4 minute read
From The Ranch to The Pulpit
FOLLOWER OF CHRIST FROM THE RANCH TO THE PULPIT
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BY JULIE CARTER ~
Owen Young, 51, is a ranch manager and has been a cowboy all his life. He grew up on a multi-generation ranch about 30 miles south of Hachita, New Mexico. If you check your map, that’s close to the Mexican border down in the boot heel part of the state.
From there he worked on ranches all over the state until finally settling in as manager on the Ruby Ranch just north of Las Vegas. Along that route he met and married Kamee Wolf Young, and together they raised a son Kade and daughter Kayla. Kade did a four-year stint in the Marine Corps and is now married and a Santa Fe County firefighter. Kayla just earned her Bachelor’s Degree in graphic design and while finding work in that field, she seeks adventures in a bigger world where she’s traveled often through ministry trips.
Owen’s story is that God “back-doored” him into preaching and the ministry. “When I was in high school, if there was an assignment that required getting up and talking in front of people, I’d just take a zero,” he said. There was nothing whatsoever in him at that time that suggested he would one day be the spiritual leader and voice for a 50-60 member church.
The road was slow. As a child, it was his mother’s influence that brought Christ to life. Later, as a church member and deacon, his involvement in his church opened other doors.
When they moved to Las Vegas in 1992, Owen and Kamee began attending Calvary Baptist church and he became a deacon. He was asked to fill in at the pulpit from time to time and led to more sermons in other churches in the district as a “supply preacher.”
Seeing a need among the ranch families that he worked with and around, Owen started a Thursday night Bible study and worship service at the ranch. That quickly grew to 20 or so weekly participants and through prayer God worked mightily among them. He was ordained by the Calvary Baptist Church in 2004.
Owen saw God moving him forward in spite of himself. “I said then, I don’t mind preaching, but I’ll never pastor a church.” And of course, that is exactly what happened. He had served as an interim pastor in Mora for a year, but he went in knowing and declaring that to be temporary, even putting a one-year deadline on the position. When Owen was asked to sit in on a business meeting of Rociada Baptist Church to offer some advice for direction, he had no idea yet another door was about to open for him.
Rociada Church
Julie Carter
For 21 years now, Owen has served God at the helm of that same Rociada church. The growth has been steady; he started out with a handful of members in the off-season. Summer would fill the pews with those that came to their summer homes. In time, as the Rociada Valley infilled with more year-round residents, so did the Rociada Baptist Church. Owen’s methods and messages of the gospel have kept them coming back. If you ask him to describe himself, he says,” A follower of Christ who works as a rancher.”
He explains. “I’m not really a ‘cowboy church’ guy. I really believe that your witness as a church, if the world looks in and everybody’s from different backgrounds, different races, different likes and dislikes, and yet they come together in Christ, that’s your witness to the world.” Meanwhile back at the ranch, Owen and Kamee spend the long days and long hours required in ranching together. For many years, the ranch has been a yearling operation but is in the process of transitioning to handling more on the cow-calf end. They also do a little farming, raising grazing forage.
Kamee and Owen Young
Julie Carter
Lamee, ranch-raised herself, is Owen’s number one help, both at the ranch and at the church. She thought she knew before Owen did that God had called Owen to the pulpit. With that came the realization she was to become “a preacher’s wife.” What evolved was both Owen and Kamee taking their work ethic of long hard days of ranching to the church.
Owen’s belief is that if a church is to impact the community, a church must be filled with workers; his church is blessed to have just that. As in 1 Corinthians 15:58 … “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Julie Carter is a New Mexico writer and photographer. For 15 years, she wrote a weekly syndicated column, Cowgirl Sass & Savvy, painting cowboy pictures with words and wit in an attempt to bring a unique point of view to cowboy life. From her ranch-raising in Colorado to her ranch living in New Mexico and a lot of miles and rodeo arenas in between, she writes and photographs with a passion for the Western way of life.
