by admin | Aug 11, 2026 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
One little four-letter words from the New Testament can be big stumbling block for someone living a cowboy lifestyle: love.
The reason we stumble is because we don’t understand the meaning of the word in a biblical context.
Many scholars focus on three main Greek words that translate to “love” and appear in the scriptures we get our English translations from: agape, phileo and eros. When we see the word in the Bible, it is mostly as agape or phileo and we need to know which Greek word it connects with. Agape means an unconditional and sacrificial love. Phileo means a deep friendship or brotherly love. Eros is the romantic word that we most often associate with the word love.
Almost every cowboy, believer or not, has encountered the first form of the word in the verse from John 3:16, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
It isn’t a romantic love that led Jesus to die on the cross for us but a sacrificial one that caused him to give up his own life knowing it would create a way for any of us to be with him in Heaven. This comes to us through our repentance of our sins, our desire to be forgiven of those sins and our belief in who Jesus was and what he did in that loving, sacrificial moment.
It’s this kind of love that God used to draw me away from a successful career and into ministry full time, living for a time in my van just to make it work. Negative stereotypes exist for a reason and give people reasons to find the cowboy crowd pretty unlovable, or even unlikable, sometimes for the way they live or conduct themselves. God built in me a deep caring, love, if you will, for the cowboy community and it’s why I’m available 24 hours a day if any from the ranch or rodeo side reaches out to talk or in need.
Love from the word “phileo” is demonstrated in the story of Lazarus and his resurrection by Jesus. John 11:3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” People Jesus had a close personal relationship with sent for Jesus when he was gravely ill and referred to the deep brotherly love he had for Lazarus.
This is a love most rodeo cowboys should be able to understand. While many may not use the word, “love” to describe how they feel about the other competitors they are closest to but they still understand the deeper connection they have for that person that causes them to care about the person’s life and successes or failures more than they do someone they don’t know as well.
The love we most often associate the word with is eros yet it doesn’t even appear in the New Testament. This is the romantic love we all know and understand and while the Greek word isn’t used, this type of love still exists in scripture from the Song of Solomon to New Testament teachings on marriage.
It’s the first way we understand the word love that should motivate a Christian cowboy to take action. Jesus calls us to live out a sacrificial love for others, even our enemies. This is action, often difficult and not something that should ever leave us thinking love is a weak word. Love takes sacrifice and is seen more than it’s felt. It’s seen when we give money to a homeless person and it’s seen when we take time to tell someone about Jesus and his own demonstration of love on that cross. Because he loved us in that way, he asks us to love others sacrificially as well.
That kind of love takes strength and because of that, should appeal to the cowboy crowd.
Neither brotherly love or sacrificial love should challenge a cowboy’s sense of masculinity. In fact, think about the men and cowboys you know out there and more often than not, it’s the ones who demonstrate these words in their own actions that are likely looked up to the most.
by admin | Jul 28, 2026 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Who we are as Christian men should be defined by Jesus’s teachings, the rest of the Bible and the work of the Holy Spirit as he works inside us as he helps us become more like Jesus.
There’s a real push from the political left against what they call toxic masculinity and many ideas from the Bible like man’s position in the family, upset people with those views who find those ideas offensive.
Then the political right pushes back against empathy, treating it like it’s a sign of weakness and goes against masculinity. It offends people with those views to suggest a man should care more about giving a family food than why they haven’t worked hard enough on their own to have what they need.
But let’s just focus on masculinity as a whole. A Christian man or cowboy’s masculinity can’t be toxic when he’s following Jesus but we have to be sure it’s his teachings we’re following, not our own versions. That’s where ideas that empathy is entirely wrong can creep in to our thinking.
There’s no weakness in loving our neighbors. We can’t confuse that with the word “love” as an emotion toward your neighbor. We don’t even have to like them. In this context, love is an action and takes real strength; especially when it’s our enemies we’re also called to love. Love as action is helping others, encouraging them, correcting harmful behavior, speaking what is good, right and true, building a home for a family in Africa, volunteering at a homeless shelter near you or taking food to the neighbor you don’t like when his wife is in the hospital. And especially, it is pointing others to a saving and life-transforming faith in Jesus Love is in how we treat others, what we do for people and what we say to them.
Following Jesus will strengthen any man. He will take you places you never thought you could or would go and show you gifts and abilities you never knew you had. When they’re used to honor God and point others to Jesus, they can’t ever be toxic. But Jesus challenges us.
Luke 6:27-28 But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
There’s plenty of direction for how we’re to treat everyone from family to neighbors to strangers but the hardest might actually be doing good for someone who hates us. Living out just those two verses isn’t for the weak.
1 Corinthians 16:13 Be on guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.
Cowboys and bull hands, horsemen, cattlemen and ranchers, don’t let our society’s view of masculinity or our lack of understanding of what the Bible teaches about love keep you from pursuing a life-changing relationship with Jesus. The Bible calls us to be strong, firm and courageous in our faith. There’s neither weakness or toxicity in any of that.
