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Moments after flying headfirst onto the arena floor dirt, the man gets up and brushes off his protective vest as rodeo clowns rush in to distract the still-bucking bull.

The crowd cheers as the announcer reveals he's fine, just before the chute opens with another cowboy atop a menacing bull.

But this isn't a typical rodeo. It's an outreach ministry of the Cowboy Church of Ellis County, which has grown from about 300 to 2,200 members since it began nearly nine years ago. The church about 30 miles south of Dallas now bills itself as the world's largest cowboy church.

Churchgoers wear cowboy hats and jeans, sing hymns accompanied by a country band and get baptized in horse troughs. Churches vary. Some have Western-theme sanctuaries; others meet in barns or on rodeo grounds, some on weeknights.

"We use an out-of-the-box method to get people to come, because people have so many walls up with church,"