For Chance Hill, saddle-training horses is more than just a hobby. It’s a mission.
The University of Mobile sophomore business management student from Satsuma demonstrates the practice of training a young horse before a live audience and relates it to the biblical process of discipleship.
Hill, a young man with a contagious smile and dusty cowboy boots, described the ministry with enthusiasm. Working with host churches, he draws a crowd with only a young untrained horse and a round pen.
“During a period of about two hours, I’ll work the horse, trying to train it. I relate that to how we work with Christ” to learn to obey Him, Hill said.
As he demonstrates the 10-step training process, Hill explains to the audience how teaching a horse to submit to a rider can be symbolic of a person learning to submit to God.
“At the end, when I saddle the horse, I’ll ride the horse for a few minutes, and then — it gets me every time — I lay the horse down. Usually there’s not a dry eye in the crowd,” he said. “When a horse lays down for you, he’s completely submitted to you. I’ll relate that to how we should fully submit to God and let Him take over.”
Though Hill has been around horses almost his entire life, he credits his ministry involvement to answered prayer.
When Paul Daily, co-founder of Wild Horse Ministries, and Sammy Gilbreath, director of the office of evangelism for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, approached Hill about doing his own demonstration, the young rider was unsure how to respond.
“I’ve loved horses and whatever I do, I want to do it for the Lord,” he said.
So Hill agreed to do his own demonstration, but while he was preparing for his first one in the spring, a horse reared up and landed on top of him.
“People that saw it said I was dead,” Hill recounted.
Miraculously he escaped with only minor injuries. And in June, Hill completed his first demonstration in Bessemer.
Through the support of his father, Roy Hill, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Satsuma, and his church family, the first demonstration was a success.
“My dad can sense when I’m struggling with what to say and he helps a lot,” he said.
Even through the excitement, Hill doesn’t forget the most important part of the presentation.
“At the end, after the horse is laid down, it leads into a time of invitation. We open up the round pen, and I take the saddle off the horse and lay it down to serve as an altar.”
Explaining that the saddle serves as the central symbol of submission and service to God, he then invites members of the audience to come forward and submit their lives to Jesus Christ.
These are the moments that prove that an ordinary love for horses can become an extraordinary mission. That mission “is to see people come to know the Lord,” Hill said.
For more information or to book a demonstration, contact Cindy Johnson of First, Satsuma, at 251-675-1280. For information about these and other types of evangelistic ministries, contact Gilbreath at 1-800-264-1225.
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