In the 1800s, the Chisholm Trail was a major pipeline for cowboys and ranchers herding cattle from southern Texas to Abilene, Kans. Though the trail has been replaced by modern transportation, its iconic status in cowboy mythology remains strong today.

Pastor Stan Norman hopes to capture the legacy of the Chisholm Trail, and translate that into a spiritual metaphor for the BIC church he’s planting in Abilene. “God’s Trail Begins Where Yours Ends,” read the pamphlets announcing New Trail Fellowship Church, which Norman hopes will draw “country music lovers, cowboys, and country folk” from Abilene and the surrounding areas.

“I want to use language that the cowboy culture will understand,” says Norman. For example, he hopes to preach his first message on the familiar story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) by using the metaphor of his own struggle to break in a stubborn, rebellious heifer on a friend’s ranch. “I was trying to lead the heifer to water, to give her what she needed,” Norman recalls, relating the story. “Just like Jesus, who was trying to lead the Samaritan woman to living water.”

Building on a foundational group of “cowboys” who have been meeting for a weekly Bible study, the church plant will officially open in September. Services will be held in a barn and feature a “country music” style of worship.

“God has really prompted my heart to start this church,” says Norman, who formerly served as the pastor of the Abilene BIC congregation. “We’re getting back to the basics. Cowboy people want the basics.”