Carrying a guitar and a Bible and wearing cowboy boots and hat, the pastor walked into the Enumclaw Sales Pavilion, his feet sinking into the wood chips of the auction floor where earlier in the week calves had been sold.
A Randy Travis tune rolled through the tiers of old wooden seats where 50 people clapped their hands. Then 50-year-old Paul Jerome of Marysville stepped to the microphone. It was the first night of worship at the new Cowboy Church here, and he was on a roundup for stray souls.
Billed as "come as you are" churches with Western music and set in nontraditional places barns, auction yards, fields and rodeo arenas cowboy churches are cropping up across the country, with three formed in Enumclaw, Marysville and the Whatcom County town of Ferndale in the past few months alone. There are also churches in Ellensburg, in Buckley in Pierce County, and in Quincy in Grant County.
The informal nature of the services and the unconventional times Saturday nights in Enumclaw, every third Tuesday night in Marysville appeal to those who don't trust conventional denominations, are uncomfortable in traditional churches, don't want to dress up or who simply identify with the cowboy way of life. Many of those at Saturday's initial service were middle-aged.
Among the younger folks in attendance were Ashley Goit, 22, and Kevin Parlari, 22, of Enumclaw, who dropped in out of curiosity. Wearing jeans and sitting quietly in folding chairs, they liked what they heard and said they'd probably come back.
While variations of cowboy churches have been around at least since the early 1980s, having started in Arizona and Texas, the phenomenon has only recently taken off. What Martin Luther was to Lutherans, John Knox to Presbyterians and John Wesley to Methodists, Coy Huffman of Tucson is to cowboy churches.
Founder of Cowboy Ministries International in 1980, he is the one most associated with the movement. With Huffman's advice, Gary and Sharon Peetz of Auburn founded Cowboy Church in the Enumclaw auction barn after several months of planning.
"It's real people for a real God," Huffman said. "It's not complex. We keep it simple, keep in fun. My mission is to help people in life."
Instead of the ornate crosses and polished wooden altars of many traditional houses of worship, the auction barn walls are covered with advertisements for farm equipment, a stallion service and meat-packing places.
With that background, Jerome talked Saturday night about Americans seeking protection from international terrorism by buying Visqueen and duct tape.
The protection you need is the protection of the Lord Jesus Christ," he said, asking that people turn their hearts over to Christ.
By day, Jerome, 50, is a forklift operator who graduated from the now-defunct Northwest School of the Bible of Bothell and was ordained at a Cowboy Church International Conference in Laughlin, Nev., in 1996. He now travels the country preaching at cowboy churches, as he did Saturday, helping the Peetzes launch their Enumclaw endeavor.
Because the churches are informal, anyone can start one. Should they first consult with Huffman, he tells them to take Bible courses and to seriously consider whether they are meant to lead a church.
The Peetzes were familiar with cowboy churches, she having interviewed Huffman on a Reno, Nev., television program she was hosting called "Meet the Pastor." She was living nearby at the time.
Sharon Peetz was an outspoken Pentecostal with a lively style of worship, and her husband was a sedate and solemn Wisconsin Synod Lutheran. Their worship preferences clashed until after he experienced spiritual renewal and she said she believed they were meant to start a church in Enumclaw with him as its pastor.
I thought, 'Why me?' " said Gary Peetz, a 48-year-old truck driver. "I'm no preacher."
For that very reason, they believed he could reach some people who would have nothing to do with traditional pastors and churches. A cowboy church seemed like a natural.
Both Peetzes loved country-western music, owned horses and identified with the lifestyle. Though Gary Peetz attended Huffman's Cowboy Church International Conference and was ordained, he turned everything over to Jerome for the initial service.
Jerome looked over the audience members and told them he was just trying to get to know them, likening the inaugural service to a first date. He reminded them that Jesus is the "champion of champions."
Then he chided them, saying, "Don't look at me like a bunch of frogs in a hailstorm."
Mary Lou Murray, 63, of Buckley was seated among the crowd. She came away delighted.
"Church needs to be a place where people feel they don't have to dress up," she said. Believing she needed to do so had kept her out of other churches for years.
"The older I get, I realized that you'll be a better Christian if you go to church," she said.
And this church, with its hats, boots and Western music, appealed to her. She may be a teacher by day, she said, but "I'm a cowgirl at heart."