The Poems of a Cowboy Preacher

Lee Brock was born in Lamesa, Texas, in October 1923. His parents were cotton farmers on the plains of Texas where he learned about hard work, wind, windmills, horses, cattle and the beauty of nature. In school he learned to express his thoughts about his life in poems. He was saved, baptized, and called to preach in a revival at Seminole, Texas, in 1938, and a spiritual element was added to his poetry. Thus began a lifetime of poetry writing from the perspective of a cowboy preacher. Lee graduated from high school in Hermleigh, Texas in 1941 and was ordained to preach on December 7, 1941-the same day that Pearl Harbor was attacked. He enrolled in Wayland Baptist College in January 1942. There he met Frances Patterson, and they married eighteen months later. He attended Baylor University for two years before graduating from Howard Payne University in 1947. He pastored churches in Rockdale and Thorndale while going to school and after graduation moved on the field at Mountain Home, Texas. It was ranch country and the cowboy helped the local ranchers with their work while he ministered to their spiritual needs as pastor. But in 1952 under the leadership of the Lord he moved to Camas, Washington to start a new church. As a bi-vocational pastor, he helped the people move from Sunday meeting in a Seven Day Adventist Church (who meet on Saturdays) to having a nice building on the outskirts of town. Several leaders in the Northwest Baptist Convention today came from that church. Lee's ministry stretched over fifty years and across pastorates in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, Williams Lake, British Columbia, The Dalles, Oregon, Goldendale, Washington and Rufus, Oregon. People were blessed by his leadership, his loving spirit, and, of course, his poetry.