WARREN, Ark. – On a recent Saturday, the ABSC Dental/Medical Clinic set up shop up in Warren, Arkansas thanks to Grace Cowboy Church.
Chris Barnes, pastor of Grace Cowboy, said the idea to bring the clinic to Warren came after Rev. Ricky Lattimore at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Dermott reached out to him a few years ago to bring some horses out to their clinic. It was their first experience with this kind of ministry.
“We walked into the sanctuary where they were doing the medical and dental stuff,” Barnes said. “I took one of our members, who was a doctor, and we walked around and looked at this stuff, and she was like, ‘Hey, we can do this at our church so let’s get this going.’”
A little over a year and a half later, the clinic was made a reality.
“We promoted it every way possible,” Barnes said. “We put it on our local radio station, newspapers, Facebook ads, word of mouth…a couple of key places we put them in, that I think were instrumental in getting this out was drugstores. Most people who need medical or dental procedures are going to go to drugstores, so it was in their face all the time.”
They were hoping for a decent turnout, but Barnes said the number of people who came was a very big shock to them and it showed them the need in the community for this type of event.
“I’ve been preaching through Acts, through the New Testament churches, and the churches provided for the people, and that’s what we did. We provided for them, spiritually and physically.”
They were able to serve 90 patients before the day was said and done. Through this ministry, they saw seven salvations and five rededications.
“Our team kept notes of if these people went to church or not. Even if someone was saved, but they didn’t go to church anywhere, we made notes of that. We’re compiling them and working through them,” Barnes said. “When I looked through them yesterday, there were about 40 cards that listed they didn’t have a church home.”
“We’re trying to decide if we want to do this in 2022 because it was such a big ordeal,” he said. “We’re definitely going to do another one though. We had to turn people away. We only had two dentists so they could only do so much. We were turning people away early Saturday morning.”
Grace also distributed backpacks with school supplies and provided horseback rides to kids. They were able to give more than 70 backpacks away.
“I have a great church that just loves to serve people,” Barnes said.
The next Medical/Dental Clinic is scheduled for Saturday, August 28 at Graves Memorial Baptist, North Little Rock. We encourage any who are available to stop by for a few minutes and see this incredible ministry provided by your missions giving through the Dixie Jackson State Missions Offering and the Cooperative Program.
