Salmon, USA - Baptisms are sometimes carried out in a horse trough, hymns are often accompanied by a banjo and the congregation places donations in a leather boot. Welcome to church-going -- cowboy-style.
The Lemhi River Cowboy Church in Idaho is part of a growing movement in the American West that seeks to rope a traditionally non-churchgoing group -- cattlemen, horsemen, rodeo riders -- into weekly Christian worship.
Non-denominational cowboy churches are cropping up in remote stretches of Arizona, Idaho and Texas in a trend Christian ministers say is re-evangelizing a region known for its religious, political and cultural independence.
"It's a boots and jeans crowd," says the Reverend Mike Palmer, the Southern Baptist behind the Lemhi River Cowboy Church. Church members meet in a century-old frame building set amid sagebrush flats and open sky.
Palmer is among ministers who believe cowboy churches must be as down-home and non-traditional as the crowd they cater to, provided they don't dilute Christian doctrine.
"You don't have to be a chaps-wearing cowboy to attend and we don't turn you away if you don't have a cowboy hat on," says Ross Goddard, an Idaho rancher and true believer in the concept of cowboy churches.
But don't plan to turn up in a fancy suit and wingtips, said Jeff Smith, cowboy missionary and head of the Cowboy Church Network of North America.
In the four years since Smith launched the network, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, it has grown to encompass 35 churches in the US and Canada.
"This is not the church your grandma goes to," he says. "This is church in a barn, in an arena, in a saddle club, with no carpet and no padded pews."
It's a place where cow dogs are welcome and where Bible study may be followed by team roping. It's a venue where members might literally engage in a bit of horse-trading after services -- which usually fall on a day and time most likely to accommodate the work cycle of a cattle ranch, a grain farm or a horse operation. Sermons are conducted in a plainspoken style which suits a congregation that places a premium on straight talk.
In a land of Wranglers, Levis and big belt buckles, where church affiliation has been historically low, the challenge for Christian ministers is to reach rural residents separated by vast distances but connected by their relation to the land.
But don't mistake being unchurched as unbelieving in cowboy country. Ferenc Szasz, author of "Religion in the Modern American West," said that while cowboys did not crowd to churches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it's rare to encounter an atheist among them.
"My theory is that you rarely find a cowboy without a sense of God because they're outside in capital-N nature and have a respect for God's handiwork," said Szasz, professor of history at the University of New Mexico.
He argues that religion played a pivotal role in settlement of the West because it supplied a form of community where none otherwise existed.
Today's cowboy churches evoke a bygone era when Plains pioneers and Western settlers gathered in dugouts, barns and community buildings to renew their faith and cement their fellowship
"I would say cowboy churches provide a sense of sub-community that is so necessary," said Szasz.
Most of the estimated 600 cowboy churches nationwide aren't tied to a specific Protestant sect but all are evangelical in nature.
At a time when many mainline Protestant churches in the US are experiencing declining enrollments, the population of evangelical Protestants continues to swell, according to a RAND Labor and Population working paper.
Scholars offer varying explanations, with some theorizing that growth follows the church that adapts to local needs, according to the think tank's study.
Evangelical churches such as the Southern Baptist Convention emphasize missionary work. The convention sponsors more than 5,000 missionaries in 153 nations but its call to support cowboy-friendly churches is an attempt to identify and minister to a discrete culture in the nation's own backyard.
Of the Lemhi River Cowboy Church, founding member Shannon Williams said: "It brings church to the people."
Unlike many parts of Europe, where church and state have historically been linked, the American tradition of separation gave rise to an open religious market infused, like American business, by an entrepreneurial spirit, said James Wellborn, professor of American religion with the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.
Not that every cowboy or cowgirl must be a believer. But to rodeo riders, the Lemhi River Cowboy Church's Palmer offers this aphorism: "If you're going to climb on a 1,500-pound bull, you'd better know God."