BE A BARNABAS!

“And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet.” (Acts 4:36-37 King James Version)

“Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement),
sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet.”
(Acts 4:36-37 New International Version)

I quoted from two versions because I like the translation of the N.I.V. much better, which says that Barnabas was a “Son of Encouragement”. When I became a born-again Christian in 1970, the only “Barnabas” I’d ever heard of was Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid) on T.V.’s weird and mystical soap opera “Dark Shadows”. At first, finding out there was a Barnabas in the Bible seemed weird, but I quickly discovered he was a great guy. When “Saint Paul” was a young recently converted man who apparently felt out of place and useless, Barnabas sought him out and spent time mentoring him and encouraging him. You know the results: Paul became probably the greatest Christian leader and church planter of the First Century. My friend the Rev. Dick Germaine (who now ministers to the needs of pastors and churches throughout New England) chose to call his nonprofit corporation, “Barnabas Ministries, Inc.” because he seeks to be an encourager like Barnabas in the New Testament.

How we need people who are ENCOURAGERS! A frustration of mine is that I was born with a Melancholic temperament. I don’t have time to explain the four temperaments (and their characteristics) here, but Tim LaHaye does a great job on that in his book, “Spirit Controlled Temperament”. Each of the temperaments has strengths and weaknesses. One of the biggest weaknesses of the Melancholic temperament is that they’re very pessimistic. Melancholics are the types who DON’T say, “THANK you for spending 3 hours washing, polishing, and ‘detailing’ my car!” Rather, Melancholics say (disgustedly), “You MISSED a spot!” My Melancholic tendencies have hurt my ministry in the past. There’s not a thing I can do about THAT, but I DO intend to try to be much more of an ENCOURAGER now and in the future.

Encouragers (like the Bible’s Barnabas) don’t see people AS THEY ARE, but rather, they see them as they CAN be. I know this will make me sound like a total geek, but I LOVE reading people’s biographies. I was reading some biographical information recently about George McGovern. (He was a U.S. Senator representing South Dakota for many years. In 1972, he was the Democrat party’s nominee for President.) I was surprised to find out that I have a lot in common with him. When McGovern was a first-grader he was painfully shy. He absolutely refused to raise his hand in class. When he was in high school, a gym teacher ridiculed him in class because he was nervous about doing some vaulting gymnastics maneuver which if done incorrectly would probably cause you to become seriously injured. Do you suppose that gym teacher or that first-grade teacher ever imagined this man would become a U.S. Senator and become the Presidential nominee of a major political party? Probably not.

In first-grade I was painfully shy. My parents sent me to school wearing white shirts and plaid ties. I know this is hard to believe, but I was painfully thin at that time and I looked like a nerd from the 1940s. I remember feeling totally overwhelmed in first-grade. I may forget where I put my car keys, but I can mentally go back to Room 2 at the Dean S. Luce School in 1960 as if I was just there! At the November parent/teacher conference, Miss Alenger told my father that I never raised my hand in class and that I HAD to start raising my hand in class. My father gave me a big lecture and pep talk about raising my hand in class. I was very nervous, but the next day in school I was determined to conquer my fear and raise my hand and answer a question. During a long session of Miss Alenger asking questions and various kids in the class answering them, it took ALL the courage I could muster up to timidly raise my hand and answer a question. At the end of that session, Miss Alenger said the following:

“Well you ALL did very well answering the questions....EXCEPT Bobby. He only answered ONE question. He might as well not have answered any at all.”

Why have I had problems with self image? Well, stuff like that! As I think about it, right now I wish I could go back in time, walk into that classroom as a 55-year-old man and give Miss Alenger a talking to about that not being the way to instill confidence in a timid 6-year-old. Thank God that I had an outstanding 2nd Grade teacher named Miss Angino. She was a very young teacher. She was not a “pushover” but she DID inspire her students, and THAT year I really came out of my shell and learned to interact with my peers. As far as high school, I had a few of those George McGovern gym class moments but today I couldn’t care less about it.

Well, adversity certainly DOES have its benefits. One of the reasons George McGovern became a heroic fighter pilot in World War 2 was to prove to himself and to that gym teacher that he wasn’t some cowardly wimp.

My friend D.C.M. will probably laugh his head off reading this part. In the Assemblies of God, there was a GREAT missionary (and quite a character) named Charles Greenaway. I remember the first time I saw him speak at Central Bible College. He was so dramatic and intense and emotional and captivating you’d ALMOST think he was mentally ill or putting on an act, but that was the REAL HIM. At that time, he was one of the executives in the Foreign Missions Department at the Assemblies of God headquarters. Almost ten years later, we had him in as our Missions Convention speaker in Walpole, MA one fall. Greenaway was the type who’d go into some jungle in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of headhunters or something “get them all saved” and then become some kind of a great white father to them. (I know this may sound racist, but I don’t know how else to put it!) When he spoke, he’d pull out his handkerchief, wave it around, and yell, “TELL ME ABOUT IT!!” At that church we used to put guests up in a somewhat low cost motel with a pancake house next door. Greenaway actually yelled during a sermon, “I’m getting sick of that MOTEL and that PANCAKE house!!”

Well, Charles Greenaway was representing a college from the South where he was on staff and he had a large fancy display board set up on a table. It was the type of thing that had to be all folded up and dismantled a certain way- then this large display board all neatly fit into a little suitcase. Now, I’m the UNHANDIEST guy you’ve ever seen! And I was asked to dismantle Greenaway’s display board and fold it up into the little suitcase. He stood there in his pale blue suit disgustedly staring at me through his big thick black-rimmed glasses. I felt like Don Knotts or Jerry Lewis. I was dismantling the thing all wrong. The harder I tried, the more of a mess I made. Finally, Greenaway disgustedly, condescendingly, and talking to me as if I were a GIRL, said, “No, no, no, HONEY. Let me help you!” He put it away himself.

HONEY?!

Boy did I wish the floor could open up!

Well, George McGovern survived that kind of stuff and so have I!

But, bottom line, try to see the best in people. Try to see what people CAN be and not necessarily what they are. Try to do a lot more praising and complimenting and a lot less “tearing people down”! Be a Barnabas!

Now, if only I could get Simon Cowell to read this...