Posts

Vicki Gatchell Feb 21, 2024

Disciplemaking in America’s Rural Churches

If you are a rural church pastor, you may be wonder, “Can my church successfully grow generations of disciplemakers?”  The question is understandable. Often, disciplemaking strategies are geared toward churches in urban settings where diversity and population density are significant factors in planning. While conversations regarding the urban church are vital, the rural church faces its own unique challenges (and some advantages) in making disciples.  The term “rural church” does not simply apply to properties hewn from the edges of Midwest corn fields. It refers to churches situated in any community with fewer than 2,500 persons. One in seven Americans…

Vicki Gatchell Mar 18, 2017

Shatter the Image

I think we’d all like to break our mirrors and throw them away at times.   They help us and they hurt us. Ultimately, sometimes they control us. Recently I had the opportunity to talk to teenage girls about friend drama, or perhaps more accurately, girl drama.  I hate it when people stereotype what girls are like, myself an outdoors woman who doesn’t own a tube of lipstick or a pair of high-heeled shoes.  I have to admit however, that one thing I can’t deny is the way girls and women compare themselves to each other and the negative consequences that follow. I remember attending…

Vicki Gatchell Nov 3, 2016

What if?

What if Donald Trump is elected as the next President of the United States? What if Hillary Clinton is elected as the next President of the United States? On November 8th I will go to the polls and vote, just as I always have since I came of age. Then I will be glad it’s over, this messy brawl of an American family feud that puts me in mind of the Hatfields and the McCoys.  It seems a lot is at stake this time around. And so many issues seem in question regardless of the winner. We’ll all be glad it’s…

Vicki Gatchell Oct 6, 2016

Looking for God’s Work

I’ve been more than a little distracted the past few weeks by this glorious autumn season.  I’m accomplishing the urgent things, but I’ve slacked on my commitment to blog through our current study, ‘Experiencing God.’ Instead, I’ve been spending time outside, particularly on the family farm, and often in the woods. I’m totally nerding-out on fungi this year! There has never been a year I have noticed them more, or appreciated their beauty as I do now. Apparently this year is a banner year for fungi, as reported by yesterday’s Fort Wayne News Sentinel. Here are just a few of the pics I’ve taken over…

Vicki Gatchell Sep 23, 2016

Experiencing God?

My favorite day of all time was August 9, 2014. Glacier National Park had been on my bucket list for many years, and we were there!  I was with my family in the midst of the most beautiful country I have ever seen.  My dream of hiking the Alps faded into the background at Glacier.  I think I’ll be fine! One of my favorite things in life is exploring the great outdoors and experiencing all that God has made. I especially love the mountains. As I tell so many people, it’s not just about seeing the mountains the way some would do on…

Vicki Gatchell Sep 15, 2016

A Gracious Spirit

I’ve been in a little bit of a funk for a few weeks, struggling with some decisions and change that came into my life.   Maybe, if you’re like me, you struggle in times of change too. You wonder whether you’ve heard God right, wavering as to whether the current change is related to a lack of listening, or whether it is God’s way of moving you to the place He wants you. Last week I prayed a lot, asking God for direction with the decisions I have to make. I didn’t see any writing in the sky, but God continuously put gracious…

Vicki Gatchell Aug 6, 2016

Way Beyond Me

In a little over a month, our daughter Katy will leave to spend her fall semester studying in Italy. There she will complete classes for her Biblical Studies major, including studying the Italian Reformation in the land where it all took place.  After that, she hopes to spend another semester in Germany and Switzerland during the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.  I’m more than a little envious, but also flabbergasted at the opportunities God has given Katy in her young life. It’s way beyond me! My own story is that of a farm girl with great parents who struggled their entire lives to save the…

Vicki Gatchell Jul 8, 2016

He Himself is Our Peace

“If someone had written this year in the news as a novel, I would have ridiculed the plot as amateurishly unrealistic.” -Russell Moore Grieved? Helpless? Disgusted? Numb? What’s next?  Massacres, shootings, hatred, terror, racism, murder, crazy politics, religious liberty in question, a nation that is divided on so many issues we can’t even name them anymore. It has indeed been quite a year. I was in the midst of writing these thoughts in response to ongoing tragedies such as the #AltonSterling shooting when I heard the news of the nightmare in Dallas. We are a nation in need of peace in a…

Vicki Gatchell Jun 21, 2016

Two Kinds of Grace

Tonight as I completed our mowing, the sun was hanging low in the sky and tucking itself away for the evening. Maybe you saw it too, and like me, you were treated to a glorious, changing display of color and movement, the skies adrift with white billowing clouds and a darkening background. The moon rose orange and full and smiled on me as I finished my work, and the sun did her final painting on the edge of each white billow, in a majestic array of pink, orange, and golden. Retiring the mower for the night, I noticed lightning in…

Vicki Gatchell Jun 8, 2016

Organic Discipleship

Perhaps many of us understand the idea of  discipleship as the process, through discipline, of becoming like the one we follow.  For the Christian, discipleship means becoming more like Jesus Christ. As His followers we are right with God and holy in Christ from salvation, but from that time forward we begin to grow so that our lives resemble, from the inside out, what Jesus is really like. Various kinds of discipleship “programs” are available, designed to address the multi-faceted relationships we enjoy with God and with other believers. I have benefitted from many, but today I’d like to talk about organic discipleship….

Vicki Gatchell May 22, 2016

Unsung Heroes of Giving

Today our family learned we will say goodbye to someone we love.  For the past two-and-a-half years we have sponsored Dayana, a fatherless little girl living in Haiti who came to our attention through the Christian relief organization Vision Trust.  We have become attached to Dayana as we have given monthly to support her needs and the needs of her impoverished family. We have exchanged letters and sent pictures of our family, stickers, and small tokens of affection.   Every night as I have put our daughter Abby to bed we have prayed that Dayana would have good food and clean water, that…