Not too many years ago, Danny Rachel was responsible for $14 billion worth of airplane parts and avionics equipment. Today, he helps manage a budget of only $140,000 in a small church in rural Tennessee.
So far as he is concerned, it's been a step up the ladder of success. When Danny received his degree at the University of Arkansas in Monticello and a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, he was planning for a 30-year tour of duty as a career military officer. That was only natural. He had been born on an air base in Mississippi in 1954 and grew up in a military household. His father, Charles Rachel, was a career non-commissioned officer. From kindergarten through high school, Danny switched schools 14 times - including three different times in one year. But where some military kids often have a problem with the "footloose" nature of the armed services, Danny never let it trouble him.
"My family was fairly typical for a military family in that particular day with the exception that my father was not the stereotypical military man," Rachel said. "He was like a big brother who enjoyed playing with me and my friends and was always fun loving and carefree. My mother, who was a telephone operator for Ma Bell, would work the undesirable shifts to ensure I would not have to stay with anyone other than my father if at all possible."
He and his younger brother, Tim, were taught the virtues of a strong work ethic, respect for authority and others, family loyalty, honesty, integrity and love. However, there was little emphasis placed on religion in the household. Rachel was introduced to evangelical Christianity and the concept of salvation in Jesus Christ when he lived for a year in Bloomington, Ind., during his junior year of high school and attended a small Baptist church. While Rachel was in college, his father decided to retire from the military and move to Bristol.
"He said he wasn't going to salute his own son," Rachel said. He met his wife-to-be, Mary at UA. He had a full scholarship in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps. An Arkansas native, she was studying both English language and education. Rachel entered active service in March 1976 and they married the following December, the same month she graduated from college. Rachel's first stint was as a Titan missile launch control officer in Arizona. He likes to quip, "when I was 21, they have me the keys to the largest thermonuclear weapon made in the world."
While living near Tucson, he and Mary became active in activities at a local Baptist church and it was there that his life began to take a new direction. "It was in August of 1979, while reading Romans, that I became strongly convicted of my sinful state and the need to repent and accept God's gift of salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ. This time, I responded to the moving of the Holy Spirit and not to man's urging or my own desires." When he was transferred overseas to Holland, he began to think that he might want to enter the ministry.
"I loved the Air Force," he said. "I would be in it today if I hadn't been called by God into the pastorate." Rachel eventually transferred overseas to Holland where he began to work in the Social Actions department on a military base counseling young men with drug or alcohol problems. He and his wife worked in a local Baptist mission church there, and he began to think he should become a military chaplain. So, he asked his superiors to hand down a recommendation that allowed him to leave the service and enter seminary, but he was turned down and sent to Upstate New York. There, he eventually commanded a Transportation Squadron. While the field was completely alien to him, he said that he learned the secret of collecting good people around him and letting them do their jobs. His division received some of the highest marks in the history of the base.
Next, Rachel was sent to the Air Force Headquarters in Nebraska during Desert Storm, and from there to Georgia. "I moved to Georgia and managed procurement of one half of the vehicles purchased for the Air Force as well as certain specialized vehicles for the other services," he said.
Again, his performance won him approval among his peers and his superiors. He was given a new position that was a plum for any career officer. "I was told the commanding general wanted me to be commander of a Defense Logistics Agency distribution depot. This was an organization with over 1,300 people and an inventory of over 600,000 line items valued in excess of $14 billion," he said. "This was a Department of Defense position, one of several that Congress identified as a prerequisite to be eligible to become a general officer. Life was good and my future was bright." But, he said, God's Holy Spirit never stopped tugging at him to enter the ministry on a full-time basis.
"The more I grew spiritually, the clearer the call. The more I explored the scriptures, the louder the call," he said. "God wanted me to enter the pastoral ministry." Rachel gave up his comfortable position at the depot in Georgia and took over a much smaller operation in Memphis.
Mary's sister and husband had settled in nearby McNairy County, and Rachel and his family joined them there, purchasing a 14-acre tract of land and building a home. Rachel commuted an hour and a half to Memphis for work. They began visiting churches in the local community, and settled on Eastview Baptist, a small community church. Rachel remembers that the day he and his family walked down the aisle, the pastor announced after the service that he was leaving. It was one of those fateful moments in life when God takes a hand.
Rachel was asked to stand in the pulpit for a couple of Sundays while the small church sought another pastor. The congregation liked him so much they eventually asked him to fill in as the regular interim pastor and, ultimately, as full-time pastor. He stayed at Eastview for seven years, leaving the military in 1996, and devoting his life entirely to the pastorate.
From McNairy County, he came to the fill the pulpit in Ridgely. Rachel is thankful for the 42 years of contact with military life. He feels it gave him a unique perspective that has helped to shape his views of Christianity and of the pastorate. The American military has a wide mix of nationalities, cultures and ethnic groups. In some ways it resembles a large family divided by rank and duties, rather than by economic status or educational background. From a flight-line noncom to the officer flying a jet fighter, all are interconnected, all important to the mission. He believes that same model should be used in rural Christian churches.
As rural populations have dwindled across the south, churches, once the backbone of southern life, have suffered. Interest has dwindled in religious life. "The church is suffering from the effects of competition for people's interest, time and resources," Rachel said. "Unfortunately, the church is often way down the list of priorities, especially among young people. In a lot of rural areas the god - with a little 'g' - is sports. When you are trying to establish a new ministry, you have to pull out the ball schedule and work around that." There are many crucial issues rural churches will face in the future, he believes. So many technological and cultural changes have occurred that "old ways" of doing business will ultimately have to change.
"So many small churches have reached a plateau or are declining in numbers that they should consider combining in order to better pool their resources," he said. In fact, because of the ease of transportation, families can go to nearby large towns or cities in order to attend churches that have the resources to offer a wide array of programs and classes.
Rachel thinks smaller, rural churches must also learn to reach beyond the traditional family and cultural groups and programs that have often defined them and make a broader impact on the community around them. That is one reason he opened the Sunday School wing of the church to the Dyer County Literacy Program, which is for Lake Countians trying to acquire a GED. His wife is a teacher in that program.
Rachel believes there is only one way to reach people with the message of Christianity - one person at a time. The old mindset of many rural congregations, "but that is why we pay for a preacher," must give way to a new sense of personal responsibility and commitment to the Christian faith.
"You can't hire enough pastors to fight this war, no more than you can just send the generals out to fight a battle," he said. "There are not enough of them. "Everyone in the church is called to minister. There are no exceptions."
