Barbara Rainey

Barbara Rainey is a speaker and best-selling author. After graduation from the University of Arkansas with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, Barbara became a staff member of Campus Crusade for Christ in 1971. Barbara and Dennis married in 1972, and together they began a personal and creative collaboration that is still ongoing more than 35 years later. FamilyLife has grown into a dynamic and vital ministry that offers families blueprints for living godly lives.

Works the Raineys have co-written include: Building Your Mate’s Self-Esteem, Growing a Spiritually Strong Family, Parenting Today’s Adolescent, Pressure Proof Your Marriage, Rekindling the Romance, Starting Your Marriage Right, Two Hearts Praying as One, and Moments with You, a devotional book for couples.

Barbara has also joined forces with her children to write books about parenting. She coauthored A Mother’s Legacy with her daughter, Ashley Rainey Escue, and collaborated with Dennis and their children, Rebecca and Samuel, to write So You Are About to Be a Teenager. She also authored the book, Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember, in celebration of this holiday. In 2007, Barbara released a group of illustrated note cards featuring her watercolor art.

In her newest book, Barbara and Susan’s Guide to the Empty Nest, co-authored with her good friend Susan Yates, Barbara reflects on the newest phase of her role as wife and mother. “I clearly remember deciding my mother was old the year she turned thirty-two,” she laughs. “What was I thinking?! Now that I’ve had six kids in ten years, done home-schooling and public schooling, sent them off to college, orchestrated four weddings, survived a prodigal’s years of rebellion, and welcomed a gaggle of grandkids into the expanding Rainey clan, I must finally admit that my own youth is a distant memory. Our youngest child just graduated from college. I’m still adjusting to my status as an ‘older’ (not old, mind you) woman whose kids are grown.”

Barbara’s childhood dream of adoption was fulfilled in 1983 when the Raineys adopted a three-day-old baby girl. “My heart has always been drawn to orphans and their sadness,” Rainey comments. “As a result, adoption and orphan care will always be a part of my God-given mission in some way.” The Raineys have translated their passion for the fatherless into FamilyLife’s “If You Were Mine” conferences that encourage Christian couples to prayerfully consider growing their families through adoption.

Barbara relishes her changing role as mother and grandmother and is enjoying the freedom of her empty nest. In her recently acquired spare time, she can be found painting beautiful watercolors, making special efforts to visit her aging parents, enjoying spontaneous adventures with Dennis, and nurturing plants in her garden. In his spare time, Dennis can be found hunting or fishing. The Raineys live near Little Rock, Arkansas.