Rachel Fahrenbach

RACHEL FAHRENBACH has straddled the creative and business-minded worlds ever since deciding to double-major in Creative Writing and Business Management at Hope College in Holland, MI. After college, she worked as a managing editor on various scientific journals until a move from the city of Chicago to the suburbs, coupled with her first pregnancy, shifted Rachel from the corporate world to mompreneur life.

While raising and homeschooling her three kids, she has also tutored college students and homeschooled high schoolers in writing, coordinated events and weddings, completed freelance writing projects, and volunteered in various church and youth ministry roles. Rachel’s biggest undertaking was using her business and communication skills to co-found a nonprofit food pantry that quickly grew to serving 1500 individuals monthly.

The adoption of their youngest brought Rachel past the point of her capacity for productivity and she experienced significant burnout, prompting her and her husband Steve to consider what it would mean for their lives to practice a sabbath each week. What Rachel found in resting weekly with Jesus was a stabilizing peace and a return to her whole self, which included making the time to write and acknowledging her personal need to regularly create.

Two years ago, she began sharing online her personal experiences with Sabbath. The response was positive and led to the release of Rest & Reflect: Conversation with Your Creator about Your Identity, Purpose, and Belonging and a podcast Simply Sabbath (which has had almost 4,000 downloads in the past year). Additional resources created by Rachel for implementing a sabbath practice can be found at simplysabbath.com.

Through her involvement in online writing and entreprenuerial communities, Rachel noticed how difficult it is for fiction writers to translate the best practices of non-fiction publishing, entrepreneurship, and social media marketing to their artform, which often costs them book sales.

Believing it’s fully possible for Christian fiction writers to make an income and an impact with their storytelling, while keeping rest a priority, Rachel launched The Business of Christian Fiction podcast, as well as invites writers to look over her shoulder as she brings her fiction work-in-progress from idea to publication over the next year.

During her weekly sabbath, Rachel enjoys going for walks with her family, trying new restaurants, visiting museums and other historical sites, wandering the aisles of Home Goods, journaling, taking a midday nap, and, of course, reading a great novel.