Wednesdays · 6:30 PM
Wednesday Arena Night
Open roping and barrel practice, then ten minutes of scripture from the announcer's stand at eight. Bring your horse, or just sit on the tailgate and watch.
Saddle Creek, fall 2026
Saddle Creek Cowboy Church · Weatherford, Texas
Church in a covered arena, Sundays at ten. Come in what you fed in.
About 180 of us meet under the tin roof on Old Dennis Road: ropers, nurses, truckers, ranch hands and a good many grandkids. Folding chairs on the dirt, a country band on the flatbed, about twenty-five minutes of plain Bible, and brisket after.
How we started
A church for folks who'd rather be horseback
Saddle Creek started in 2009 with eleven people on hay bales in the old Parker County sale barn. Amos Birdwell was shoeing horses for a living then, and most of the men he worked beside hadn't been inside a church since their grandmother's funeral.
So he started the kind of church they would walk into: a dirt floor, plain talk, the Bible read straight, and nobody looking twice at your boots or your past. Seventeen years on we have our own arena, a roping every Wednesday, a stock tank that has baptized 412 people, and a pastor, Clint Haskell, who was one of them.
Sunday, 9:50 AM
Bo Lutz rides over from the next place on and ties up at the east rail. He hasn't missed a week since 2016.
Sunday morning
Folding chairs on arena dirt, and coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in
The service is in the arena itself, under the roof the members raised in one weekend in 2016. The band plays from a flatbed trailer at the north end: guitar, fiddle, steel and whoever brought a harmonica.
Clint preaches straight through a book of the Bible, a chapter or so a week, and he'll finish by eleven unless the Spirit or a loose calf gets in the way.
- Gate opens at 9:15 with coffee and kolaches at the concession window
- Kids 3 to 11 head to the tack room after the first song
- Barn fans in summer, propane heaters November to March
- Dinner on the grounds after: brisket, beans and whatever the ladies bring
Through the week
Something on most nights, and most of it outdoors
Every group below takes newcomers any week. Nobody will make you introduce yourself.
Saturdays · 6:30 AM
Ranch Hands Breakfast
Eggs, sausage and a chapter of Proverbs at the long table in the tack barn. Done by 7:30 so you can still go feed.
Tuesdays · 9:30 AM
Saddle Sisters
Women's Bible study around Darlene's kitchen table, with babies welcome and coffee on.
Sundays · 10:00 AM
Buckaroos
Kids 3 to 11 in the tack room with Kaylee's team: a Bible story, a craft and a turn on the roping dummy.
Read at the close of every arena night
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
On the calendar
Coming up at the arena
Oct17
Fall Ranch Rodeo
9:00 AM · Covered arena
Six-man ranch teams in sorting, doctoring and wild cow milking. Gate admission is two canned goods.
Oct25
Stock Tank Sunday
10:00 AM · Tank by the east gate
Baptisms right after the sermon. If one of them is you, bring a towel and dry jeans.
Nov7
Chuckwagon cook-off
11:00 AM · South pasture
Five wagons, one judge from Abilene, and peach cobbler by the gallon.
Nov21
Hay Fund haul day
7:00 AM · Hay barn loading pad
Forty round bales out to families along the Palo Pinto county line. Goosenecks needed.
Dec13
Cowboy Christmas
6:00 PM · Covered arena
A live nativity with real stock, carols with the band, and hot cider by the fire barrels.
Nothing in that category this month.
In their words
Why folks keep turning in at the gate
I hadn't been in a church in twenty-two years. Clint said come as I was, so I came straight from the feedlot, and nobody moved their chair.
My girls learned to run barrels and learned the Lord's Prayer in the same arena. That's about all I ever wanted for them.
After the March grass fire took our fence and our hay, there were bales at our gate by Thursday. We hadn't even asked.
Sunday at ten. The gate's open at nine-fifteen.
Turn in at the white pipe fence on Old Dennis Road and follow the trucks.