{"id":9524,"date":"2011-11-10T19:59:24","date_gmt":"2011-11-11T00:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=9524"},"modified":"2011-11-10T21:20:26","modified_gmt":"2011-11-11T02:20:26","slug":"tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee preacher holds church service at “Cotton-Eyed Joe” honky-tonk saloon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knoxville’s non-denominational NorthStar Church held services at local bar Monday night with a country-music themed sermon, after which everybody was invited to stick around and dance.<\/p>\n

Church at the Cotton-Eyed Joe honky-tonk saloon was a success, says \u00a0Pastor Scott Cagle.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He admits the non-traditional venue may raise a few eyebrows, but “we’re a church that likes to take the gospel outside of the four walls,” he told WBIR-TV Channel 10 News.<\/a>\u00a0He said the Monday service was designed to connect with country music fans.<\/p>\n

“They love country music, they love wearing their camouflage, they love wearing their cowboy boots, they love doing a little country line dancing. So we’re just trying to be relevant to their life and their culture and just take the love of Christ to them in fresh new ways.”<\/p>\n

Local country musician and church member Donny Cohen came to Cagle with the idea.<\/p>\n

“We still weren’t reaching the heart of those people, that, maybe lost hope,” Cohen told WBIR.\u00a0“We feel like if Jesus was here on earth, Cotton-Eyed Joe’s is where he’d be hanging out. He didn’t sit back in the synagogues and wait for people to come in. He went out and hung out with sinners.”<\/p>\n

The bar’s owner, Gingi Bakri agreed to rent his saloon to the church on Monday nights — when the bar is usually closed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Man, you are crazy!\u2019\u201d Bakri told ABCNews.com<\/a>. \u201cBut I was there on Monday and these people are for real. I saw a lot of my regulars.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the sermon, a band sang Christian tunes with a Tennessee twang while worshipers line-danced and played corn hole, a game involving throwing a bean bag through a hole.<\/p>\n

Sheri Hampton, who had never attended NorthStar, took her 9-year-old daughter to the service.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very impressed with the pastor, the way he spoke, the environment, the people. I just think it was fun,\u201d she told WATE-TV.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knoxville’s non-denominational NorthStar Church held services at local bar Monday night with a country-music themed sermon, after which everybody was invited to stick around and dance. Church at the Cotton-Eyed Joe honky-tonk saloon was a success, says \u00a0Pastor Scott Cagle. He admits the non-traditional venue may raise a few eyebrows, but “we’re a church that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1827,1826,2201,1825],"class_list":["post-9524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cotton-eyed-joe","tag-knoxville","tag-news","tag-northstar-church"],"yoast_head":"\nTennessee preacher holds church service at "Cotton-Eyed Joe" honky-tonk saloon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tennessee preacher holds church service at "Cotton-Eyed Joe" honky-tonk saloon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Knoxville’s non-denominational NorthStar Church held services at local bar Monday night with a country-music themed sermon, after which everybody was invited to stick around and dance. Church at the Cotton-Eyed Joe honky-tonk saloon was a success, says \u00a0Pastor Scott Cagle. He admits the non-traditional venue may raise a few eyebrows, but “we’re a church that…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-11-11T00:59:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-11-11T02:20:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/11\/ht_joe_bar_church_jp_111109_wblog.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Tennessee preacher holds church service at \"Cotton-Eyed Joe\" honky-tonk saloon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Tennessee preacher holds church service at \"Cotton-Eyed Joe\" honky-tonk saloon","og_description":"Knoxville’s non-denominational NorthStar Church held services at local bar Monday night with a country-music themed sermon, after which everybody was invited to stick around and dance. Church at the Cotton-Eyed Joe honky-tonk saloon was a success, says \u00a0Pastor Scott Cagle. He admits the non-traditional venue may raise a few eyebrows, but “we’re a church that…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-11-11T00:59:24+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-11-11T02:20:26+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/11\/ht_joe_bar_church_jp_111109_wblog.jpg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon","name":"Tennessee preacher holds church service at \"Cotton-Eyed Joe\" honky-tonk saloon","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/11\/ht_joe_bar_church_jp_111109_wblog.jpg","datePublished":"2011-11-11T00:59:24+00:00","dateModified":"2011-11-11T02:20:26+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/11\/ht_joe_bar_church_jp_111109_wblog.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/files\/2011\/11\/ht_joe_bar_church_jp_111109_wblog.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/11\/tennessee-church-plans-to-hold-services-at-cotton-eyed-joe-cowboy-saloon#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Tennessee preacher holds church service at “Cotton-Eyed Joe” honky-tonk saloon"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9524"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9535,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9524\/revisions\/9535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}