Arkansas Baptist pastor Brad Curtis has had 10 broken arms, four knee surgeries, a broken leg, has lost three teeth and had plastic surgery on his forehead.
No, we’re not talking about rough deacons’ meetings. The pastor of Lexington Baptist Church in Clinton, Ark., is a retired rodeo cowboy who spent 13 years as a bareback rider.
Curtis, who grew up in a non-Christian home in Harrison and didn’t attend church as a child, joined the rodeo circuit as a teenager in an attempt to fit in.
“Rodeoing was the only thing I could do where I wasn’t compared to my brother,” recalled Curtis, who struggled in school with learning disorders, including dyslexia, and had turned to alcohol and drugs by the time he was 15.
During his senior year of high school, Curtis met his future wife, Janet. They fell in love, and he tried for a time to straighten out his life.
After graduation, he felt he could do nothing except rodeo, even though Janet didn’t like the idea. College was not an option, and he only had a third- or fourth-grade reading level. “Rodeoing was the only thing I could do,” he said.
Curtis won his first state championship in 1984. Eventually, he started traveling on the professional rodeo circuit. By the age of 22 he had been in 36 states and part of Canada.
Curtis had set a goal to become one of the top 10 bareback riders in the world. He attained that goal in 1985, along with being named rookie of the year.
Despite his success, he wasn’t happy. His drinking increased and his attitude and outlook on life deteriorated.
One night at a rodeo in Lebanon, Tenn., Curtis thought he had performed very well. Unfortunately, the judges disagreed. Curtis drowned his sorrows in alcohol. When he woke up the next morning, he was in North Carolina in a strange van with guys he didn’t even know.
Curtis recognized one person, David Gaither, from the rodeo circuit. “I didn’t really know him because he was a Christian, but he was a familiar face,” Curtis said. Gaither climbed into the van beside Curtis and began telling stories about Jesus and the prodigal son. Finally, Curtis told him four hours of nonstop Jesus was enough.
But God wasn’t finished working in Curtis’ life. He continued talking with Gaither about getting his life straightened out, and every conversation turned to Jesus. He was a guest in Gaither’s home in Virginia for a week. “It was nothing like I had ever been around,” he said. “They prayed before meals and seemed to be happy.”
Right before a rodeo on a hot summer night, July 3, 1986, Curtis climbed into his own van and asked Jesus into his heart. “I felt like Superman coming out of the phone booth when I came out of the van,” Curtis recalled.
The next night at another rodeo in Edmond, Okla., Curtis broke his leg. Friends packed him up and sent him home to heal, but before he left, one friend he had mentioned accepting Christ to gave him a copy of the New Testament. “It was the first book I ever read,” said Curtis, who at the time was 23 years old.
Still, his troubles weren’t over. After his leg healed, Curtis decided to rodeo again. He tried to win his rodeo friends to the Lord, but instead, they pulled him down. He drank again and started snorting crystal methamphetamine, a dangerous illegal drug.
In late 1987, Curtis began attending Conway, Ark.’s, Second Baptist Church, known as “Cowboy Church.” It offered worship services for cowboys and provided them a place to study the Bible and feel perfectly at ease no matter what they were wearing. Curtis was drinking on Saturday nights and then attending church on Sunday nights.
“By the end of the year, I was running from the Lord,” Curtis said. “I was miserable and thought about taking my own life. I had to do something.”
In March 1988, Curtis and a friend took a trip to get away. During the trip, he said, “God opened my eyes.”
He determined to return home, see if Janet would take him back, get involved in Bible study and get a job. Finding work posed the biggest challenge, because he didn’t feel qualified for anything but rodeo. He did find a job, however, in Conway.
He married Janet in 1989 and then won another state championship. He decided to give up rodeo when their daughter was born. Quitting rodeo was harder for him than it was to quit drinking or drugs, he said, because it had defined him for so long.
He soon felt God was calling him into the ministry, but thought that was impossible since he despised being in front of people. Eventually, however, he surrendered to preach. He gave his first sermon the next week and has preached somewhere nearly every week since.
A friend encouraged him to seek more education, so he began attending what is now known as the Arkansas Baptist School of Biblical Studies in Little Rock. For the first time, he began to realize he could learn.
He attended school every weekend for more than four years and continues to take correspondence courses. He has now spoken in 53 churches and has been involved in prison ministry.
About six months ago, after filling in at Lexington Baptist Church, they asked him to become their pastor. It was the first time in his life he ever knew what he was to do.
Curtis also works at Aermotor Pumps in Conway as a machinist. Curtis and his wife have two children, Lindsey, 10, and Fletcher, 6.
“They (his church) are the right group of people. It is a place I don’t have to act or be anything I’m not,” Curtis said.
(ABP)
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