Reclamation Welch Blog

 Shawnee and Ricky's impact story     God always changes family trees, even though we like apples fall close to the tree because of our flesh, God renews you in the spirit, allowing you to be separate from hang-ups, habits, and hurts that family trees bring. So that’s why we share impact stories, it’s important to us as a church to share with each other our past hurts of addiction and or home life situations. Introduction     I’m Shawnee Potter. This is my husband, Ricky Potter. We’re the founders of an organization called Lion of Judah New Life Ministries. We’re working on opening a long-term recovery home here in McDowell County. We met Paul and a group  from Prosper McDowell and toured our facility, and we’ve come a really long way, but we still need to do a lot of work before we can fully open. What was your life like before Christ? What have y'all been through? Why is this mission so dear to your heart? Shawnee: I am from McDowell. I struggled with an ...

Without doing much editing or polishing, I will take a few minutes to "spill" a reflection on serving at RCW as Planting Pastor for now a little more than two years.   Faith and I are leaving in the morning on a 2 night trip to see Ben Rector with the Nashville Symphony, and so I am cleaning up my "office list" and now feel free to write a few things.   In tribute to a good friend's method (thanks, Jay) I will post a non-exhaustive list of lessons I've learned.  1.  Lostness matters - It's all about relationships.  I am grateful for the opportunity to care for God's people.  I have never been more aware of His love for his children, and I've never been more heartbroken over those who are lost.   Come, Lord Jesus.   2.  Keep it Cross-centered - I often feel under-qualified and under-informed.  The pace of life of our modern world are impossible to keep up with.  Learning to lean into my limitations keeps me humb...

  This April, I had the privilege of serving as a chaperone for Illiana Christian High School’s annual service trip to McDowell County, West Virginia. For eight years now, our school from small-town Indiana has made the 550‑mile minibus journey to Welch to join a community that continually teaches us what resilience, generosity, and Christ‑centered love look like in action. This year, our group of 23 students and 5 chaperones partnered with Reclamation Church and Young Life to serve across the region. Our projects were varied, like repainting and repairing the Little League dugouts in Welch and Iaeger, painting murals inside Reclamation, landscaping at the Young Life camp in Summersville, and supporting the Lion of Judah Rehabilitation House in whatever ways were needed before they open. But the real work was always about the people. One of the most powerful parts of this trip is watching community form on multiple levels. Within our own group, students who barely knew each other o...

Impact Story: WyldLife Winter Weekend With Shannon and Raven   When sharing stories of what God is doing, it doesn’t usually center around one person; sometimes it focuses on many. God’s story works in many ways, one of them is ministry. Recently, our Wyldlife youth ministry went to a winter weekend, and they are here to share how God moved with kids and with each other. Here’s what Raven and Shannon have to say about it. They had the opportunity to serve middle schoolers. We will talk a little bit about what that looks like. Such as where they went and what they did. As we are talking through this life story, I want you to see what it's like to pull into the lives of other people that are in your life and being  a disciple. We hear about discipleship or being a follower of Jesus, but we often are quick to maybe discount our calls on our lives to make disciples, too. God places people in all of our lives, whether it’s students in your classroom, work, and communities, so that ...