WEST OF ENID — “Come as you are.”

That continues to be the motto of Chisholm Trail Cowboy Church, a growing non-denominational congregation of cowboys and cowgirls from across Oklahoma.

The Rev. Dan O’Daniel, who is the church’s pastor and founder, said he is merely following the example Christ set more than 2,000 years ago.

“A lot of his ministry was on the hillside, right where people are,” O’Daniel said.

In 2003, O’Daniel was leading “round pen revivals,” writing and reciting cowboy poetry, training horses, filling as pastor at various churches, and directing the local Baptist Collegiate Ministries (BCM).

As if O’Daniel needed anything else on his schedule, an auctioneer friend who started a cowboy church in Texas repeatedly approached O’Daniel, trying to persuade him to start a cowboy church in northwest Oklahoma.

“I kept saying ‘no,’” O’Daniel said. “I was booked two years ahead in round pen revivals.”

However, he discussed the idea with several friends who helped host cowboy gatherings and they concluded they had no place to meet for a cowboy church.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and knew I needed to talk to Ray Winter (owner of the sale barn Winter Livestock),” O’Daniel said. Friends told O’Daniel that Winter would never consider allowing a cowboy church to meet in his sale barn, but O’Daniel said he felt the Spirit was leading him to speak to Winter anyway.

As it turned out, Winter had become a born-again Christian not long before O’Daniel visited with him and he wholeheartedly agreed to let O’Daniel start a cowboy church at Winter Livestock.

“It was a God thing,” O’Daniel said with a smile.

“We just feel blessed that they’re here,” Winter said. He said as a Christian, he personally considers it a blessing to let the cowboy church utilize the facility for free. Many of the cowboy church attendees are Winter’s friends, neighbors and customers.

Chisholm Trail Cowboy Church welcomed the public for the first time in October 2003 and 43 people attended.

“I thought it was great,” O’Daniel said. The turnout on the first night was above and beyond what he expected. “When it got up to 100, I thought it would stop. It kept on climbing.”

“We’re running 300 to 350 now,” O’Daniel said.

The cowboy church was initially funded by Southern Baptist churches, but “we’re non-denominational in our approach,” O’Daniel said.

He said people are drawn to Chisholm Trail Cowboy Church for two reasons — one, they rodeo on the weekends and weeknight services give them an opportunity to worship, or two, cowboy church doesn’t seem like church.

“We have a lot of people who come to the Lord because it was a non-threatening environment,” O’Daniel said. Many in the congregation have commented to him they had bad experiences at traditional churches.

Chisholm Trail Cowboy Church operates differently than a conventional church setting.

Country gospel singers locally and around the country are invited to perform for the first half of the service. O’Daniel said they are already booked through November. During the latter half of the service O’Daniel, dressed in a hat, jeans and a western shirt, speaks from the Bible.

The offering plate is actually a bucket at the door and O’Daniel doesn’t invite people to “come forward.”

“I don’t ask folk to come forward. I ask them to come find me,” he said. It’s known as “the talk” and people who step inside the sale barn are not pressured by O’Daniel to find salvation. If and when they are ready, they call O’Daniel and he’ll meet them wherever they want.

“They say, ‘Dan, I’m ready for that talk.’ We do it on neutral ground — around their kitchen table, in the barn or in the pasture,” O’Daniel said.

Those who want to be baptized have two choices — the water trough at the sale barn or in a pond north of Enid. The water trough is for immediate individual baptism while the pond is a group baptism in the spring. O’Daniel said 54 people have been baptized since the church’s inception.

There are no church programs other than a men’s Bible study at 7 a.m. Tuesday and children’s church called Little Wranglers Class during the regular Thursday service at 7 p.m.

“We don’t come up and say we have to do a program. What we want is people who say ‘My heart is in it,’” O’ Daniel said.

Church attendees range in age from young to old.

“We have a good mix,” O’Daniel said.

Although Winter Livestock only has 500 seats, “We’re going to accommodate the crowd as long as we can,” O’Daniel said. They don’t want to build a church building because again the current location embodies a non-threatening environment. And without utility bills and a church staff, all the donations will continue to go to those in need.

“We’ve given $40,000 to those who need help. We want to keep that going instead of putting it in a building,” O’Daniel said. “We’re seeing some neat things.”

Because the cowboy church is growing and is taking more of his time, O’Daniel has had to relinquish some of his duties. He gave up his position as BCM director last year. Since a horse-riding accident that gave him another skull fracture in August 2004, O’Daniel no longer leads round pen revivals and avoids training other people’s horses.

He continues to write and recite cowboy poetry and he hosts trail rides periodically during the year.

In addition to his position of pastor at Chisholm Trail Cowboy Church on Thursday nights, O’Daniel also serves as pastor for Nash Christian Church on Sunday mornings.

“I pastor an awful lot of people,” he said. “Between the two churches, I have 400 to 450 people coming.”