 12:00 am
Cowboy hats, boots and belt buckles are not what you'd expect to see inside the old Lewisburg Grange Hall off Highway 99W - at least not since the St. Anne Orthodox Church moved into the building about four years ago.
But on Thursday nights that's exactly what you'll find with the start of a new Cowboy Church that's drawing up to 50 people each week from Corvallis, Philomath, Albany, Monmouth and Lebanon.
The Rev. Dan Vickers is the pastor of the new congregation, which met for the first time in the fellowship hall of St. Anne's on Dec. 7.
Vickers had been looking for a space in Albany to rent. He expected the church would be centrally located to the communities he hoped to draw from, but when he and his wife, Charlotte, attended a friend's 50th wedding anniversary celebration at the Lewisburg site, they realized the former grange hall was a perfect setting.
"You couldn't meet a nicer group of people and they've made everything so convenient for us to have our services there," Vickers said.
Father Stephen Soot, rector at St. Anne's, explained the building is actually owned by a separate entity, Mid-Valley Orthodox LLC. The Greek Orthodox congregation frequently shares its fellowship hall with groups that use the building for special events.
"He (Vickers) and his congregation are absolutely wonderful Christian people and we are pleased to have them as renters," Soot said. "They come in Thursday evening, set up and then take down again immediately after their gathering concludes. You wouldn't even know they'd been there."
Not lost on Vickers is the irony of a country-western service sharing space with an Orthodox church whose worship area upstairs is elaborately decorated with classic icons of the saints, richly patterned carpeting and huge brass pillars with beautiful candelabras, not to mention a contemplative worship style.
"Isn't that just the way God is?" he said, adding he believes there's going to be a lot of people in heaven whose worship styles were very different on Earth.
"The Cowboy Church is an interdenominational church, open to anyone and everyone," he said.
Vickers, a 63-year-old retiree, grew up as a Baptist in Texas and graduated from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo., but he is ordained as an Assemblies of God preacher. He and his wife moved to Corvallis with their two children in 1977 after selling their home and farm in Canton, about 60 miles east of Dallas, Texas.
Some of his descendants were among the pioneers on the Oregon Trail that settled in The Dalles, and his parents and siblings who had already moved to the Northwest were eager for the rest of the family to join them. They chose the mid-Willamette Valley so Charlotte could complete her college degree and eventually earn a master's degree at Oregon State University.
They discovered a group of cowboys that started to worship together in the Corvallis area, but then moved to the Eugene Livestock Auction Building just south of Junction City on Highway 99 in 1994.
The farmers and ranchers felt more comfortable in that environment, Vickers explained, and the fellowship grew quickly, filling the 250-seat arena. Vickers served as an unofficial associate pastor of the church and played the guitar and sang with the praise band.
"A lot of cowboys don't attend conventional churches," he explained. "So that's what we do. We offer them a place where they can come and feel comfortable worshipping the Lord in their Western environment."
In 2000, Vickers was asked to pastor a small church in Harlan in the hills south of Burnt Woods.
"I agreed to go help them, just until they could find a new pastor," Vickers laughed, adding he stayed four years.
The couple found it more and more difficult, however, to make the 70-mile round trip between Harlan and their home south of Philomath, especially during the winter months, and so they went back to the Fellowship of Christian Cowboys in 2004.
Over the years, Vickers has helped the Cowboy Church of Oregon, as it's now known, conduct Sunday worship services at weekend rodeos during the summer and put on four weeks of Rodeo Bible Camp throughout Oregon.
The camps for middle and high school students teach daily Bible lessons and a variety of rodeo skills, including barrel racing, goat roping, bull riding and saddle bronc. Campers come from all over the western United States and British Columbia.
Vickers has always wanted to start up another church in the Corvallis/Albany area and believes "it was Providence" that led him to the Lewisburg site and a solid group of initial church members.
None of the 19 people who attended the first service of the Cowboy Church were from the Eugene fellowship, which is a good thing, Vickers explained. "We're not trying to steal sheep from someone else's pasture.
"In fact, we're not actually trying to be a (full-time) church. We have lots of people who go to other churches too," he said. "We're their 'watering hole' where they can come partake of the water of life and then still go to their regular churches on Sunday all revved up."
The Thursday night services are specifically geared to farmers, ranchers and those who like a country-western style of worship. A five-piece band, including rhythm, lead, bass and steel guitars and drums, leads worshippers in singing Southern gospel music, and Vickers preaches.
"Some like to just sit and listen, others like to clap their hands and even dance," he said.
"We're just a group of people who love to worship the Lord and have fun doing it. Everyone leaves with the joy of knowing they've been in a service where the name of Jesus has been lifted up," Vickers said.
What: Cowboy Church
WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursdays
WHERE: The church meets in the downstairs fellowship hall of St. Anne Orthodox Church (formerly the Lewisburg Grange Hall), 6000 N.E. Elliott Circle.
INFORMATION: 753-2574
Carol Reeves covers religion for the Gazette-Times. She can be reached by e-mail at carol.reeves@lee.net or by phone at 758-9516.