March 10, 2003
Church reaches out with faith and food
for those who faithfully feed the cattle
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___HEREFORD--Frio Baptist Church is praying it's true that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
___Every Sunday morning, women from the church rise early to prepare breakfast. A little later, three teams of men hit the feed lots in and around Hereford with food for body and soul.
___Recipients of the breakfast vittles are cowboys "riding pen," sorting cattle into various groups and inoculating cattle to prevent the spread of disease in the close quarters.
___"These guys have a tough job, and they spend a long day in the saddle," Pastor Ken Ansell said.
___More than 28,000 cattle sometimes moo and low in the three feedlots where the church ministers--one of which lies right behind the church.
___Whether the church is down wind or not is, of course, a matter of which way the wind is blowing, "but you get used to it," Ansell professed. The task may be easier for him, since he was a pig farmer in Brady until the pork market started going belly up.
___Although it's impossible to ignore the presence of the feedlots in Hereford, they had been overlooked as ministry points. That changed about a year ago when Ansell and a deacon began praying for God to show them a hands-on ministry.
___"For several months, we'd been praying God would show us a mission work we could do instead of just sending our money to the Southern Baptist Convention. One day, I was talking with one of the other men in the church, and he said what about the feed lots. It was an answer to prayer," Ansell said.
___One of the chief reasons the church chose the feed lots is because their work keeps the cowboys away from regular church services, Ansell said. So now, the church takes itself to the cowboys in the form of muffins and breakfast burritos and conversation.
___On the first Sunday of each month, however, the cowboys come to the church for a sit-down breakfast and a brief word from the pastor.
___"Each of these lots has a head cowboy, and since we have it on a set schedule, they know what's going on. They don't mind giving us one-half-hour a month," Ansell explained.
___While it's too soon to gauge the full impact of the ministry, some of the cowboys and their families have made connections to the church and have attended other services. One cowboy's wife made a profession of faith in Christ before the family moved to a new job in South Texas.
___And the lives being changed aren't all in the feed lot, the pastor said.
___"This ministry has no doubt made our people aware that if we're going to be a missions-minded church, which we are and always have been, we need to start doing missions and not just writing checks."
The Baptist Standard
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