Cowboys of the Cross is a rodeo/bull riding ministry that leads cowboy church services at events and maintains an online presence to share the gospel and make disciples among the ranch and rodeo community. They can be found at CowboysOfTheCross.com
by admin | Jun 23, 2026 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There continues to be a push against what it means to be a family, parents, fathers and men. Christians share the western world with a progressive culture that looks at the world differently from Biblical beliefs and wants to remove what it calls social constructs of what it means to be fathers and mothers. They are taking away biological distinctions and removing terms like father and mother and replacing them with “non-gestating” and “gestating” parent.
For Christians, the Bible is distinct on topics of gender roles and, of especial interest to the cowboy crowd, what it means to be fathers and men.
Not everyone in the rodeo community comes from good parents or had good fathers. There are many guys competing to prove something to themselves because in the rodeo arena, it’s them competing against the animal whether it’s a calf bolting across the arena or a bucking horse. It’s a chance to step out on their own, exert themselves and accomplish something not everyone can do and stand proud as men.
Many go on to become fathers but can be left without the role model they need to know how to be good dads themselves.
But the Bible gives us a clear role model to follow with a clear distinction of just what a father is, no matter how much a culture around us might want to remove those standards.
It’s Jesus Christ himself.
The issue and topic was raised at a father’s day service I got to attend at Castine Church all the way in the midwest in Ohio and much of this message is from that sermon by Pastor Greg Hyre.
While Jesus gives us so many examples of what Christians are to follow throughout scripture, we formally recognize God as not just our creator, but our father.
But Jesus makes something clear to his disciples in John.
John 14:6-11 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
Jesus is God and God is Jesus.
There is no other example we need to turn to in order to understand what it looks like to be a father.
Jesus is that example and whether we are fathers or men, whether or not we had great dads of our own, it is Jesus who we should be striving to follow. Nothing more, nothing less.
by admin | Jun 10, 2026 | James
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Don’t judge me.
Since the Christian faith is the dominant faith in the cowboy communities from ranching to rodeos, the idea that calling out someone’s sin is judging them is a common confusion. The reality is, the majority of the cowboy crowd identify as Christians, but far fewer are plugged into a good church or take the time to study God’s word and understand it better.
That’s why, just like most of the unbelieving world, there’s this misconception that when we talk about sin, we’re judging the people living out the sin we’re bringing up.
But James concludes his letter quite abruptly with a lesson in just one reason why have to be able to talk about someone else’s sin.
James 5:19-20 My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, 20 remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
If our faith is real, we’re going to live it out and James has used the bulk of his letter to outline ways that a Christian lives out his faith describing every action being proof his faith is real; how the rich handle their power, how important the words we speak our, how to care for others who have less than us.
As he concludes his letter, he wants us to watch out for those whose are engaged in sin, to help them turn away from their sin and toward a Christ-like life.
If we see that as judging and reject their efforts, then we risk missing out on eternity in Heaven through a saving faith in Jesus. If we can’t talk about sin without being accused of judging, we can’t share the gospel. Sin has to be discussed in the open.
And here, James wants us to help others move away from their sin. If they are already believers, the goal is to restore them to a focus on their saving faith and living out that faith in the ways James has taught us throughout his letter.
They may not like it, but no one feels like their actions are being judged when a rodeo judge or producer fines them for breaking the rules. The goal of the fine is to correct the behavior, like swearing in the arena for the crowd to hear when missing a catch or entering and not showing up.
The point of the fine isn’t to run a contestant off, but to encourage right behavior that helps the event run smoothly or to remain pleasing to the crowd in attendance.
A lot more is at stake for Christians and James says our correction can lead them to saving faith in Jesus with everlasting life in Heaven. It’s the blood Jesus shed on the cross that covers our “multitude of sins” but our correction is what God can use to lead someone to repentance and salvation.
by admin | May 28, 2026 | James
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Whether you’re breeding and training horses, raising cattle or competing in rodeo, at first look, it’s a lot of solitary work. But if you go out to the barn and you find your horse is lame or has a bad gash on his leg, you call a veterinarian for help. You get advice on supplements from the feed store and when it comes time to branding cattle, you have a whole team of help to work through the process.
In the roughstock side of rodeo, it’s you versus that bucking horse or bull, but you still need someone to open the gate when you nod your head.
There’s much in our lives that we go through alone, even when we have families, we sometimes keep struggles to ourselves. But James shows us the importance of community through prayer.
James 5: 13-18 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.
These verses are sometimes used to suggest that with enough faith and prayer, healing is guaranteed but we know even from the first chapter of James, that the only thing we can count on in our broken and fallen world, is that we are going to face trials. Sometimes the healing we desire or the escape from our struggle doesn’t come or it doesn’t come easy.
We know that God will turn a trial into something good, but now, near the end of James, we also know we aren’t supposed to be the only person praying and we aren’t supposed to go through a trial alone.
And, we’re supposed share our joy with others, as James tells us to sing praise when God works in our lives, which shares that praise with everyone.
We’re in community together, good and bad.
When I’ve sinned, confessing it to others and praying together is going to strengthen our position against repeating that sin and we are going to draw on strength from others more mature than us as they pray for us. James isn’t specific if the healing he mentions is from physical illness and disease or a spiritual healing but he’s clear that there is power in our pray for others and being part of a community of believers.
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