After two years in a tent, church moves indoors_110104

Posted: 10/29/04

After two years in a tent, church moves indoors

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

FAIRLIE–Cross Trails Cowboy Church led Hunt Baptist Association in baptisms last year while meeting in a tent. Now members are imagining what can happen as they have moved into new facilities.

The congregation's ministry grew to serve about 300 people each Sunday in worship during its two-year stint beneath a tent. At times, members sweated through services. Other times they shivered.

Often they shed tears of joy as the church baptized more than 50 people, said Pastor Shannon Moreland.

“The Spirit of the Lord was there,” he said.

If the early numbers are any indication, it seems the same Spirit must be in the church's new facilities, which include a sanctuary, a roping arena for outreach events and classrooms for Bible study. About 400 people attended the first service in the new setting.

Expectant mothers, women with young children and senior adults turned out for the initial service because they could sit in the air conditioning rather than under the hot tent, Moreland noted.

“Everybody wanted to come and check it out,” he said.

The congregation looked forward to the first indoor service for more than a year as it waited for the new facilities to be completed.

The church appears to be starting in these buildings where it left off in the tent. Moreland already has conducted the church's first indoor baptism in more than two years–though he continued to use a horse trough, just as he had done when the church met under a tent.

Cross Trails sold its tent to another cowboy church developing in Brazoria County.

It worked for Cross Trails, and Moreland believes it can work in Brazoria as well.

“God will bring people,” he said. “It doesn't matter what the elements are.”